Season 2 Episode 3 – Donald MacCormick – A Time of Change: How B.I. Has Evolved Throughout the Years

Episode Summary

Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence.

In this episode, B.I. entrepreneur and Chief Strategy Officer at Squirrel365, Donald MacCormick joins the show to talk about his background and experience working in enterprise and desktop software. Donald provides his thoughts on self-service B.I., the cycle of business intelligence and what the future holds for the industry.

Highlights

00:37 – Introducing today’s guest, Donald MacCormick, who speaks to his background in business intelligence and highlights from his illustrious career

07:10 – Donald breaks down the cycle of business intelligence, technology and IT

12:47 – Donald speaks to why self-service B.I. means different things to different people

17:13 – Acquisitions in the B.I. industry

19:50 – Donald speculates on the future of B.I.

24:29 – Why Excel remains so pervasive and popular

30:19 – Donald provides his thoughts on enterprise reporting systems and the numerous other ways B.I. can be utilized

39:31 – Donald gives his opinion on Covid-19 and the future impact it may have on our world

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The sad thing is that we have gone through at least three cycles and we’ve just delivered slightly better capability to the same people over and over and over again.

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That’s what business intelligence is like. It’s a supply chain that gets the right thing to the right people.

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Technology has moved on, but actually in the last thirty years, has B.I. really changed that much? And, will it change in the next five? I don’t know, but I could take a guess.

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I characterize it (Excel’s popularity) as the three ‘F’s: it’s familiar, it’s flexible and it’s free.

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If an enterprise reporting system is something that end users can quickly and easily access the data they need then it’s good.

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It’s a time of change. And if you can spot how your business fits into that change, then you can thrive.

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Links Mentioned

Limitless BI Website

Donald’s LinkedIn

Season 2 Episode 2 – Jefferson Lynch – Predictive Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)

Episode Summary

Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence.

In this episode, Managing Director and Founder of Red Olive, Jefferson Lynch joins the show to talk about his experience with predictive artificial intelligence and using data to help businesses and organizations unlock value. Jefferson speaks to the impact Covid-19 has had on his business, the importance of data analytics and the future of business intelligence.

Highlights

00:42 – Introducing today’s guest, Jefferson Lynch, who speaks to his background in business intelligence and some of the projects he’s been working on with predictive A.I.

08:40 – Trends Jefferson has observed in predictive A.I. and where he sees A.I. fitting into the business intelligence equation

18:38 – Jefferson makes the case for utilizing intelligence automation over artificial intelligence and provides specific examples

21:45 – Where Jefferson sees B.I. going in the next five years

24:58 – Jefferson speaks to the impact Covid-19 has had on his company and how they have pivoted in these difficult economic times

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I think what we’re starting to see is there’s a common way to go about tackling that kind of problem. And I think what’s left to happen is these more defined problems likely get encapsulated into the likes of a B.I. tool and to…

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A little anecdote if I could, there was someone who is the head of quite a large hedge fund who said to me, ‘What we’re aiming to be is more Iron Man than Terminator.’ What he was getting at is that actually to be really augmented,…

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Lots of organizations have been taking advice on what their information and B.I. strategy should be. And, I think the general move continues to be towards the act of self-service.

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I think a potential benefit for its longer term, if this (Covid-19) all carries on, is I think maybe we’ve had a limiting belief, in a way, in that thinking we had to meet physically with an organization that we haven’t perhaps gone…

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Links Mentioned

Limitless BI Website

Jefferson’s LinkedIn

Season 2 Episode 1 – Kate Wright – Augmented Analytics & Business Objects

Episode Summary

Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence.

In this episode, VP of Augmented B.I. for SAP Analytics Cloud, Kate Wright joins the show to talk about her experience with Enterprise Analytics. Kate comments on trends and changes in business intelligence over the past decade, SAP’s vision and strategy for their cloud-based analytics platform and what the future holds for intelligence enterprise.

Highlights

00:42 – Introducing today’s guest, Kate Wright, who speaks to her background in business intelligence and how Covid-19 has transformed her work with SAP Analytics Cloud

08:44 – Kate shares SAP’s vision for business intelligence and the future of the intelligence enterprise

13:09 – Kate explains SAP’s aggressive strategy in business intelligence, specifically developing a cloud-based analytics platform

16:27 – Trends and changes Kate has observed in business intelligence

19:11 – Kate provides her thoughts on the role of IT in augmented B.I., the emergence of predictive A.I. and where she sees B.I. going in the next five years

24:29 – Kate looks back on what SAP could have done differently with their business intelligence strategy and what the future of augmented B.I. holds

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Most of my career has been spent on business intelligence, and the last few years I’ve been focusing on SAP Analytics Cloud.

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The reason that SAP is focused on our message of the intelligence enterprise is because we believe – and I personally believe – that the future of enterprise applications has to be more intelligent than it is today.

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And when they think about analytics and they think about B.I., we want them to also start thinking about simulating, and forecasting, and correlations, and classifications. Because everyone is going to need B.I. The bread and butter is…

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When I have dialogues with a CFO or a CRO – no matter what line of business you’re in – the need for information and the need to really understand what you can change, how you can change it, and have that transparency is top of…

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I think our (SAP’s) strategy to double down on cloud, invest heavy in augmented analytics, bring those analytics domains together, continue to evolve the business intelligence platform, those have all been the right decisions. I just…

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Links Mentioned

Limitless BI Website

Kate’s LinkedIn

Season 2 COVID-19 Preview

Episode Summary

In this episode, Paul Grill, CEO of Infosol, previews he second season of Limitless BI. He discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic has caused many businesses to dramatically adjust their planning and how they are being forced to take a fresh look at their business intelligence reporting. Many CEOs are having to make tough decisions and realizing that the reporting they were using was not sufficient to meet these new reporting challenges.

Paul previews the guests that will be appearing in future episodes.

Episode 6 – Chris Sinkwitz – Home Building with Business Intelligence Initiatives

Episode Summary

Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. In this episode, Chris Sinkwitz joins the show to talk about his experience integrating business intelligence dashboards into the home building industry. Chris discusses how his firm utilizes business intelligence for land acquisition, marketing, and recovery from financial disasters like the 2008 housing crisis. Finally, Chris shares his planned initiatives for his new company as well as his thoughts on the future of business intelligence.

Highlights

01:12 – Introducing today’s guest, Chris Sinkwitz

01:35 – Chris’ background in the home building industry

04:31 – What business intelligence means to Chris

05:39 – Unique challenges that the home building industry faces

07:35 – Utilizing B.I. for land acquisition

09:44 – Chris discusses the fallout from the housing crisis of 2008

12:45 – The role B.I. played in helping the home building industry recover from the housing crisis

15:23 – How Chris’ organization is utilizing B.I.

17:09 – Lessons learned from the 2008 financial crisis

18:50 – Chris speaks to how the housing industry is better prepared today as opposed to 2008

20:14 – Chris talks about the successful marketing B.I. dashboard solution he oversaw

23:50 – Interesting takeaways from this dashboard solution

25:34 – Other B.I. solutions Chris has collaborated on

29:12 – How the usage of B.I. has changed in the home building industry over the past five years

31:53 – Chris discusses starting his own business

33:42 – New B.I. initiatives that Chris is focusing on currently

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Business intelligence is looking at data holistically and comprehensively. And, it allows you to prove correlation versus causation, use your data as strategic competitive advantage, even find answers to questions you didn’t even know…

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The firm I was working at we had roughly 2,500 employees at the top of the market. And the housing crisis, when that hit, within several months we went down to 750 employees give or take.

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In putting that marketing dashboard together, they were able to see real time how these leads were coming in.

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I think there’s a lot of examples [of business intelligence] that we can go through and look at how this has helped the industry and certain firms are actually taking advantage of it.

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Links Mentioned

Limitless BI Website

Chris’ LinkedIn

Episode 5 – Leslie Warden – Digging Into the Data

Episode Summary

Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. In this episode, Dr. Leslie Warden joins the show to talk about her unique role as an Egyptologist and the impact business intelligence has had on her archeological excavations. Leslie speaks to the vast data her and her colleague collect, document, and analyze every time they excavate a site. Finally, Leslie praises the business intelligence dashboard that has allowed her and her team to classify and input data seamlessly.

Highlights

00:59 – Introducing today’s guest, Leslie Warden

01:36 – The moment Leslie knew she wanted to become an Egyptologist

04:03 – Leslie speaks to some of the excavations she’s participated in

08:21 – A non-glamorized look at archeology

10:53 – The primary goal of archeologists

12:26 – How archeologists piece together the past from broken objects

15:32 – Collecting, documenting and analyzing data

18:57 – The incredibly vast amount of data that Leslie and her colleagues collect

20:39 – How business intelligence can help in the collection, classification, and analysis of this data

22:34 – Challenges Leslie has faced incorporating business intelligence into her excavations

30:18 – Modifying the business intelligence dashboard to include classification and input functions

33:32 – Other benefits Leslie has experienced with the dashboard

35:27 – Leslie speaks to the reaction other specialists have had to the dashboard

38:19 – Next steps for Leslie’s use of business intelligence in archaeology

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Looking back on it, it was just the whole kit and caboodle, if you will, right? Animal-headed gods! What’s not to like about animal-headed gods?

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We just move so slowly because we’re reconstructing ancient life based on the little bits and pieces that are left for us. And, if I’m just digging for the showy complete objects, I’m actually wasting 98-99 percent of what’s…

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And then for the analysis, you’re left with a bit of a challenge because there is clearly far too much data from any excavation to be entirely analyzed and entirely published.

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What I have found to be my personal challenge is learning the language of the tech and the tech team and them learning the language of the archaeology so that we can actually have productive conversations.

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It [the dashboard] took that three-step process and made it into a seamless and beautiful one-step process, which of course limits human error.

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I’m a huge advocate for getting people from the tech world and from the computer world involved in excavations because there’s so much that we have to share with each other.

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Links Mentioned

Limitless BI Website

Leslie’s LinkedIn

Episode 4 – Shaun Taylor – Taking Them to School

Episode Summary

Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. In this episode, Shaun Taylor joins the show to talk about his experience integrating business intelligence dashboards into the educational system. As a former CIO at Tacoma Public Schools, Shaun speaks to the important role that data and metrics have played in the increased graduation rate in his district. Finally, Shaun shares his thoughts on the state of education and the challenges that must be overcome to make a positive change in this human-intensive industry.

Highlights

01:02 – Introducing today’s guest, Shaun Taylor

01:22 – Shaun’s background with business intelligence and technology

02:37 – Shifting into a second career in education

03:01 – The changes Shaun has seen in the CIO role throughout the years

04:23 – What business intelligence means to Shaun

05:33 – How new business intelligence technologies shape out decision-making

06:47 – How Shaun got involved in business intelligence

07:54 – The multiple challenges Shaun faced as CIO of the Tacoma Public Schools

09:50 – The data challenge

11:10 – The challenges that public school systems face

13:27 – The importance of metrics

15:32 – How long it took to extract business intelligence metrics from the public school system

17:18 – Developing business intelligence dashboards

20:26 – Key factors that drove the actions that led to such a dramatic increase in graduation rates

22:07 – How the outside community impacted the success of Shaun’s business intelligence dashboards

23:15 – How the community, school board, and faculty reacted to this data

25:16 – Shaun speaks to the ripple effect this dashboard has had on other school districts

26:31 – Next steps for the Tacoma School District

29:25 – Next steps for Shaun in his consulting business

31:47 – The challenge to change the education system itself

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And when I retired from the navy that’s when I tried to decide how to best leverage what I understood about information and how to help kids.

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What is the definition of success? That became a pretty challenging topic amongst the school board, the leadership of the district and also the community, because everyone had their own perceptions as to what success is.

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By the way, in education, ‘business intelligence’ is not a term they like to use because they think they’re different from business.

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Each two to three years, we added more benchmarks to see what else maybe we can do to influence better results for the kids. By the time we were done, just last year, our graduation rate is up eighty-seven percent from fifty-five percent.

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Education is a human intensive industry.

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Ya gotta have leadership buy-in and ya have to have leadership credibility to be able to pull something off like this.

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We need to hold school districts, administrators, and teachers accountable for what’s happening in schools.

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Links Mentioned

Limitless BI Website

Shaun’s LinkedIn

Episode 3 – Don Woods – Differentiating Telematics

Episode Summary

Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. In this episode, Don Woods joins the show to talk about his experience integrating business intelligence dashboards and creating efficiencies as VP of Client Information Systems at ARI. Don speaks to the rapid growth of the telematics space and explains how ARI is leveraging the power of data to reach new levels of efficiency and value. He talks about the importance of analytics and meeting customer needs. Finally, Don shares his thoughts on the future of business intelligence and the ways to differentiate new technologies within this space.

Highlights

00:47 – Introducing today’s guest, Don Woods

01:04 – Don speaks to his role at ARI

02:34 – Telematics explained

05:50 – What business intelligence means to Don

07:19 – How business intelligence has evolved at ARI over the years

09:48 – Don speaks to the vendor management dashboard solution that ARI created

14:48 – Meeting customer needs

15:30 – Measuring the results of this business intelligence dashboard solution

16:23 – Challenges ARI has faced while doing business in Germany

18:28 – The role of analytics

19:11 – The Fleet Health Card

23:19 – How Don and ARI built the algorithm necessary to build their predictive model

25:25 – Customer reactions to the new data tools that ARI is developing

26:47 – The prescriptive and human element of business intelligence

31:28 – Other ways to differentiate through vertical markets

33:25 – Future plans for telematics

36:31 – Remarketing

37:42 – What Don believes the ultimate goal for business intelligence will be

41:54 – Don speaks to other technologies such as artificial intelligence

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Really what it [business intelligence] means to me is what it kinda says on the tin, right? It really is generating intelligence for the business. So it’s really about using data to drive good business decisions.

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All of a sudden it starts to snowball. Once you start gaining that competency, then you start to see lots and lots of different areas where this happens, where you’re able to use the data to make and find nuggets of information.

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It’s kinda like brushing your teeth. If you didn’t brush your teeth for twenty years but then you brushed today, you’re compliant with brushing your teeth. But the damage has been already done.

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You’re starting to see that there’s more data crunching and there’s more strategic thinking around data being done across all areas of organizations.

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It’s really a fun space, this automotive and telematics space, to be involved in right now.

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Links Mentioned

Limitless BI Website

Don’s LinkedIn

ARI’s Website

Episode 2 – David Behr – Enhancing the Medical World

Episode Summary

Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. In this episode, David Behr joins the show to talk about his experience integrating business intelligence into organizational and clinical segments as VP at United Surgical Partners International (USPI). David expounds on some of the most successful BI dashboards he’s helped develop, as well as other projects he’s working on, including a partnership with the Frisco Independent School District in Texas. Finally, David shares his vision to leverage artificial intelligence interactive queries, and predictive analysis to enhance business intelligence.

Highlights

00:46 – Introducing today’s guest, David Behr

00:57 – David speaks to his role at USPI

01:38 – David’s background in business intelligence

04:19 – What business intelligence means to David

05:13 – David’s first successful integration of business intelligence

08:50 – The value of business intelligence and survey dashboards

11:22 – The Greenfield Business Intelligence Account

14:56 – How the surgery centers at USPI operate

16:47 – Quick wins for David

21:09 – Constantly moving on to new projects

23:13 – The decision to focus on the clinical side of business intelligence

25:59 – Other factors that influence individual clinical cases

27:13 – How David was able to track results from facilities who used the dashboard

27:53 – Feedback from physicians who have utilized the dashboard

29:25 – The behavioral response to business intelligence

30:41 – David’s recent collaboration with high school athletes

33:23 – The next phases of business intelligence

37:09 – David’s ultimate goal for business intelligence

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My passion in B.I. now is much more on the visualization side versus the static report side. #limitlessbi

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Through the ‘What if?’ they’d also be able to look at if they noticed that their drug and med expense happened to be red each month, they can click on it and it would take you to a whole nother screen that was all the best…

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We’re kinda working on a better way to manage, ‘How do we get those best practices rolling in?

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What we’ve done is we’ve actually broken these cases out into that level on granularity that I can look at ACL with knee scope and then I would only be looking at cases that did an ACL and a knee scope.

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I think it makes a difference if the people out there who are driving a business know that they’re being tracked and held accountable to what they’re doing.

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So, we’ll have a dashboard we built for the facility, but then we have the exact same one built where you can roll up the numbers to the region, roll up the numbers to the market President so they’ve got visibility as well now which…

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Links Mentioned

Limitless BI Website

David’s LinkedIn

USPI’s Website 

Episode 1 – Jenny Roberts – World Wildlife Fund

 

Episode Summary

Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. In this episode, Jenny Roberts joins the show to talk about her experience working on the TX2 Program within the World Wildlife Fund. Jenny speaks to the ways in which the WWF has used business intelligence to aid in their goal of doubling the worldwide tiger population by 2022. Finally, Jenny expounds on some of her current conservation projects and shares her plans for the future.

Highlights

00:26 – Welcome to Limitless B.I.
00:45 – Introducing today’s guest, Jenny Roberts
01:06 – The goal of the TX2 Program
02:18 – Key metrics that the TX2 Program uses to measure success
04:20 – Collecting the data necessary for this program
06:17 – How the World Wildlife Fund keeps count of the tigers
09:08 – How tigers can predict the future
11:18 – Jenny reflects on how the business intelligence dashboard has benefited her team
14:21 – How the World Wildlife Fund responded to this dashboard tool
16:20 – The impact this tool has had on global governments
17:52 – How the business intelligence dashboard has aided in the success rate of the TX2 Program
20:37 – Next steps for the World Wildlife Fund and the TX2 Program
22:40 – Working with the Cambodian government
23:18 – Jenny praises the level of global government interest in the TX2 Program
24:55 – Jenny shares her plans for future endeavors

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Poaching for illegal wildlife trade is probably the biggest threat to tigers. So it’s very important that we monitor whether we’ve got those safety protection mechanisms in place. #limitlessbi

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Normally, if tigers go extinct or start to decrease in an area, it’s an indication to us of what’s happening further down the food chain at the bottom. If something in the food chain is not right, then normally the top predator is…

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We need to act quickly, otherwise there’s going to be far more species and far more ecosystem damage to come.

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Often the government doesn’t have the same kind of monitoring intensity that we do for conservation and tiger conservation. So, it’s been able to make it easier for us to communicate what’s going on in their own landscape in some…

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I think it [the business intelligence dashboard] certainly plays a role in this big challenge of trying to double the number of tigers in the wild. It gives us evidence to support where we’re prioritizing.

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Links Mentioned

Limitless BI Website

Jenny’s LinkedIn

TX2 Website

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