sascom voices - The sascom magazine blog

In September, I published a few posts from the Midwest SAS Users Group (MWSUG) conference, including coverage of presentations from SAS VP John Sall, SAS CIO Suzanne Gordon, SAS Consultant Kirk Paul Lafler and JMP Marketing Director Jon Weisz.

Now that the MWSUG organizers have published the conference papers online and announced the best paper winners, I want to highlight my favorite talk from the conference: Revolutionary BI by Charles Kincaid.

Charles, an Engagement Director at COMSYS, describes the ways he thinks analytics and business intelligence will be used and shared inside organizations in the future, and I think even George Jetson's employer Spacely Sprockets could benefit from his ideas.

If you've ever wondered how Web 2.0 will affect reporting and analytics in the future, Charles lays out the most comprehensive predictions I've seen yet. He looks beyond social sharing features like those you find on Facebook and Twitter, and describes intelligent reporting systems that will recognize common users of single data sources and allow report users to favorite or suggest changes to reports that are created by other users.

In addition to the MWSUG talk, Charles has presented his paper at other conferences, including SAS Global Forum 2009 in Washington, DC. In fact, he says his presentation at SAS Global Forum inspired one conference attendee to try some of Charles' ideas in his own banking organization, and that user is now presenting his results at SAS conferences too.

Read the full paper to understand Charles' vision for the future of business intelligence. Maybe you'll be inspired too.