Spotlight on our Distributors: Meet Bob Corr of DBI

by | Oct 4, 2016 | General BI

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bob-corrThe Dimensional Insight family includes not just employees from our U.S., Netherlands, Germany, Panama, and China locations, but also employees from our network of global distributors.

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Today we would like to introduce you to Bob Corr. Bob is the managing director of Dynamic Business Informatics (DBI), our partner and Diver distributor for Ireland and the UK. Learn more about Bob’s experience at DBI and his insight on business intelligence.

Bob, what is your position at Dynamic Business Informatics (DBI), and what do you do in that role?

I’m the managing director (MD) of DBI, which I set up in February of 2003. Prior to this I was MD of System Options Ltd, where I first came across Fred Powers and his BI offering in 1994. I was blown away then and I’m still amazed by the new technologies coming out of Dimensional Insight like Spectre and Workbench.

My role, apart from the day to day running of the company, is to drive business development with both existing and prospective customers. I am very “hands on” with the technical aspects of Diver, and have been designing and implementing Diver applications for many years! I am particularly adept at integrating Diver with new systems and engineering proof of concept applications.

Tell me a little bit about DBI.

Our Technical Director, John Spillane, worked with Diver extensively in the company that became the first-ever Diver user in Ireland way back in 1994. He then partnered with me in 2004. Along with John and a team of Diver consultants, we operate as the Diver distributor for Ireland and the UK. We have over 10 resellers who work with Diver within their respective customer bases. Diver is the only product we sell and as such we have experts in all aspects of the software. We assist our customers during their initial deployment, developing appropriate models and cBases to satisfy their requirements. In addition, we support our customer deployments and develop new BI applications for our customers as requested.

In 2011, we founded the Diver BI Group to act as an umbrella for all of these resellers and consultants. From this base we have a team of Diver experts who work with our over 200 customers in this region.

Our website is a focal point not only for us, but also for many other partners and colleagues from around the world who are either Diver distributors or Diver experts. We share ideas and technical tips in our blog and our “Ask Anthony” pages.

What type of clients do you work with?

I work with many of our clients – mainly those with multi-national operations where BI applications are required to bring information together in one place. We have customers from sectors including retail, wholesale and distribution, manufacturing, pharma, healthcare and even a chain of cattle markets! We have also developed a SaaS offering using Dimensional Insight’s InterReport facility in the Netherlands – and we host Diver applications for smaller customers who don’t have in-house IT expertise.

What is one interesting way you have seen customers use Diver?

Well, I’ve seen many, many interesting ways that our customers use Diver. It never ceases to amaze me how after a few days of implementing a Diver application they are finding out all kinds of information that really deliver savings. They have real evidence for taking actions in processes that revolutionize the way they do business. One particular example that stands out is H & K International. We used Diver to help them consolidate their data from pan-global sites. We were also able to help the company apply business rules based on time zone and currency. This is a feat that would have been extremely difficult without a BI layer.

What aspect of Diver is most appealing to you, and why?

The most appealing aspect of Diver is its speed of implementation to see valuable results and its agnostic versatility. I have to say, though, that it’s hard not to mention the fact that it covers all aspects of ETL and has a huge strength in the transformational development toolset. Without this, we would not be able to offer our customers the ability to combine multiple data sources into standard formats that allow them to see all sources as alike. Some of the other offerings out there just don’t have this capability. In fact, they are only useful for clean, simple data sources.

In what direction do you see the future of BI heading?

Well, that’s a hard one to predict. While the trend is for super-whizzy visualization techniques, big data crunching is, in our experience, the top must-have for customers. The value of BI is in the detail, especially in retail where there are millions of rows of EPOS transactions. Thankfully, Dimensional Insight now has this covered for huge volumes of transactional data with Spectre. Visualizations are great if they tell a thousand words. However, in our world, it’s often the detail in the hundred-millionth row of data that holds the key to success. If they can’t get to it quickly then it’s no good. We see BI heading towards faster data access across a variety of devices. The key is getting the right information to the right people at the right time on the right device.

Tell us about the culture of the Ireland office.

Ah, everyone knows about the craic in Ireland! We are a warm and friendly bunch of people. In addition, we love our work and our play! We have two offices in Ireland and all our staff are dedicated professionals who love Dimensional Insight and Diver. Every year, we welcome our customers and partners to a free conference to showcase the new techniques and features in Diver. Typically, Fred presents, and we all gather the night before in the Dublin hotel for a good catch up over a Guinness. (What else would you expect?)  Our conference is on October 27th this year – you’d be very welcome –  céad míle fáilte!

Thanks for your time, Bob! If you have questions for Bob about his work, let us know in the comments section below.

Natalie Cantave

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