Preface

This may be a horrible way to start a book, but in all honesty my first real-world QlikView experience was a failure. I was assigned to do a proof-of-concept with a prospective client's IT department, and they insisted that I share every mouse click and keystroke on a large projection screen with them. I had taken a QlikView designer and developer course and was developing a QlikView template in my spare time, but this hadn't prepared me for the live development of a real application.

I fumbled around the screen as I developed their first data model and charts. They must have doubted my competence, and I was embarrassed. However, I was surprised to hear that they were impressed with how little time it had taken me to convert raw data to interactive data visualization and analysis. I had created the required indicators and finished their first application within three days.

The goal of the proof-of-concept was to demonstrate the value that QlikView could provide to the prospective client's company, and it all seemed to have gone well. After all, I had created an attractive, functional QlikView application that was filled with the indicators that the IT department had requested. However, I failed to demonstrate QlikView's value directly to the business users; in the end, the prospective client never purchased QlikView.

All was not lost because I ultimately learned that, although it is important to understand all of QlikView's technical features, we can't display its value by only memorizing the reference manual. If we really want to master QlikView, we have to go beyond the technical functionality and learn what business value QlikView enables us to deliver. Moreover, we must bring about a data discovery initiative that changes a company's culture.

This first experience occurred ten years ago and these first failures have given way to success. I am lucky to have the opportunity to work as a QlikView consultant and participate in projects that encompass multiple organizations and various functional areas. All of their difficult challenges and excellent ideas have helped me to constantly learn from our mutual successes and failures.

During the last ten years that I've implemented QlikView projects, I've found that many businesses share much of the same advanced data analysis goals. For example, most sales departments in every company dream about having an easy way to visualize and predict customer churn. We will go over these common, but complicated, business requirements that you can apply to your own company.

As a QlikView master, you have to be just as comfortable discussing the most appropriate performance indicator with a business user, as you are with scripting out a data model that calculates it. For this reason, at one end, we will explain the business reasons for a particular visualization or analysis and, at the other end, we will explain the data model that is necessary to create it.

We will then develop different types of data visualization and analysis that look to push the boundaries of what is possible in QlikView. We will not focus on QlikView syntax or function definitions. Instead, we will see how to apply advanced functions and set analysis to real business problems. Our focus on the business problem will also lead us to look beyond QlikView and see what other tools we can integrate with it.

Practice leads to mastery, so I've included sample data models and exercises throughout this book. If they apply to your business, I recommend that you copy and paste these exercises over your own data to see what feedback you get from your business users. This extra step of adjusting the exercise's code to make it work with a different dataset will confirm your understanding of the concept and cement it in your memory.

Ultimately, I hope that, by sharing my experience, I will help you succeed where I first failed. In doing so, when you finally fail, it will be because you are attempting to do something beyond what I have done. Then, when you finally overcome your failure and succeed, I can learn from you, the master.