Things you can do to grow your business

Is your business in a rut? Are you stuck on how to move forward and expand? Don’t worry – there are many ways in which you can grow your business exponentially. Many of them are simple in their initial idea, but may require some more work in execution.

Open more branches.

Opening more branches of your business may sound intimidating. It may also sound like a lot of money being spent. However, by opening more branches, or even just the one to start with, you can expand your geographical target customers.

Expansion of this kind expands the number of people that you can capture the attention of when selling your product or service.

Word spreads too – so anyone that was just out of your geographical target before now has a chance to try the product or service that you’re offering. Those that are loyal customers already will spread the news for you, as well as your own marketing.

Improve your current products and services.

This is a very broad point. Improve could mean anything from streamlining your service to make it more efficient and therefore more cost effective, to improving the physical product itself and making an invention 2.0 to market instead.

In terms of services, you could offer more training to staff members to ensure that your business is being run as efficiently as possible to improve them.

Expand your current products and services.

If there is a service or a product which would go hand in hand with each other and you’re only doing the one… why not do both?

By expanding your services on offer that cross over and are likely to affect the same people, you will drive up sales as your customers are likely to be interested in both as opposed to just one of your services or products.

Find your audience and go to them.

As part of your business, you should be aiming to connect with the people that use your services and products. Not only can you personally get to know them and their habits and needs, but you can also discover new ideas or ways in which to market your services specifically for these people.

Invest your time and energy into marketing.

Marketing is the way to connect to new people. There is a whole generation that is numb to typical advertising – the generation that has never had to watch a TV ad because there’s a skip button. Older generations are also getting into that habit.

If you want to break through the advertisement blindness that we have now, it must be with something well thought, relevant and interesting to your audience.

Market your products and services in new ways.

Try social media to target your audiences: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. These platforms are being used by the whole world – what better place exists to reach your audience (and for your audience to reach you).

Growing a business can seem daunting initially, but there are many ways to do it and be successful.

Gizem Kaynar

5 WAYS FOR ENTREPRENEURS TO DEAL WITH CONFLICT

#1: Stubbornness

In this first level, entrepreneurs tend to be stubborn about whatever belief system they have. For example, you can get into a conversation or debate with someone who believes in their position so strongly they aren’t willing to cooperate. This is the lowest level of dealing with conflict.

#2: Accommodation

Have you ever met someone who tries to please everybody? They are people pleasers. As long as everybody is happy, that’s all that matters. The challenge with the issue with trying to accommodate people is that everyone is happy, except one person, and that’s you.

#3: Avoidance

The third level of dealing with conflict is avoidance. Have you ever met someone that avoids problems and just doesn’t want to deal with them? Eventually what happens is that five or ten years down the road, there are conflicts and problems with so many people that have been avoided  and all of a sudden everything comes at you at the same time.

#4: Compromise

You’ve probably heard that the best way to deal with problems is to compromise.

Let me explain to you why compromise isn’t the best option.

I want you to think about two business partners that are lost in the desert. They get to a road where right in front of them is a cliff. If they go straight, they’ll fall off the cliff. One partner says, “We’ve got to go left” and the other partner says, “We’ve got to go right.” They argue about it for a while and finally decide to follow the advice that everyone gives and that is to compromise. I don’t have to tell you how that turned out!

So while you may have been told that compromise is the best way to deal with conflict, there is a better way, that the great entrepreneurs have figured out.

#5: Collaboration

When you collaborate, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have the best idea or that someone else has the best idea. It’s about taking your idea and someone else’s idea and putting them together, and from there dealing with conflict together, in a way that leads to something bigger than either of the ideas would have been alone.

The great entrepreneurs learn how to collaborate.

My challenge to you is to take an inventory of yourself. How do you deal with conflict in your business? Are you stubborn? Do you accommodate? Do you avoid? Do you compromise? Or do you collaborate?

Find whatever of the five levels listed above you are and look for ways to move to the next level until eventually you learn how to collaborate when it comes to the problems in your business.

Patrick Bet-David

From cloud computing to drones, technology is transforming Africa

The year 2016 will be a defining one for Africa in its approach to advanced technologies, particularly as these technologies begin to converge and offer even bigger opportunities for change. Here are four ways this could play out in 2016.

Thinking big

To really make the most of the convergence of new information, robotic and genetic technologies, progressive African economies will need to make coordinated decisions.

This means, for a start, double-digit increases in research spending around computing – from coding in primary schools to industry grants. It also means having a starburst vision of how poorer communities can take advantage of the convergence – a reality that is messier than the “singularity” vaunted by Silicon Valley zealots. Shiny Afrofuturism has so far been shoved aside by the realities of administering living systems that are simultaneously decaying and burgeoning (think, for example, of Uganda’s failure to keep its only radiotherapy machine for cancer therapy running).

That has to change. So does the ambition to think deeply about obvious questions such as, say, the fate of the petrol car in African cities in an age of autonomous electric vehicles. All of this has to happen now because the technologies themselves are combining at dizzying speeds. Slowness and a lack of vision will mean that under the best-case scenario, it will be technology companies rather than Africans themselves setting the agenda. And the worst-case scenario? The digital divide between Africa and industrial countries will grow so large that it can’t be bridged.

The power of the cloud

The “cloud” is driving convergence. The global cost of building it out is considerable. Most of the money is being spent in richer countries. Amazon, Google and Microsoft will all be among the top 10 companies in the world this year in research spending. But the cloud will also be the leading tech trend in Africa this year. Oracle and Huawei say they are experiencing “hyper-growth” in Africa as businesses move their operations to the cloud.

The effects will be much more considerable than shifting practice. Whereas steam power (pistons pumping) was the basis of the Industrial Revolution (and still powers old ships on African lakes), cloud computing promises a near future that is increasingly dematerialized and more highly distributed. Everything moves faster, cheaper, more precisely and more transparently. What is physical wants to become virtual, and what is virtual demands to manifest itself in the physical world. This tension is felt in the competition for warehousing business between online and shipping companies. Companies that control both the cloud and the warehouse, such as Amazon and Alibaba, will likely triumph.

Optimization

This sounds esoteric, of little relevance to African development, but that would be to underestimate the interplay between people and machines – and the more so in Africa, where resources are limited and legacy infrastructure has yet to be built. General Electric has $2.4 billion of business in Africa in turbines, railway engines and medical machinery.

It wants to add another $1 billion of business in Nigeria by becoming “digital industrial” – meshing its diverse innovations online. But the new world is just as likely to be formed by new consumer technologies as by heavy lifters like GE. One example is Amazon’s recently released Echo Dot, artificial intelligence that accesses the cloud by human voice command, which, while superficially gimmicky and priced for industrial countries, is sure to find its competitors, collapse in price and, over a decade, optimize consumption of energy, food, goods and information at the household level in Africa.

Understanding the new business models circling around these technologies will be of critical importance when devising plans at the ministerial and boardroom level. This is particularly true for African towns. These are mostly predicted to triple in size exactly as artificial intelligence technology begin to mature. One of the questions that needs to be addressed in 2016 is whether the convergence of technologies can improve the way these towns are built – and if so how?

Flying robots

I finish, self-interestedly, by outlining an invention that incorporates some of this thinking: the droneport. Because of cheap electronics, we will inevitably make intensive use of the sky over Africa using flying robots to carry precious cargo at motorbike prices.

These will be fixed-wing craft, six metres or more in span, flying the middle mile, droneport to droneport, town to town, rugged, cheap, beautiful, quiet, silvery, streaming red lights behind them: the love child of a Citroën 2CV and a Star Wars fighter who fell for each other in a seedy bar. The droneport, as conceived by the lead designer of the Redline project, Lord Norman Foster, will be a large civic building, built of earth, cheap as a petrol station, with many uses, including digital fabrication, pharmacy, courier services, trading and e-commerce. The spectral lines in the sky connecting droneports manifest the convergence – putting the robot in the cloud in every way.

Jonathan M. Ledgard

3 Ways to Help Turn Your Weaknesses Into Branding Strengths

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1. Reviews and Ratings

Bad reviews can be the bane of your existence, no matter what your industry. As an author, I know all too well what it’s like to check Amazon only to find a new, dreaded one-star review. It’s awful! I know when readers are considering buying my book, they’re not going to read all of the reviews. They may go straight to the one-star train wrecks instead of starting with the glowing five-star reviews.

So how on earth do you transform a lousy review into a good thing? Well, I got a call once from a professor who had read my book. He said the content was great, but what he objected to was my language. He said it was too in-the-trenches and not academic enough. A light bulb went on. I asked him to write up his review and post it, along with a one-star rating. He was puzzled until I explained my reasoning: What he disliked about my book is exactly what my readers love! He was giving me a backhanded compliment and a sales tool without even realizing it. Readers who were looking at my book could go read the critical review that mentioned the non-academic language, and they’d know my book was what they wanted. It was fantastic.

2. A Difficult Name

No one knows this struggle better than I do. My last name is Michalowicz. People have no idea what to do with it. They’re afraid to pronounce it, have no idea what nationality my name reflects and in general they just don’t want to deal with my name. That’s a problem for an author and a public speaker. My name is my brand. I could have changed it, but instead, I made it fun. My website plays with my name, and I spell it out phonetically every chance I get. (It’s mi-'kal-ō-wits, by the way.) Rather than sending potential customers away with a negative association around a word they didn’t want to mispronounce, I make it a playful part of my branding. I know it’s a difficult name, but my approach also makes it a memorable one. Once people learn how to pronounce my name, it just rolls off their tongues. And they never forget it.

3. Pricing

When you’re selling a product that’s very expensive, you could defer questions about cost and tuck the price tag underneath (either literally or figuratively), but laying it all out in the open may be beneficial to your branding. Telling your clients that you’re proud to offer the most expensive entry in your category because your product is worth every penny may be a way to stand out from the pack. Talking about your uncompromising quality and your exceptional customer service may help your clients see that even though you’re expensive, you’re still a value. Turning your high price into a powerful asset may help make customers feel good about handing over their hard-earned dollars. 

Many businesses have some type of weakness. In order to transform them into strengths, it may be helpful to identify those weaknesses first. If you’re unaware of where you’re missing the mark, it may be hard to find opportunity for growth. But when you identify your weakness and turn it into a strength, you may be able to improve your service and put yourself in an advantageous position with regard to your competition. Don’t miss a chance to stand out from the crowd.

Mike Michalowicz

We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost..

During the press conference to announce NOKIA being acquired by Microsoft, Nokia CEO ended his speech saying this “we didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost”. Upon saying that, all his management team, himself included, teared sadly.

Nokia has been a respectable company. They didn’t do anything wrong in their business, however, the world changed too fast. Their opponents were too powerful.

They missed out on learning, they missed out on changing, and thus they lost the opportunity at hand to make it big. Not only did they miss the opportunity to earn big money, they lost their chance of survival.

The message of this story is, if you don’t change, you shall be removed from the competition.

It’s not wrong if you don’t want to learn new things. However, if your thoughts and mindset cannot catch up with time, you will be eliminated.

Conclusion:
1. The advantage you have yesterday, will be replaced by the trends of tomorrow. You don’t have to do anything wrong, as long as your competitors catch the wave and do it RIGHT, you can lose out and fail.

2. To change and improve yourself is giving yourself a second chance. To be forced by others to change, is like being discarded.

Those who refuse to learn & improve, will definitely one day become redundant & not relevant to the industry. They will learn the lesson in a hard & expensive way.

Swapnil Sonar

Top Microsoft Business Intelligence Interview Questions For Beginners

Businesses across the world are increasingly adopting Business Intelligence tools to capture data and analyze it for smarter decision making. This has opened up myriad opportunities for Business Intelligence professionals and the demand for skilled BI practitioners is huge. There has never been a better time to make a career in the Business Intelligence space! Familiarizing yourself with Microsoft Business Intelligence, the leader among BI tools, can help you bag top jobs in Business Intelligence. This blog lists the top Microsoft Business Intelligence interview questions to help you prepare for your job interview after mastering Microsoft BI. In case you have attended a MSBI interview recently, we urge you to share any questions you may have faced. Our experts will be happy to answer them for you. All the best!

Microsoft Business Intelligence Interview Questions:

1. Define SSIS. How it is related with SQL Server?

A component of SL Server, SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) can be used to perform a variety of Data migration and ETL operations. SSIS is a platform for Integration and Workflow applications which is known for a fast and flexible OLTP and OLAP extensions used for data extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL). It can also be used to automate maintenance of SQL Server databases and multidimensional data sets.

2. Which are the different Lookup Cache Modes Available in SSIS?

There are three Cache Modes available in SSIS Lookup Transformation:

• Full Cache Mode: In this cache mode, SSIS queries the database before the start of the data flow task execution (pre-execute phase) and loads all the data from lookup/reference table into SSIS lookup cache.
• Partial Cache Mode: In this cache mode, SSIS queries the database against new rows coming in from the source. If there is a match, the row is cached into SSIS Lookup Cache for rows coming subsequently in the data flow which might have a match. When the cache is full, SSIS then proceeds to remove few rows from cache based on the usage/match statistics for those rows and loads the new matching rows into the Lookup Cache.
• No Cache Mode: In this cache mode, SSIS does not cache any rows into Lookup Cache (except in cases such as two subsequent source data rows having a match with same lookup values). For every row coming from the source, the database is queried to get the matching value/data from the reference table.

3. What are the differences between DTS and SSIS?

The differences are as follows:

Data Transformation Services	SQL Server Integration Services
Limited error handling	Complex and powerful error handling
Message boxes in ActiveX scripts	Message boxes in .NET scripting
No deployment wizard	Interactive deployment wizard
Limited set of transformation	Good number of transformations
No BI functionality	Complete BI integration

4. What is control flow?

A control flow consists of one or more tasks and containers that execute when the package runs. To control order or define the conditions for running the next task or container in the package control flow, we use precedence constraints to connect the tasks and containers in a package. A subset of tasks and containers can also be grouped and run repeatedly as a unit within the package control flow. SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) provides three different types of control flow elements:

• Containers that provide structures in packages
• Tasks that provide functionality
• Precedence Constraints that connect the executables, containers, and tasks into an ordered control flow

5. What is data flow?

Data flow consists of the sources and destinations that extract and load data, the transformations that modify and extend data, and the paths that link sources, transformations, and destinations. Data Flow task is the executable within the SSIS package that creates, orders, and runs the data flow. A separate instance of the data flow engine is opened for each Data Flow task in a package. Three important categories in the data flow are:

• Data Sources
• Transformations
• Data Destinations

6. How to log SSIS Executions?

SSIS includes logging features that write log entries when run-time events occur. They can also write custom messages although it is not enabled by default. Integration Services supports a diverse set of log providers, giving you the ability to create custom log providers. The Integration Services log providers can write log entries to text files, SQL Server Profiler, SQL Server, Windows Event Log, or XML files. Logs are associated with packages and are configured at the package level. Each task or container in a package can log information to any package log. The tasks and containers in a package can be enabled for logging even if the package itself is not.

7. How do you deploy SSIS packages?

SSIS Project BUILD provides a Deployment Manifest File which needs to be run. We have to then decide whether to deploy this onto File System or onto SQL Server [ msdb]. SQL Server Deployment is faster and more secure then File System Deployment. Another way of doing this is to import the package from SSMS from File System or SQL Server.

8. Name the components of SSAS.

The components are:

• An OLAP Engine is used for enabling fast ad hoc queries by end users. A user can interactively explore data by drilling, slicing or pivoting.
• Drilling refers to the process of exploring details of the data.
• Slicing refers to the process of placing data in rows and columns.
• Pivoting refers to switching categories of data between rows and columns.
• In OLAP, we will be using what are called as Dimensional Databases.

9. Explain the two-tier architecture of SSAS?

• SSAS uses both server and client components to supply OLAP and data mining functionality to BI Applications.
• The server component is implemented as a Microsoft Windows service. Each instance of Analysis Services is implemented as a separate instance of the Windows service.
• Clients communicate with Analysis Services using the standard XMLA (XML for Analysis) protocol for issuing commands and receiving responses.

10. How does error-handling work in SSIS?

When a data flow component applies a transformation to column data, extracts data from sources, or loads data into destinations, errors can occur. Errors frequently occur because of unexpected data values.
The types of typical Errors in SSIS are:

• Data Connection Errors, which occur in case the connection manager cannot be initialized with the connection string. This applies to both Data Sources and Data Destinations along with Control Flows that use the Connection Strings.
• Data Transformation Errors, which occur while data is being transformed over a Data Pipeline from Source to Destination.
• Expression Evaluation errors, which occur if expressions that are evaluated at run time perform invalid

11. What is OLAP?

OLAP stands for On-Line Analytical Processing. It stands for a category of applications and technologies that allow the collection, storage, manipulation and reproduction of multidimensional data, with the goal of analysis.

12. Differentiate between OLAP and ETL tools.

• OLAP is an online analytical processing tool.
• ETL stands for Extract, Transform and Load. This is a product to extract the data from multiple/single sources and transform the data and load it into a table, flat file or simply a target.

13. Name the tools used in MSBI.

Microsoft BI contains the following tools:

• SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS)
• SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
• SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
• Performance Point Services (PPS)

14. What is a workflow in SSIS?

Workflow is a set of instructions to tell the Program Executor how to execute tasks and containers within SSIS Packages.

15. What is the difference between WHERE and HAVING clauses in SQL Server?

• HAVING clause can be used only with a GROUP BY clause, whereas a WHERE clause can be used with constructs such as SELECT, UPDATE, DELETE etc.
• HAVING clause is applied as a filter to the data/output resulting from the GROUP BY clause, where as a WHERE clause is applied to every row in the SELECT, UPDATE, DELETE etc constructs.
• In queries where both HAVING and WHERE clauses are used, WHERE clause is applied first (to every row in the SELECT statement to filter the records before they are fed to GROUP BY clause for aggregation) and then the HAVING clause is applied (to filter the aggregated result from GROUP BY clause).

16. Name the differences between view and materialized view.

Views:

• A view takes the output of a query and makes it appear like a virtual table. You can use a view in most places where a table can be used.
• All operations performed on a view will affect data in the base table and so are subject to the integrity constraints and triggers of the base table.
• A View can be used to simplify SQL statements for the user or to isolate an application from any future change to the base table definition. A View can also be used to improve security by restricting access to a predetermined set of rows or columns.
• In addition to operating on base tables, one View can be based on another. A view can also JOIN a view with a table (GROUP BY or UNION).

Materialized Views:

• Materialized views are schema objects that can be used to summarize, pre-compute, replicate, and distribute data. E.g. to construct a data warehouse.
• A materialized view provides indirect access to table data by storing the results of a query in a separate schema object.
• The existence of a materialized view is transparent to SQL, but when used for query rewrites, it will improve the performance of SQL execution.

17. What languages are used in SSAS?

The languages used are:

• Structured Query Language (SQL)
• Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) – an industry standard query language orientated towards analysis
• Data Mining Extensions (DMX) – an industry standard query language oriented toward data mining
• Analysis Services Scripting Language (ASSL) – used to manage Analysis Services database objects

18. What is WriteBack? What are the pre-conditions?

The Enable/Disable WriteBack dialog box enables or disables WriteBack for a measure group in a cube. Enabling WriteBack on a measure group defines a WriteBack partition and creates a WriteBack table for that measure group. Disabling WriteBack on a measure group removes the WriteBack partition but does not delete the WriteBack table, to avoid unanticipated data loss.

19. Name the business analysis enhancements available for SSAS.

The table below shows the business intelligence enhancements that are available in Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS). The table also lists the cube or dimension to which each business intelligence enhancement applies, and indicates whether an enhancement can be applied to an object that was created without using a data source and for which no schema has been generated.

Enhancement	Type	Applied to	No data source
Time Intelligence	Cube	Cube	No
Account Intelligence	Dimension	Dimension or cube	No
Dimension Intelligence	Dimension	Dimension or cube	Yes
Custom Aggregation	Dimension	Dimension (unary operator) or cube	No
Semiadditive Behavior	Cube	Cube	Yes
Custom Member Formula	Dimension	Dimension or cube	No
Custom Sorting and Uniqueness Settings	Dimension	Dimension or cube	Yes
Dimension Writeback	Dimension	Dimension or cube	Yes

20. How do you extract first tuple from the set?

Use could usefunctionSet.Item(0)
Example:SELECT {{[Date].[Calendar].[Calendar Year].Members
}.Item(0)}
ON 0
FROM [Adventure Works]

21. If you want to create a calculated member that intersects all measures, where do you put it and why?

You would put it in a dimension other than Measures because a member in a dimension cannot intersect its own relatives in that dimension.

22. What is the use of property called non-empty behavior while creating a new calculated member in a cube?

Nonempty behavior is used for ratio calculations. An MDX expression will return an error if the denominator is empty, just as it would if the denominator were equal to zero. By selecting one or more measures for the non-empty behavior property, we’re establishing a requirement that each selected measure first be evaluated before the calculation expression is evaluated. If each selected measure is empty, then the expression is also treated as empty and no error is returned.

23. What is a RAGGED hierarchy?

Under normal circumstances, each level in a hierarchy in Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) has the same number of members above it as any other member at the same level. In a ragged hierarchy, the logical parent member of at least one member is not in the level immediately above the member. When this occurs, the hierarchy descends to different levels for different drilldown paths. Expanding through every level for every drilldown path is then unnecessarily complicated.

24. How are Cubes implemented in SSAS?

Cubes are multidimensional models that store data from one or more sources. They can also store aggregations. SSAS Cubes are created using the Cube Wizard.

25. What are the differences between TRUNCATE & DELETE clauses in SQL Server?

• TRUNCATE is a DDL (Data Definition Language) command, whereas DELETE is a DML (Data Manipulation Language) command.
• TRUNCATE removes all the records from a table without making a log entry for individual row deletions whereas DELETE removes all or selected records (based on absence or presence of a WHERE condition) from a table by making a log entry for individual row deletion. Hence TRUNCATE is faster than DELETE.
• TRUNCATE removes all the records from a table and a WHERE clause or filter condition cannot be used with TRUNCATE, whereas DELETE can remove selected records or all records based on whether a WHERE clause (Optional) is used or not used respectively.
• TRUNCATE cannot be used on a table if it satisfies one of the following conditions:

• Table is referenced by one of more FOREIGN KEY constraints
• Table is marked/enabled for replication

• TRUNCATE resets IDENTITY in any of the columns in a table, whereas DELETE does not reset the IDENTITY.

MSBI