A new mobile software platform launched this week has found a way to discern critical patterns and trends inside a business by analysing complex data and presenting it simply and clearly.
Qlik Sense is a self-service data discovery tool allowing a business to conduct a more through analysis of its operations. The dashboard-type interface allows complex information to be entered from other sources like Excel by a simple “drag and drop” movement. It can then immediately discern the key relationships in the data.
The user can then construct how the data is presented in a simplified manner by creating an “app” within the Qlik Sense platform using a series of graphs and charts. By experimenting with the data, it’s possible to reveal important connections and trends not possible from an examination of the data in its raw form.
Swedish based software-company Qlik is behind the platform, with the Australian and New Zealand Vice President and Regional Director, Sharryn Millican, telling Dynamic Business that anyone can use the platform, from a small business to a large corporation.
To highlight its various applications, Ms Millican said it could be used in health care facilities to find peak incident times or, on a more personal level, to catalogue something as simple as large wine collection.
She said the technology had proved useful to nurse unit managers at leading public healthcare provider, Melbourne Health. “We built a dashboard that allowed them to look at their operating theatres and wards. What they found was, over a few months they saw, on any given day, that there were three spikes in the data.
“When the nurse unit mangers actually looked at the data, they looked at it and went ‘Ok, that’s morning tea, that’s change of shift and that’s night shift’. And when they looked at what was happening to the patients in those spikes it was a particular age group — 70 to 80 year old people — and the incident was getting out of bed, so they fell getting out of bed.”
To highlight the utility of the platform, an app was created within Qlik Sense to mine data relating to the chief executives of the ASX 200. Dubbed “Where do CEO’s Come From”, a user can explore the data to discover trends relating to the nation’s most powerful corporate leaders.
For example, men hold the top position at 95 per cent of Australia’s leading companies, but are out-earned by women.
Female CEOs on average earn a higher average salary of $4.1 million a year compared to their male counterparts on $2.5 million. This is largely due to their better representation in banking and finance. However, females also stay in higher management positions for longer, with the average tenure being six years compared to males with only five years.
The average age for a male CEO and a female CEO is the same at 54 years of age. However, the youngest male CEO is 37 while the youngest female CEO is ten years older, at 47.
Salaries were highest in the banking sector at an average of $7 million per annum, followed by the transport and manufacturing industries with $4.4 million and $4.3 million respectively.
In terms of education, four per cent of CEOs did not attend university while just over half attended university here in Australia. The Australian university that has produced the most current ASX 200 CEOs is UNSW.
In terms of degrees, only 17.8 per cent of CEOs have MBAs while 34.1 per cent hold bachelor’s degrees. Surprisingly, just over half of Australian CEOs were born overseas at 53 per cent with the highest percentage coming from the UK.
Lead Solution Architect, James Belsey, told Dynamic Business the Qlik Sense platform would allow businesses to build similar applications to discover trends about their own businesses. “To build this application is something a business person could do themselves,” he said. “It creates an environment where you can explore it (the data) and look at it.”
