How Stratiam helps to identify performance improvements and competitive advantage in IT, business and sport

I’m old enough to remember that in the early days of the Internet upload and download speeds were so poor that you were lucky if you could upload a 10Mb file. How times have changed and most of us haven’t even noticed that we are all streaming video, working from home and operating as though the Internet was just like turning a light bulb on or boiling a kettle.

  Peter Job   Jan 2021   5 min read   36 views

Uncover the Team and the Equipment Behind the Athlete

On paper, ski racing is very much an individual sport but that is far from the truth. Behind the racer is an incredibly important support team. From the coach who takes on all the responsibility for tactical and technical input, to the physical trainer who helps the athlete get in their best form and the physio who helps the athlete get to their peak physical condition.

  Chemmy Alcott   Jan 2021   4 min read   177 views

How Athletes Optimise Their Physicality

I am stronger than my peers. I can lift more weight. I have faster agility. I am more co-ordinated. I have higher levels of flexibility. However, I wasn’t winning every race. Being physically the best in the world off the snow WILL 100% give you confidence that you have prepared the best that you can. It WILL help you recover from mistakes you make on your skis quicker. It WILL help you load the skis with more pressure. It WILL help you power out the start more efficiently.

  Chemmy Alcott   Jan 2021   4 min read   475 views

Understand the 'Skill of Skiing' at almost 100mph down a 25° slope

I am starting the in-depth cog detail mentioned in my first blog with the most obvious of pre-requisition to be a champion in sport - huge technical skill. The number of times I have heard the following: “It is a gravity sport, point your skis down and go. The heavier you are the faster you go, as simple as that!” What absolute nonsense.

  Chemmy Alcott   Dec 2020   4 min read   598 views

Why you’re only as strong as your weakest link.

To be the very best in elite level sport, you can’t just be the best technically. That will only get you so far. You can’t just focus all your energy on being the strongest in the gym. We always say a sport is far more mental than it is technical based on how you handle the pressure and manage your expectations. But even if you have more confidence in your abilities than your peers you still need to have the skill level and more to back it up to win.

  Chemmy Alcott   Dec 2020   4 min read   612 views

What's 'Pre-Canned Analytics'?

Pre-canned analytics is when beautifully-built, best-in-class data visualisations and interactive dashboards have already been created specifically for you. You just need to plug in your data sources, open the can and then glug down on refreshing cool, pre-prepared, wonderful data-insights.

  Anthony Osborn   Dec 2020   3 min read   93 views

Welcoming Chemmy Alcott to team Stratiam!

We are absolutely delighted to welcome Chemmy Alcott as Stratiam's new brand ambassador! As a 4X Winter Olympian and one of Britain's greatest skiers. Chemmy recognises that maintaining an ‘A’ game on the slopes requires rapid understanding of data from multiple sources... Just as it does for optimising for performance from any data sets. We’ll be working with Chemmy over the coming months on a series of blog posts related to skiing, data and performance optimization.

  Anthony Osborn   Nov 2020   4 min read   519 views

Top 10 reasons you might not want to run your business operations using MS Excel

Almost 16,000 UK COVID infection cases recently went ‘missing’ due to a “technical error with an Excel spreadsheet”. Using Excel for life-and-death situations, was in this case, a poor choice. Here are 10 reasons you might want to question using Excel to power your business.

  Anthony Osborn   Oct 2020   5 min read   453 views

What's the difference between a Business Intelligence Tool and an Operational Intelligence Platform?

I’ve been working with Business Intelligence (BI) tools for a number of years now, and my collection of vendor water-bottles is slowly building up.  BI vendors are good at keeping their analysts hydrated, but where is this industry actually headed?

When we look back over 2019, we see some major acquisitions in the Business Intelligence (BI) vendor tool space, which suggest a certain coming-of-age, re-shaping or maturity for this industry.  For example, Tableau was acquired by Salesforce for $15.3bn (June, 2019), Looker was bought by Google for a reported $2.6bn (also June, 2019), Qlik snapped ...

  Anthony Osborn   Oct 2019   8 min read   392 views

Using Microservices to Manage Data

When it came to building Stratiam as a robust and scaleable system, we realised there would be some decisions that would be best made early on. One of those was how we architect the backbone of a system that will need to import and process billlions of lines of data without adversely affecting the experience of users wanting to access and view reports based on that data.

  Christopher Johnson   Oct 2019   8 min read   251 views