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[post_content] => Scottsdale, AZ – iShift and Preferred Strategies have joined forces to seamlessly deliver an innovative cloud-based implementation of Preferred Strategies’ QuickLauch solution.
Preferred Strategies has been an innovator and thought leader in the Business Intelligence and Data Analytics space for over 20 years. The QuickLaunch solution is an Information Engine designed to help companies access data that is hard to get to and understand, and turn it into useable information so employees and leaders are equipped to make better decisions that positively impact their business. The QuickLaunch framework is built on the Microsoft Power BI platform and offers cutting edge visualization and analytics functionality across all corporate data sources. The solution allows organizations to access and use their data as a strategic asset to make informed business decisions, increase efficiency, reduce labor costs and gain powerful insights to future opportunities that ultimately make their company more profitable and competitive.
The iShift Platform is a comprehensive solution to guide businesses undergoing cloud migration. It encompasses a fully hosted and managed cloud environment and the stack of applications that meet the organization’s needs for value and profitability following the highest security standards, governance, and compliance with applicable regulatory requirements.
When a Preferred Strategies client approached them for guidance on best practices in setting up a cloud-based deployment of QuickLaunch, Preferred Strategies brought in iShift as a strategic partner to advise, plan, and design the right Azure cloud environment. As a Microsoft Azure partner, iShift had the knowledge, certifications, and resources to plan and set up the right cloud infrastructure. As a result of the joint project, Preferred Strategies will deploy QuickLaunch on Azure leveraging the iShift Platform.
The partnership between the two companies is determined by several factors: the shared values and uncompromising dedication to client success, the focus on transforming technological innovation into a business advantage, and the firm belief that when it comes specific competencies, it makes sense to find the experts that will complement the gaps in know-how.
According to Mark Googins, CEO of iShift, “Our teams are passionate about building long-term trusting partnerships with our clients and delivering the competitive advantage they need to grow their business, improve operational efficiencies, and increase profitability. We are very excited to build our relationship with Preferred Strategies for the long-term by offering organizations innovative cloud-based solutions that will help them turn their data into decision ready information.”
According to Adam Crigger, Founder and President of Preferred Strategies, “In today’s ever-changing business climate, organizations need to be able to access their enterprise data anywhere anytime. The cloud environment that the iShift Platform offers provides this flexibility. We are continuing our tradition of pursuing strategic partnerships to deliver modern solutions with enhanced capabilities to clients and empower businesses to realize the full potential of their ERP data.”
About Preferred Strategies
In order to be successful and competitive in today’s landscape organizations need to easily access, consume and digest corporate wide data and information. Preferred Strategies is an innovative leader in the decision-making business. Our QuickLaunch solution leads to higher data literacy and corporate wide success because our scalable platform provides customers with a governed decision framework model delivering a single source of truth across all data sources…empowering leaders to make strategic, informed and educated business decisions across the organization. We partner with companies to transform their data into meaningful information displayed in customized dashboards, KPI’s, graphs, charts, key metrics, and reports, with the ability to drill down and through the information to clearly identify insights, trends, and outliers. With hundreds of successful customer partnerships, QuickLaunch has been proven to deliver the perfect balance of user friendly and empowering, innovative functionality, near real time data access, and IT governance without the heavy lifting that competitive organizations require to take their companies to the next level of success. At Preferred Strategies we don’t shy away from what is hard, we come right for it, and we succeed! To learn more about how we can help you accomplish your business goals, visit www.preferredstrategies.com
About iShift
iShift is a multi-cloud technology solutions company that provides cloud engineering, cloud migration, cloud management and specialized IT staffing services. Our mission is to help businesses to simplify and accelerate growth while enabling digital transformation and IT modernization. No matter where organizations are in their cloud journey, iShift can design, build, optimize and manage a future-ready multi-cloud environment, resulting in significant cost savings, increased workforce productivity, operational resilience, continuity of services, and business agility. For more information on how our offerings empower businesses through their adoption of cloud and modern technology, visit www.ishift.net.
[post_title] => iShift and Preferred Strategies Partner to Enable Businesses to Make the Most of Their Enterprise Information in the Cloud
[post_excerpt] => iShift and Preferred Strategies have joined forces to deliver a cloud-based implementation of Preferred Strategies’ QuickLaunch.
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[post_content] => As we move towards the holiday season, let's review what the Power BI team has been up to over the summer and early fall of 2021. There have been some interesting features introduced across all three of our Power BI user categories including automated insights for consumers that leverage the latest in AI and Machine learning, DirectQuery for PBI Datasets and AAS that lets authors customize enterprise data models, and updates to Sensitivity labels which helps Admins better protect assets in Power BI.
Power BI Consumers
Automated Insights Feature (Preview Feature) (Premium Feature)
Leverage the latest automated machine learning feature built into the Power BI consumer experience to easily find and explore insights such as trends, outliers, and KPI analysis with the click of a button inside a report. The Insights feature is context aware so that as you change filters and pages in your report, new insights will be generated. This is an exciting development as reports that were in “Live Connection” previously didn’t not work with many of the latest AI Power BI features.
Read more
(click to view larger)
Analyze Teams Usages with Power BI Teams App
If you are one of the millions of professionals that has adopted Microsoft’s collaboration app over the past couple of years then this update may interest you. From the Power BI app in Teams, you can easily analyze Teams usage data. The auto generated report includes a My Activity page that shows your personal usage information, a Team activity page allows you to compare general metrics across all the teams you’re a part of, and the Team activity details.
Read more
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Power BI Designers
Direct Query for Azure Analysis Services and Power BI Datasets (Preview Feature)
With this feature, power users and report authors create a local model that connects to existing Azure Analysis Services data models and Power BI Datasets and bring in data from other data sources such Excel workbooks and SaaS providers. It also provides the ability for users to personalize or enrich the metadata from existing enterprise semantic models such as changing the formatting of fields and adding new calculated columns. This can be a great tool for prototyping new data model designs or for one off reports that require custom data modeling.
Read more
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New Buttons
In the past, if you used buttons in your reports, the formatting options were limited. You were required to use a rectangle shape and customization usually required overlapping visuals. However, with the latest updates to button objects in Power BI, you can now choose between many new shapes, use custom icons, and more.
Read more
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Assign Line Chart Series Labels
Sometimes a legend is always enough and to further aid consumers of a report, it is helpful to be able to assign labels to elements in your visualizations. With this new enhancement, you are now able to provide more clarity on which lines are associated with categories using the new series labels formation option.
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Turn Off Total Column in Waterfalls Charts
Waterfall charts are great visualization to have in your toolbelt and with this update, you can now customize the visualization further by being able to control whether a total column is displayed or not. By default, this will be enabled to show what the total was across all the elements in the series, however you can turn if off under the formatting pane for the visual.
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Power BI Admins & Content Managers
Bulk Upgrade Classic Workspaces to V2 Workspaces
The Power BI team has created a bulk-upgrade tool within the Workspaces section of the Power BI Service Admin portal that allows admins to automatically update all the classic workspaces in their tenant to the latest V2 version. The new workspace is required to get the latest features and security enhancements in Power BI.
Read more
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Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) and Sensitivity Labels
MIP helps organizations classify and protect information as it moves inside and outside of the organization and across devices, apps, and services to prevent data loss. One of the main MIP tools to accomplish this is creating sensitivity labels and label policies that can be inherited across different data sources and file types. Once you create different sensitivity categories, you can enforce protection settings based on that classification such as encryption and content markings. In Power BI, you can assign Sensitivity labels to corporate data sources such as Azure SQL DB, Power BI Datasets and reports, and files such as Excel workbooks.
Read more
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Power BI Desktop Required Infrastructure Change
Microsoft is changing the components used by the Power BI Desktop application. Starting in Feb 2022, Power BI Desktop will move away from CerSharp to WebView2. To avoid interruptions, ensure that users that use PBI Desktop have ‘Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime’ installed on your machines.
Read more
We are excited about what the Power BI team is releasing soon! If you're interested in checking out the Power BI feature release plan in an interactive Power BI report click here.
[post_title] => Power BI Updates for QuickLaunch Customers: Q3 2021
[post_excerpt] => As we move towards the holiday season, let's review what the Power BI team has been up to over the summer and early fall of 2021.
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[post_content] => Mark Twain is quoted, “Everybody talks about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it.” A similar sentiment might be said about junk data. It is a blight which perpetually limits our ability to make data driven decisions which will improve our businesses. Being informed by quality data is more imperative in business than ever to remain competitive and profitable. If your data is ‘junk’, you can never become a data driven organization.
Sometimes junk data accumulates because organizations lack disciplined business processes. Additionally, they may not have the analytics framework in place to monitor those processes and ensure they are followed. Most dimensional or categorical data is generated manually by human input or by automated systems. When these fail, data is assigned inconsistent values and reporting on inconsistent junk data is nearly impossible.
Another cause of junk data is the lack of a planned governed decision framework. Many companies’ analytics efforts are focused on one specific ‘use case’ at a time. Each project becomes a silo built for a specific user or purpose. These independent repositories of data are not built using a common standard which leads to data structures varying widely from one solution to the next.
Alternatively, a governed decision framework will eliminate siloed solutions and have these characteristics:
1. User friendly
You shouldn’t need to be a data scientist to be able to use and understand the data.
2. Formatting
Dates, numbers, percentages, and dimensional values should be formatted the same throughout the data set. If you use ‘96.5%’ in one column, another percentage column in the same data set should not read ‘.965’.
3. Trustworthy
Aggregations of data should be able to be validated against the detail transactions so that end users know they can trust the information and insights obtained.
4. Completeness
If you have dimensional data such as a ‘region’ code, every row of data should always have a value. If the value doesn’t apply, show something like ‘N/A’ instead of leaving it blank. Blank values don’t tell the end user if the field was accidently or purposefully left out.
Preferred Strategies is often told by prospective clients that they want to ‘clean up’ their data before they start an analytics initiative. Our experience has been that until the prospective client embarks on an analytics initiative (and experiences the frustration of junk data), they will never have the process discipline required to enforce the creation of reliable, trustworthy data. If your company is ready build a governed decision framework which will help to clean up your data and provide a solid foundation for analytics excellence, contact us to see how we can help. That is, don’t just talk about the weather, do something about it.
[post_title] => Are You Ready to Tackle Your Junk Data?
[post_excerpt] => If your data is ‘junk’, you can never become a data driven organization.
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[post_content] => As the world reopens from the COVID pandemic, the Power BI team has been releasing new features in full force. Q2 has seen a steady stream of updates to all areas of the platform. There have been updates for consuming Power BI content in Teams, SharePoint Online, and the Windows App to bring these experiences closer to the Power BI Service. Highly requested new visuals were released for content designers including the Power Automate and Paginated Report visuals. Finally, there were several very important updates for Power BI Admins such as performance and usage history analysis capabilities and backup and restore for Power BI datasets. In this post we will cover these updates and other top feature updates from the past three months that span consumer, content creator, and admin users.
Power BI Consumers
Enhanced Consumer Experience in SharePoint Online
Organizations that leverage SharePoint sites to host Power BI reports will be pleased with the new action bar that brings the consumer experience from the PBI Service to SharePoint Online.
Read more
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Updated Version of the Power BI Windows App
One often overlooked way to consume Power BI Content is through the Windows application. For consumers who do not need to edit reports and do not want the added UI overhead of a web browser, this updated experience may be just the tool. With this update, the PBI Windows app gets an updated look to match the PBI Service and enhancements to performance with changing and background processing.
Read more
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Power BI Designers
Modern Visual Tooltips is now in Preview (Preview Feature)
The new visual tooltip feature allows users to perform the drilldown and drillthrough functions right from the tooltip UI instead of using the visual header or right-clicking. It also allows report designers to match tooltip design to the report theme.
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Small Multiples Visual Enhancements (Preview Feature)
There have been several updates to the Small Multiples visual over the past few months since we first covered this feature at the end of last year. These include the ability to control gridlines and background colors, word wrap for titles, control for padding and spacing between multiples, support for combo chart visuals, conditional formatting, and the ability to drill on date hierarches.
Read more
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Power Automate Visual (Preview Feature)
Allow your report users to take action from within a Power BI Report with the new Power Automate visual. With this new visual, you can let consumers run an automated process or flow that can be contextual to the data selected in filters or slicers on a page.
Read more
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Paginated Report Visual (Preview Feature)
With this high requested updated, it is now possible to embed a paginated report that has been uploaded to the PBI Service from within a standard, interactive Power BI Report.
Read more
(click to view larger)
Power BI Admins & Content Managers
Backup and Restore Power BI Datasets (Preview Feature) (Premium Feature)
This enterprise-grade improvement allows organizations to utilize the backup and restore functionality that many DBAs are used to with traditional Analysis Services deployments. Whether you are trying to provide redundancy in case of corruption or loss, maintain records for compliance with regulations, or consolidate datasets across workspaces or PBI tenants; this new feature will come in handy.
Read more
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Historical Usage and Performance Metrics (Preview Feature) (Premium Feature)
Prior to this new feature, the historical reporting on Power BI usage and performance was very complex and was not native to the PBI/Azure architectures. However, now it is possible to analyze performance over time, user activities and metrics for any workspace, as well as figure out which queries or dataset refreshes are taking the most time. This feature requires a connection to an Azure Log Analytics resource in Azure that can capture and retain up to 2 years of information.
Read more
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Updated Timeframe for Classic Workspace Upgrades
The Power BI team has pushed the automatic upgrade of Classic Workspaces in the PBI Service to April 2022 which was originally set for this year. In October 2021 there will be a new Upgrade All tool in the PBI Admin portal that will allow Admins to manually upgrade all the workspaces in their tenant simultaneously.
Read more
Object- Level Security (ODS) for Power BI Premium and Pro
Many QuickLaunch customers are currently leveraging row-level security (RLS), however, now there is a new security feature that allows you to secure data model objects at the table and column levels to protect sensitive information. This allows you to hide object names and metadata from the user so that they do not even know it exists.
Read more
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Add and Edit Data Sources from the Power Platform Admin Center (Preview Feature)
If you are a Power BI Admin then you need to check out the Power Platform Admin Center. With the latest updates, you can now add new and edit existing cloud and on-premise data sources used by Power Platform programs like Power BI, Automate and PowerApps. This portal will eventually replace the Manage Gateways section of the Power BI Admin portal so it is a good idea to start familiarizing yourself with it soon.
Read more
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[post_title] => Power BI Updates for QuickLaunch Customers: Q2 2021
[post_excerpt] => The Power BI team has been releasing new features in full force. Q2 has seen a steady stream of updates to all areas of the platform.
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[post_title] => An Inside Look at How IGI Wax Envisions Their Future with QuickLaunch
[post_excerpt] => In this on-demand recording, you’ll hear an update on the IGI Wax data-driven journey, learn about their next steps, uncover lessons learned, and get an inside look at their continued success with data-driven initiatives.
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[post_title] => Trends in ERP Adoption in Construction
[post_excerpt] => Ben Harrison, vice president of product management at Preferred Strategies, discusses trends in the adoption of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) in the construction industry and how QuickLaunch can help contractors better utilize ERP data to its full potential.
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[post_title] => How to Build Interactive JDE Reports with QuickLaunch and Power BI
[post_excerpt] => Learn how to build interactive JD Edwards reports using modern BI tools. For illustrative purposes, we will use Preferred Strategies QuickLaunch and the free, cloud-based version of Microsoft Power BI as the BI tools.
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[post_title] => Show Me the Money: Visualizing Your Cash Flow
[post_excerpt] => Watch this session to learn some visualization options for both macro and micro cash flow analysis at your company.
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[post_content] => Power BI was named a leader in the Gartner magic quadrant again this year. (Be sure to check out our interactive analysis of the Magic quadrant here.) A major factor of Power BI's success has been the dedication by Microsoft to continuously improve the Power BI product suite with updates that are demand-driven and consistent.
We were planning on releasing future installments of this blog series on a monthly cadence, however, updates started off a little slow this year with no monthly update to the Power BI Desktop product in January and just a few updates in February, so we decided to include all updates from Q1 of 2021 in this post.
Power BI Consumers
New Power BI Icons
The latest version of Power BI icons has been released so keep your eyes peeled for these new, more stylized images.
Supported Browsers
Users that are still using the legacy version of the Microsoft Edge browser need to update their browser by March 9th, 2021 and users using Internet Explorer 11 need to upgrade by August 17, 2021 as Power BI will no longer support these. You should plan on keeping your browsers up to date anyways to ensure maximum performance while interacting with content in the Power BI Service.
Updated Subscription Attachments (Premium Feature)
Currently for Pro licensed users, you can only subscribe to one page of a report per subscription. This is a limitation if you have multiple pages in your report and you or a recipient want all the pages in the report included. However, with this latest update, subscriptions to reports in an Upgraded V2 Premium or Premium Per User workspace can be configured to include a full version of the report as a PDF or PowerPoint attachment. In addition, you can also subscribe other users in your organization, but the data sent to others will be based on your permissions so if you have row-level security in place, be cautious of this.
Read More
Power BI Designers
Datasets Hub in PBI Service (Preview Feature)
Easily explore all the Datasets you have access to in the new Dataset Hub in the Power BI Service and in the Power BI App for Teams. With this new dataset details portal in Power BI, you can quickly get important metadata such as the last refreshed date, endorsement information (i.e. promoted vs certified), lineage information to show data sources (i.e. SQL or Analysis Services servers), and view which reports are built from the datasets as well as usage metrics per report.
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New Release of Power BI Report Builder
Do not get too excited here. It is still the same Report Builder from the early 2000s with a new name and a few new shiny buttons. The latest version of the PBI Report Builder application includes a similar publishing experience to publishing reports in PBI Desktop. There is now a Publish button on the home ribbon that allows you to quickly make changes to reports and save them back to a workspace in the PBI Service.
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Search in Power BI Desktop
While the number of new features and properties that have been added to the Power BI Desktop over the past 6 years has been incredible, it also makes it harder for new users (and veterans) to find what they are looking for. The new search feature in PBI desktop is very useful for navigating the increasingly complex UI.
Change Log for Power BI Desktop
Over the past few years, many people have asked why there is an update notification in the PBI desktop even though they have downloaded the last monthly release. The answer to this is the PBI team releases different versions outside of the monthly cadence to fix bugs and other issues. There is now a Change Log for all the known fixes that you can use to track specifics of different versions.
Note: If you download installation files from Microsoft to install PBI Desktop, you will have to manually keep downloading the latest version. The preferred method is to install PBI Desktop from the Microsoft Store so that new releases are automatically downloaded and installed for you.
You can see an archive of all the past PBI updates here.
Power BI Admins & Content Managers
Power BI Premium Per User Licensing (PPU) (Preview Feature) (Premium Feature)
We covered this update back in December but now we have more clarity on pricing and availability. One of the biggest complaints about Power BI Premium for the past several years has been the cost barrier to entry for small to medium sized companies, however, this has been resolved with the announcement that PPU will cost $20 per user with existing Power BI Pro users only having to pay an additional $10 per user.
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Read/Write XMLA Endpoints are Generally Available (Premium Feature)
With XMLA endpoints, developers can connect to the Analysis Services engine powering datasets in the Power BI Service. This allows users to connect enterprise BI tools such as Visual Studio (SSDT), SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), Tabular Editor, DAX Studio, and many others directly to Power BI datasets in the Service enabling application lifecycle management, governance, debugging, and monitoring all within the Power BI ecosystem.
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[post_title] => Power BI Updates for QuickLaunch Customers: Q1 2021
[post_excerpt] => Power BI was named a leader in the Gartner magic quadrant again this year. (Be sure to check out our interactive analysis of the Magic quadrant here.) A major factor of Power BI’s success has been the dedication by Microsoft to continuously improve the Power BI product suite with updates that are demand-driven and consistent.
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[post_content] => Scottsdale, AZ – iShift and Preferred Strategies have joined forces to seamlessly deliver an innovative cloud-based implementation of Preferred Strategies’ QuickLauch solution.
Preferred Strategies has been an innovator and thought leader in the Business Intelligence and Data Analytics space for over 20 years. The QuickLaunch solution is an Information Engine designed to help companies access data that is hard to get to and understand, and turn it into useable information so employees and leaders are equipped to make better decisions that positively impact their business. The QuickLaunch framework is built on the Microsoft Power BI platform and offers cutting edge visualization and analytics functionality across all corporate data sources. The solution allows organizations to access and use their data as a strategic asset to make informed business decisions, increase efficiency, reduce labor costs and gain powerful insights to future opportunities that ultimately make their company more profitable and competitive.
The iShift Platform is a comprehensive solution to guide businesses undergoing cloud migration. It encompasses a fully hosted and managed cloud environment and the stack of applications that meet the organization’s needs for value and profitability following the highest security standards, governance, and compliance with applicable regulatory requirements.
When a Preferred Strategies client approached them for guidance on best practices in setting up a cloud-based deployment of QuickLaunch, Preferred Strategies brought in iShift as a strategic partner to advise, plan, and design the right Azure cloud environment. As a Microsoft Azure partner, iShift had the knowledge, certifications, and resources to plan and set up the right cloud infrastructure. As a result of the joint project, Preferred Strategies will deploy QuickLaunch on Azure leveraging the iShift Platform.
The partnership between the two companies is determined by several factors: the shared values and uncompromising dedication to client success, the focus on transforming technological innovation into a business advantage, and the firm belief that when it comes specific competencies, it makes sense to find the experts that will complement the gaps in know-how.
According to Mark Googins, CEO of iShift, “Our teams are passionate about building long-term trusting partnerships with our clients and delivering the competitive advantage they need to grow their business, improve operational efficiencies, and increase profitability. We are very excited to build our relationship with Preferred Strategies for the long-term by offering organizations innovative cloud-based solutions that will help them turn their data into decision ready information.”
According to Adam Crigger, Founder and President of Preferred Strategies, “In today’s ever-changing business climate, organizations need to be able to access their enterprise data anywhere anytime. The cloud environment that the iShift Platform offers provides this flexibility. We are continuing our tradition of pursuing strategic partnerships to deliver modern solutions with enhanced capabilities to clients and empower businesses to realize the full potential of their ERP data.”
About Preferred Strategies
In order to be successful and competitive in today’s landscape organizations need to easily access, consume and digest corporate wide data and information. Preferred Strategies is an innovative leader in the decision-making business. Our QuickLaunch solution leads to higher data literacy and corporate wide success because our scalable platform provides customers with a governed decision framework model delivering a single source of truth across all data sources…empowering leaders to make strategic, informed and educated business decisions across the organization. We partner with companies to transform their data into meaningful information displayed in customized dashboards, KPI’s, graphs, charts, key metrics, and reports, with the ability to drill down and through the information to clearly identify insights, trends, and outliers. With hundreds of successful customer partnerships, QuickLaunch has been proven to deliver the perfect balance of user friendly and empowering, innovative functionality, near real time data access, and IT governance without the heavy lifting that competitive organizations require to take their companies to the next level of success. At Preferred Strategies we don’t shy away from what is hard, we come right for it, and we succeed! To learn more about how we can help you accomplish your business goals, visit www.preferredstrategies.com
About iShift
iShift is a multi-cloud technology solutions company that provides cloud engineering, cloud migration, cloud management and specialized IT staffing services. Our mission is to help businesses to simplify and accelerate growth while enabling digital transformation and IT modernization. No matter where organizations are in their cloud journey, iShift can design, build, optimize and manage a future-ready multi-cloud environment, resulting in significant cost savings, increased workforce productivity, operational resilience, continuity of services, and business agility. For more information on how our offerings empower businesses through their adoption of cloud and modern technology, visit www.ishift.net.
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[post_excerpt] => iShift and Preferred Strategies have joined forces to deliver a cloud-based implementation of Preferred Strategies’ QuickLaunch.
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In the News
Trends in ERP Adoption in Construction
Ben Harrison, vice president of product management at Preferred Strategies, discusses trends in the adoption of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) in the construction industry and how QuickLaunch can help contractors better utilize ERP data to its full potential.
Blog
Power BI Updates for QuickLaunch Customers: Q1 2021
March 23, 2021
Power BI was named a leader in the Gartner magic quadrant again this year. (Be sure to check out our interactive analysis of the Magic quadrant here.) A major factor of Power BI’s success has been the dedication by Microsoft to continuously improve the Power BI product suite with updates that are demand-driven and consistent.
