Abstract: Lawson, contrary to many other players, seems to be compensating its narrow foothold with a strong vertical dimension. Lawson will continue to concentrate its internal sales efforts on its traditional vertical markets and to additionally rely on partners to address and develop for particular industry needs. Look for Lawson's opportunistic expansion into another service industry market and for its abstaining from manufacturing in the foreseeable future.

Abstract: When it comes to data, it’s all about location. Although more than 80 percent of enterprise data has a geographic dimension—such as stores, customers, and competitors—it’s rarely used in traditional business intelligence (BI) analysis. In order to react faster to market changes and to improve competitive advantage and operation efficiency, businesses should consider adding location intelligence tools to their BI platform.

Abstract: When evaluating a data integration tool, you need to ask whether it handles dimension and fact transformations in a robust manner. You also need to determine how it handles error processing, and captures changes to dimensional data across time. Does it include reusable objects? What late-arriving fact functionality does it provide? And which data stores does it actually connect to?

Abstract: A balanced scorecard is a measurement system for management that provides real insight into the status of a business or some part of it. Developed by Kaplan and Norton in the early 1990s, balanced scorecards provide a control system that helps ensure the right balance between different, and often times conflicting, perspectives. For example, an insurance company may increase profitability by offering incentives to claims assessors for taking a tough stance on payout, but will soon find dissatisfaction among its clients that may lead to lost business. Scorecards help ensure this balance and are an improvement over more traditional single dimension approaches that tend to be based purely on expense management and business growth.