Thoughts on being a Qlik Luminary

Life is made up of moments, and I remember clearly the moment I asked by former boss for a career change. Eight years ago I decided to leave a future of implementing ERPs and bet on a new future helping people analyze their data with a software called QlikView.

In 2006, QlikView was new to Mexico and it wasn’t easy to convince prospects that we were better than the OLAP-based competitors that had already been around for decades. However, we knew it was the product of the future because almost every time we competed with OLAP-based software in Seeing is Believing events, we would leave the prospect in awe and win the project. I’ll never forget the time I made a business user shed tears of joy after seeing an analysis in QlikView that the company had never been able to perform after years of numerous, futile attempts with other tools.

I’m more an analyst than a salesperson, so I know QlikView is not perfect. I respect what Stephen Few has done for data visualization and I’ll always have a place in my heart reserved for Tableau, but as I commented in my recent book, I believe QlikView is the best all-around data discovery software. There’s more to data discovery than data visualization. Rapid, efficient and easy data extraction and transformation along with an innovative associative data model are all vital tools to discover data, and this is why I still prefer QlikView.

Now eight after first choosing QlikView, it has been renamed Qlik and as a new, game-changing version is ever closer to being unveiled, I’m going to bet again on Qlik. I’m honored to be among a group of the Qlik Luminaries that includes an impressive list of customers, partners and enthusiasts. As a Qlik Luminary, I promise to take on the responsibility to share how great Qlik is to all those who still suffer from information deficiency, and I also promise to represent the needs of my customers to make Qlik an even greater data discovery tool.

I will keep you updated on what I can share with you during what looks to be an excellent 2014.