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Non-technical people in companies need data, but don't have the programming skills to get it themselves. So, it becomes your part-time job to get them data. As your company grows, this problem only gets worse.

We built a (soon to be released as open source) Ruby on Rails app that has completely transformed the way non-technical people at Paperless Post access data. With this 'simple' rails app, we are able to offer sophisticated, on demand, realtime reporting, that takes almost no developer time.

The intended audience is anyone who works at a company with ten or more people, where it starts to becomes very painful that non-technical people don't have access to data.

I'll go over why the current solutions (often getting a developer to run a database query / lots of cronjobs) don't solve this problem well, and how their shortcomings become incredibly painful as an organization grows.

Then, I'll show the tool we built at Paperless Post, which does a really great job solving this problem. It uses some not-commonly-used features of ActiveRecord and erb to take this complicated problem and solve it elegantly.

To say this app has made life better at Paperless Post would be an understatement. At the end of the talk, I hope attendees can go back to their companies, implement our tool, and bring more joy and happiness into their lives.

Here's a step by step outline of the talk:

The Problem
    How Most Companies Try To Solve It
    How Activerecord & erb Create a Better Solution
    Going Through The Code
    Dashboards, Visualizations and Complex Reports
    Deploying The Application
    The Social & Political Benefits Within Your Company

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http://amara.org/v/FGYy/

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The video titled 'BI Tooling with Rails' features speaker Solomon Kahn at the GoRuCo 2014 event, where he discusses how non-technical employees in organizations struggle to access necessary data. At Paperless Post, a Ruby on Rails application was developed to empower these individuals, transforming their data access experience. Kahn outlines the common challenges companies face regarding data retrieval by non-technical staff, such as reliance on developers for SQL queries and inadequate tools. The main themes of the talk include:

- **Identifying the Problem**: Many employees do not know SQL, making it difficult to access data for informed decision-making.
- **Traditional Solutions**: Most companies resort to inefficient methods like cron jobs sending overwhelming emails or developers running routine queries, which do not scale well as organizations grow.
- **Rails Insights**: Kahn highlights two critical insights from Rails: ActiveRecord’s ability to connect to various data sources and the use of ERB for SQL templates, making data queries more accessible and flexible for users.
- **The BI Application**: The application developed at Paperless Post includes four sections—questions, KPIs, reports, and visualizations. This allows users to execute queries dynamically with user-defined parameters.
- **User-Friendly Interface**: Non-technical users can easily run predefined queries, making timely data access straightforward and intuitive.
- **KPIs and Visualizations**: The application facilitates tracking of key performance indicators and offers visual dashboard features for complex reporting needs.
- **Deployment Insights**: Kahn explains the simple setup process for the app and emphasizes the necessity of authentication, although that feature was not yet implemented at the time of the talk.
- **Cultural Benefits**: Addressing the data access needs of non-technical individuals promotes better relationships between teams and enhances overall workplace morale.

The video concludes by encouraging attendees to implement this BI tool within their companies to foster a more data-driven culture and improve collaboration among staff. Kahn illustrates that by providing access to data, organizations can empower non-technical users, leading to more efficient decision-making and a positive working environment.

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