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  • Monarch Tips & Tricks: Get Organized with Monarch, part 1

    by Carol Giadone

    Carol Giadone

    As new users start with Monarch 11, the latest version of Datawatch’s report analytics and report modeling software, they often ask “what’s the biggest benefit  of using Monarch?”  I say it’s the ability to get organized.

    When I flip through magazines, I almost always encounter an ad for one of those closet organization companies.  My eyes are drawn to the photo of tidy shelves with all the contents arranged neatly by color and season, hangers spaced consistently one inch apart. There is something very basic to my personality that finds these ads exciting, my eyes widen and my heart flutters.

    Having all our “stuff” arranged and sorted neatly and exactly the way we want appeals, I think, to most of us. It’s empowering to know where everything is and to be able to reach in, grab what we want, and go.   What if we could “reach in and grab” the data that we need to do our jobs better, faster and more efficiently?  How much easier would our work days be?  Monarch 11 is the software solution for those who seek order in their lives. Instead of organizing your closets you can do something more important: organize the business information you work with every day – specifically your recurring reports.

    Data buried in reports can be quickly extracted and presented in a variety of views for easy analysis – without programming and without rekeying!

     

    With Monarch 11 you can restructure and organize the data in your fixed source reports and transform it into versatile, informative and actionable data. Pull just the most relevant pieces of information from your reports and sort it into meaningful groups.  Monarch gives you an easy way to access, explore, analyze, sort, group, delete, merge, tabulate, calculate, rearrange, and display your data.

    So if you’re someone who likes to keep your brown shoes with your brown belts, or if you want to group your wardrobe by color, by season, or by size, you can. Or, express your creative side and see if the Hawaiian shirt pairs well with the seersucker shorts. Monarch lets you create predictable order, or mix it up to make use of projection analysis and apply “what if” scenarios.

    Organizing isn’t just for closets – Monarch 11 can bring order and meaning to your most trusted and important resource, your data.

    Interested in taking a deeper dive into organizing your business data with Monarch 11?  Check the Datawatch Report Analytics blog next week for a new post on organizing your business information.

    ­­– Carol 
    @datawatch

    Published on September 14, 2011 · Filed under: Monarch Tips & Tricks; Tagged as: , , ,
    1 Comment

One Response to “Monarch Tips & Tricks: Get Organized with Monarch, part 1”

  1. DataExploiter said on September 15th, 2011 at 2:18 am

    Yes and Yes..

    Before I give my thoughts, I’m convinced you were my instructor on March 24, 1999 in NYC along with my converted team members . You may ask how do I know the specific date? Because at this moment I’m actually looking at the idea packed 131 page “Training Booklet” that I still have!

    Honestly, I’ve trained and been trained by several large international software vendors before and after your class and I can honestly say the class was huge never ending POWERFUL source of solutions to questions/ideas that involves data and uncovering solutions involving data. Really, this is not an overstatement, I highly recommend training even if you’ve been using the product for some time and don’t believe there is something new you could use. As a almost 20 year user .. ” you think you know but you don’t know” :) . You will start doing things that you didn’t think you needed or never realized was possible. Ideas grows as one solution leads to another new solution or new way of exploiting monarch to discover something of real value.

    “what’s the biggest benefit of using Monarch?” i agree getting organized is a huge benefit but if you’re motivated new benefits will continually accumulate and be realized. I find what was the big benefit one period will be something new in future periods. A spreadsheet for some is a glorified calculator and that’s fine but for others it become a tool to solve all kinds of problems or a platform to develop sophisticated software. In my opinion Monarch like a spreadsheet actually has the same range of possibilities and potential impact for users.

    Monarch helps keep me organized in countless ways. You save a model or project and you now have this self documenting work. The effort can easily be transferred to a user that has never used monarch or someone that can add additional value. Formulas,data sources, filters, views , summaries and the creative insight used to create is now a transferable asset to be kept and safeguarded by the company.

    I’m currently benefiting from Monarch’s organization buy using Microsoft access table and compex queries devloped in other departments to add additional off line attributes to reports to improve the results and discover overlooked insights. Once its set up I click the project and I’m done. I don’t have to remember the 5 external tables that’s needed or the way summaries were created or views used. It’s all self documenting with comments and explanation in formulas. I’m not organized and its also a great way to build on the work/expertise of others without modifying Access Queries or spreadsheet formulas.

    John

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