Community Voices: Nicolas CHIGROS

Holly Rieke

We are excited to bring you more valuable insights from the ‘Community Voices’ series! This month, we welcome Nicolas CHIGROS—a long-time Board user from Kiwika, an EPM-specialized company and consulting partner located in France. You’ll find Nicolas active in the Board Community participating in opportunities like the Idea Exchange and BEAP, and you’ll also notice he’s made the homepage Leaderboard.

Nicolas joins last quarter's featured Community Voice—Krisztina Zappert—in sharing a bit about his journey, including some helpful tips for building with Board. Here’s what he had to say:

Tell us about yourself and your journey with Board. Include a fun fact about yourself if you have one!

I had been working as a consultant for a digital service company for nearly 10 years where I had the opportunity to work with different ETL tools and EPM solutions for clients from various business sectors before my journey with Board began. It was around 2016 when I started working on a BI project for the French subsidiary of a toy manufacturer. Since then, I have continued to work on Board consistently, while also gaining experience with other solutions. A few years ago, I established Kiwika, an EPM-specialized company. Together with Mateo DE LOS RIOS and Sébastien TRAMOLAY, two out of the six associates, we built a dedicated Board team of 10 people at the moment. We are all certified on the Board platform and have become a trusted consulting partner.

No two journeys when planning with Board are alike. What is a 'memorable moment' in your experience?

When we founded our company, it was an incredible experience to witness customers placing their trust in us to implement Board for their year-long EPM projects so quickly. This was truly rewarding and validating. And now that the projects are live, it also affirms our capabilities and expertise in delivering successful implementations.

It not only demonstrated that our strategic decision to build a specialized company in EPM was the right call, but that the Board platform resonates with customers' needs—whether with its ability to replace Excel, its enticing user experience, or being catered for small to larger business. All of this, supported by the great team at Board France.

the Board platform resonates with customer's needs

There is always something to learn in your Board journey. What advice do you have for others to learn and improve their skills?

From a design perspective, the Board toolbox offers developers numerous options, but overcrowding an application with features is often counterproductive. Hence, the principle of "Less is More" applies. Also, It is crucial to avoid simply cloning Excel and instead focus on creating a comprehensive and robust Board application.

From a technical standpoint, my main takeaway is to rely on Cubes. It is important not to take shortcuts and instead opt to create cubes—temporary or not—when necessary, or even if it may seem quicker not to. For instance, avoid using Block References in procedure. If possible, create a temporary cube. This not only improves performance overall but also enhances procedure readability, making debugging and troubleshooting easier. This is particularly relevant since version 12.5.1, as it no longer clutters the data model as it used to.

For newcomers who are accustomed to coding and may come from competing platforms, embracing the Board paradigm may initially seem difficult. However, with a little patience and perseverance, you will gradually become familiar and comfortable with it.

From a technical standpoint, my main takeaway is to rely on Cubes.

As an active member in the Board Community, what areas do you find most valuable?

So, while Best Practices and How-to Guides are valuable resources for onboarding new coworkers - after they finished Board Academy of course! - I rarely refer to them as I've being developing on Board for quite some time now. Personally, I use the community to keep up to date anything Board related (upcoming release, BEAP, new features...) and for the idea section to provide feedback to the Board development team about new features or improvement for both end-user and developer and hopefully impact future feature in a positive way.

Find all Community Voices here.

Nicolas—the entire Community thanks you for sharing your time and talents here. Your contributions help make the Community a valuable destination for the Board ecosystem! Are you interested in being featured in an upcoming Community Voices? We’d love to hear and learn from you. Drop us a note in the comments below or reach out to us directly at community@board.com.

Krisztina Zappert

Excellent article, thank you!