We had a great evening last night at the Westpac Auckland Central Business Awards.

Not quite as good as winning one of the categories - but it was an honour to be named a finalist in not just one - but two - categories.

Our categories were Best Emerging Business, won by The Lovely Little Food Company, and Best Service Delivery, won by Sachie's Kitchen.

Obviously we're going to have to work on our food products for next year!

Seriously though, congratulations to all the winners and thanks to Westpac and the Auckland Chamber of Commerce.

Stellar Consulting is honoured to be in the Deloitte Fast 50 announced this evening in Auckland.

The annual list recognizes the fastest growing companies in New Zealand, and Stellar checked in at number 28, with annual revenue growth of more than 247% over the past three years.

To make the 2012 Deloitte Fast 50, companies had to achieve growth of 154%, while growth of at least 480% was required to make the top 10 on the index.

Working with a blue chip list of leading New Zealand companies and organisations, Stellar has engaged a top team of specialist consultants in Business Intelligence, and has grown rapidly from a team of five to over 25.

At Stellar, our aim has been to show the gains that can be made from better managing all the information needed in making business decisions, and to do this in a way that lets our clients choose the technology that best suits them.

The 2012 group of Deloitte Fast 50 businesses grew the New Zealand economy by $637 million in the past three years and created 1376 jobs.

For the full list of winners, visit fast50.co.nz

Thanks to all our Stellar customers and our fantastic staff who made this achievement possible.

And here are some facts and figures about the average company in the Fast 50.

A recent issue of Reseller News looked at the transition of some IT resellers from "moving boxes" to selling services - including Business Intelligence services.

But the article includes a cautionary comment from Stellar BI's Managing Director, Grant Broadbent (pictured).

"If you just drop the technology on the floor you might get some passionate soul to use it and show their fellow business unit [members] how great it is, but if that person leaves or if the business changes its focus, then a lot of those projects just end up dying. There’s a lot in BI that people don’t realise."

Paul Plester of Express Data adds that teaching users how to analyse and use data is a key part of a good Business Intelligence offering.

"That type of skill is going to be more in demand, it’s not a box move any more, there’s value add around it."

“With BI, you’re not really selling software,” says Richard Johnson,  sales director of consulting firm Cortell.

"I mean you are, of course. But you’ve got to understand [a customer's] data and then you’ve got to build the underlying data structure that you then report on and do your analysis.”

Business Intelligence, Analytics, Data Warehousing and Project Management are skills in short supply, according to a number of recent articles looking at IT staffing trends for 2012.

Demand for these skills is expected to grow, as the recession eases.

According to Computerworld's annual Forecast survey, 29% of IT executives (the highest percentage in the past three years) plan to add staff during the first half of 2012, while 17% expect to reduce staffing.

The magazine surveyed more than 350 IT leaders in the United States during June.

Business Intelligence and Analytics

BI is included in Computerworld's list of nine hot IT skills for 2012, and staffing company Robert Half International's list of the five hottest technology jobs.

In New Zealand, Robert Half expects strong demand in the related area of Business Analysis.

Computerworld's survey found that 23% of IT executives plan to hire people with BI expertise in the next 12 months, up from 13% in the 2010 survey.

"The uptick indicates a shift from focusing on cost savings to investing in technology that provides access to real-time data, enabling better business decisions," writes Computerworld's Rick Saia.

Start-up headhunter Keith Cline sees Analytics as one of the five areas facing a talent shortage in 2010.

"Analytics is becoming a central hub across companies where everything (web, marketing, sales, operations) is being measured and each decision is supported by data," he wrote at inc.com.

"Thus, we are seeing a high level of demand for analytics and business intelligence professionals."

Megan Alexander, New Zealand General Manager of Robert Half, predicts that "decision makers will be looking for candidates who can drive business intelligence and will be prepared to invest in hiring the right people to deliver infrastructure change."

Data Warehousing

IT recruiters interviewed by CIO Magazine predict that mobile application developers - and, in particular, mobile game developers - will remain "the hottest commodity in IT" throughout 2012.

But mobile isn't the only area offering exciting opportunities. CIO's list of the six hottest IT jobs, published last month, also sees strong demand for data warehousing experts:

"Companies' desire to extract insights from the petabytes of data streaming into their back office systems is driving demand for data warehouse architects, analysts and developers," says CIO writer Meridith Levinson.

Eighteen per cent of executives in the Computerworld survey said they planned to hire IT staff with data centre skills in the next 12 months, down slightly from 21% in the 2010 survey.

Project Management

One of the five skills most in demand, according to Robert Half, Project Management is also on Computerworld's list of the top nine hot skills.

Computerworld notes that 44% of executives in its survey plan to hire project managers in the next 12 months, up slightly from 43% a year ago.

But a PM designation may not be enough to land every job:

"Big projects need managers, but they also need business analysts who can identify users' needs and translate them for the IT staffers who have to meet those needs and complete projects on time," writes Rick Saia.

He quotes John Reed, executive director of Robert Half Technology who says: "The demand has been more for business analysts than project managers, in other words, those who can help deliver projects rather than merely oversee and monitor them."

Opportunities abound

As a Business Intelligence consultant, I work with executives and managers who believe in basing their business decisions on solid data.

Managing and analysing that data are two of the biggest challenges most companies face. That's where good BI systems and great people come in.

"As we head out of a recession hiring managers will be looking for more analytical abilities," says Megan Alexander. "Those in senior roles who ‘sat tight’ during the recession have now been in the same role for 3-5 years and will be looking to up skill or are ready for a change.

"Candidates with the ability to analyse will be well placed in this market."

Here at Stellar, our 2012 pipeline reflects the strong demand seen by recruitment agencies. We currently have openings for Oracle and Microsoft BI developers, so if you think you've got what it takes to consult alongside New Zealand's best BI talent, get in touch!

Travis Barker, Consulting Partner

As we load the bubbly into the fridge and get ready to celebrate the beginning of a new year, we thought it might be an opportune moment to reflect on the past year and compile some thoughts on emerging trends in Business Intelligence.

So, here's our view of the Top 5 BI trends.

1) BI is an "Every Unit Item"

If you're a CEO or other "CxO" level executive and you're not involved in a BI initiative of any kind, then it's time to "get with the programme"! We know your competitors are committing to BI so it's only a matter of time before they start grabbing your market share. Just give us a call and we can help you put things back on track in no time.

2) Mobility is all the rage

Adoption of mobile BI is happening at light speed in New Zealand. Top level executives at several of our customers have ditched their A4 documents and are using active BI reports on tablets at "the big table". Our customers are rolling out mobile BI apps to their customers so you'll be seeing some of them on your phone or tablet soon. The men and women in white coats at Stellar's R&D labs have done some amazing things with BI mobility tools and this is just the tip of the iceberg: we will see the death of paper reports in our lifetime.

3) Technology lock-in is dead

In "the old days" a commitment to a single vendor often meant a lifetime of lock-in misery. Now you can say goodbye to vendor lock-in forever! We work with all the major technology stacks and have delivered solutions using pretty much every combination of technology platform so we know that tools from disparate vendors work together. If your techies say "we're committed to vendor ABC's architecture so we need to buy their XYZ BI products" you can tell them that's just a load of bollocks! :-)

4) The cloud is real

You've no doubt heard all sorts of buzz about cloud computing, and we're happy to report that the cloud works! At Stellar, we run our business on "the cloud"; our accounting, time-sheeting, resource planning, payroll processing, email, document management, and helpdesk are subscription-based software services based somewhere in the ether. We also know how to implement BI on the cloud. We are very excited about the Ultra Fast Broadband initiatives in play in New Zealand and have recently hooked up to a fibre local loop "fat pipe" so we can host BI applications that run at the speed of light. Just watch this space!

5) BI has never been less expensive

Back in the day, the entry level cost for BI was expressed in 7 or 8 digits. These days we are delivering discrete, robust, fully acceptance-tested, documented and supported solutions to delighted users for ridiculously small fees. When you know what you're doing, you know what your customer really wants and you do it right the first time. We are now able to deliver BI solutions for much less than you'd think.

So that's our take on the BI scene at the end of a successful 2011, and here's
to an even better 2012!

Happy New Year from the team at Stellar!

Photo credits:
Boardroom The River Club on Flickr
iPad liewcf on Flickr
Padlock außerirdische sind gesund on Flickr
Cloud fifikins on Flickr
Coins Cosmic_Flurk on Flickr

It's been a busy year at Stellar's world headquarters. It seems we've barely got into our stride for 2011 and all of a sudden it's the 23rd of December!

So we'd like to take this opportunity to thank our customers, partners and our team members for their support and offer our hearty 'Compliments of the Season' to you.

Whatever your religious persuasion, Christmas is a great time to kick back and relax, spend a bit of quality time with your family and close friends and reflect on the year that was. The team at Stellar is going to take time out to do exactly that and we'll be re-opening the office on the 9th of January to kick off our new year with a hiss and a roar.

So regardless of your plan for the holidays remember to drive carefully, be nice, wear sunscreen and most importantly, chill out and don't think about work too much!

Merry Christmas!

Grant, Travis, John & Grant

I was talking to the CFO of a medium/large Auckland-based organisation the other day about that organisation's experiences with Business Intelligence. He told me that the IS team had spent a fortune on purchasing one of the popular data visualisation packages which they proceeded to put on the shelf for a while, uninstalled. Why? Because the vendor offered a "never to be repeated price" at the end of its financial year.