Sunday, December 19, 2010

Personal Business Intelligence

One definite benefit to working for a business intelligence company is having access to some of the coolest technology out there. I am one very busy person...sure working for the standard in Commercial Open Source Business Intelligence vendor Pentaho keeps me extremely busy with so many companies making the switch, I am also a single Dad raising 5 kids. As you can imagine, raising 5 kids requires a lot of management, one key area is where it gets rather expensive and I need to keep a good eye on is medical expenses...especially since they are tax deductible.

So what do my kids medical expenses have to do with Pentaho? Simple...with Pentaho, I can easily upload my data and use AgileBI to quickly analyze, gain insight, and take action on the information. Here is a screen shot of my kids medical dashboard:


As you can see here...Emily is my most accident prone kid, she represents the only child that has had the pleasure of visiting the emergency room. Additionally, I may need to make sure she is spending adequate time brushing her teeth as I see she represents a large portion of the dental expense. It also seems that I tend to spend a significant more on medical expenses during the school year...I guess when the kids are not at school, they tend to pick up less germs from the other students.

So in the end, this is not rocket science, but I guess that is my point...Pentaho has made is so easy to connect to data I already keep track of for my family and turn that data into information and help me see trends in my medical spending.