Tag: Building Business Intelligence

What Can I Do With a Stored Process?

Often I refer to SAS Stored Processes as the workhorse of the SAS BI tools … you can use these little devils everywhere sometimes as Band-Aid, sometimes as the star, and sometimes as a background player. In a past post, I showed you how to use a stored process to add dashboard dials to Web Report Studio and Linking to a Stored Process from Web Report Studio. Add-In for MS Office – View Reports or Data Use the stored process to deliver a report or maybe just a dataset (using Proc Print) to the Add-In for Microsoft Office (AMO). In the past, I set up several stored processes that only contained a PROC PRINT to display a data set. Then I added a prompt for Product, which allowed the user to query product inquiries based on the product of interest. Here’s how you access the stored process from AMO 4.3. This works similarly in prior versions of AMO. Open MS Excel (or Word/PowerPoint). On the SAS ribbon, click the Reports icon. Navigate to the stored processes storage location and click the stored process name. < Optional> This stored process has two prompts: Visitor Type and ODS Style. Your stored process […]

Crash the Party at All Analytics …

I have been calling us data geeks – but turns out our new name is actually the more respectable data scientist. Wonder if we get white lab coats with our names over the pocket? That would be so cool. Anyway, check out AllAnalytics.Com – there is a community of folks talking about big data, data analysis, and even trends for the future.  Great Place to Get Ideas     AllAnalytics.Com is a great resource for SAS users – they discuss a lot of the topics that we work with everyday. I love learning about all the different ways us data scientists are solving problems.  Today they are discussing how those personals – Find Your Mate sites work.  I say you cannot apply analytics to love … but maybe I’m a romantic scientist.     Chance to Win a Free Copy of BI Book   Next Friday at 2 PM (EST), AllAnalytics.Com is hosting my co-author, Angela Hall, and I to talk about our new book, Building Business Intelligence with SAS: Content Development Examples.  So Angela and I will be available to discuss the writing process, working with SAS Press, and even answer some of your BI questions.  SAS Press has donated two copies of […]

Enterprise Guide: Zero My Hero – Using the Z Format

Working with account numbers can require adding a leading zero.  You can use the Z format but it can be a little tricky. Not so long ago I showed you how to use the Z format to create a new data item in Information Map Studio.  However, I noticed many people are still searching for this information and when I was using it myself I was not able to find much on it. This post explains how to create a new column in Enterprise Guide following by the actual coding steps in PROC SQL:   Creating a New Column in SAS Enterprise Guide Query Builder To add the leading zeros, you have to use the Z format and a numeric variable.  Using the Query Builder, you can create a new column in your data. In this example, you’ll see how to change the numeric ACCNO to a character variable with the leading zeros.  This example starts with the ACCNO_TWO dataset.   To create the new column, do this: From SAS Enterprise Guide, open the Query Builder with the ACCNO_TWO dataset.  Select Computer Columns button. In the Computer Columns window, select the New button (not shown).  From the New Computed Column window, select […]

Ready for the Next Generation of SAS?

There’s so much excitement about big data, data scientists, and all things that mean you need some serious SAS BI skills.  On Monday I was discussing the Kinsey Insitiute projections for data related jobs, but even the New York Times ran The Age of Big Data an article about it.  Appears everyone is talking about it!  oooh … Buzz! I love it. SAS BI Developer Demand is Growing The past December, BusinessIntellience.Com, reported that SAS Business Analytics SMB Sales Jumped 42 Percent and went on to comment that  ”[this]  jump demonstrates that enterprises of all sizes are seizing business analytics as a vital competitive tool.”  Last week, the same webzine was reporting that SAS in Leaders Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms according to the Gartner Inc report.  As SAS Institute sells more SAS BI solutions, naturally more SAS BI Developer jobs become available.  On the Indeed.Com you can search out job trends to determine which fields seem to be growing.  [Disclaimer! These figures are based on Indeed.Com job postings and I have no idea what their counting rules are – so I realize this could be that more recruiters use Indeed or Indeed has  a better aggregation methodology.] With that said, check out the SAS BI […]

Reporting 101: Lessons Learned

Wow – it’s a very exciting time to have an analytics career!  You may have read the Preparing Yourself for Analytics Job Tsunami post at BeyeNetwork last week, which basically said we are headed for a shortage of analytics or data-minded people.  Oh … music to my little analytic-trained, big-data-lovin’ ears!  The article was pointing to the McKinsey & Company thoughts from last May about the arrival of big data and what it would mean.  I liked this particular point:   “There will be a shortage of talent necessary for organizations to take advantage of big data. By 2018, the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of big data to make effective decisions.“   -McKinsey Global Institute May 2011    Analysts with the Know-How to use the Analysis My favorite moment with customers is when I show them their data as a chart or graph and they say something like  ”This is what I’ve been trying to say!” or “No wonder this situation is happening.”  Suddenly, the issue they  have been having with employee productivity, another department, or […]

SAS Add-In to MS Office: Refreshing the Data & Breaking the Link

If you use SAS Add-In to Microsoft Office – specifically Excel, then you already know how awesome it is to link to the SAS data on the server. First, if you are using data that needs to be refreshed – just a click of the button brings you the new rows and your report or charts are updated immediately.  Awesome! Let the analysis begin …  Refreshing Your MS Office Report with SAS Data Using the SAS Add-In to MS Excel (or Word or PowerPoint), you can build charts from the SAS data sets. You may have a report that you create each month based on an Oracle table that is extracted into SAS. On the first day of each month the data is made available, which is great because you report is due the next day and your manager gets upset when it’s not on his desk. [He’s a fan of your work – what can you say?] Let’s make your job a little easier so you can get back to answering your fan mail. Using the SAS Data button from the SAS ribbon, you can peruse the SAS Server to find the desired data.  With the found data, you […]

SAS BI Dashboard: Measuring the Conversion Rate with Google Analytics

Once you start looking at your Google Analytics, it is thrilling to see that visitors are coming to your humble Web site and some even return. Your first inclination is to create fancy charts to show the traffic patterns, compare the patterns by day of week, segment into New and Returning visitors, soon your charts may even be trending on #StuffDataGeeksDo.   In the past few weeks I have been leaning on you to adding more VA-Voom!!! (in the words of Dr. Suess) to your data using the SAS BI Dashboard. [More Google Analytics and SAS BI Dashboard articles] Why Have a Website? When I started this blog, the main purpose was to ensure SAS BI users were aware of my book, see my writing style, and determine if I knew enough to have written a reliable book. To this end, I had to measure was how many people followed the More Book Info link I had prepared. As a introverted data geek, this was a hard for me because I did not want to be the in-your-face, buy-this-now pushy sales lady! What I wanted was for SAS BI users to know that Angela and I had created an awesome resource that […]