Yellowfin is unique amongst Business Intelligence vendors in that it embraces spreadsheets as a legitimate data source for your enterprise reporting. This means that not only can you use Excel spreadsheets or CSV files to create Yellowfin reports from but you can merge data from these sources with the rest of your enterprise data.

The successful adoption of spreadsheet reporting into your business intelligence environment requires a thorough approach if it is to be successful. The goals of integration and centralization are to:

1. Reduce the volume of spreadsheets reports used
2. Stop data from being extracted from core systems and merged in spreadsheets
3. Ensure audit processes are in place for external data uploads

Yellowfin helps you to achieve these goals with its unique approach to managing excel spreadsheets as a legitimate data source in your organization.

Typically 70% of organizations data assets used for decision-making consist of internal data (stored in an ERP, CRM and other formalized production systems) while the other 30% is external to these systems (such as budgeting information, external benchmark or market data etc).

Excel spreadsheets, as such have become pervasive and are used by people at all levels of organizations to collect and report on data. Generally business users do not use spreadsheets by choice - they use them by necessity. This necessity is driven by that fact that:

1. Not all decision making data is accessible, centralized or formalized
2. Business users lack alternative tools to create and share their reports
3. Business users lack IT support to access their data in a timely manner

Yellowfin's Business Intelligence platform addresses these needs by providing your business users with an easy to use tool that supports their data analysis needs.

The lack of access to a BI tool that supports spreadsheets as a data source and the lack of IT priority to managing the spreadsheet data issue contribute to the continued use of spreadsheets as a reporting tool.

As a result organizations put themselves at tremendous risk when basing decisions on spreadsheets that are recognized as being prone to error and limited in so many ways. These risks include:

1. Lack of regulatory compliance
2. Lack of data governance & data quality
3. Delayed access to data for decision-making
4. Lost productivity
5. Dependency on the spreadsheet gatekeeper

Yellowfin's Business Intelligence solution provides an ideal way to manage the risks associated with using spreadsheets for reporting within an organization. With Yellowfin users can combine data from multiple data sources, share reports with many users and manage updates to data themselves. Providing a compelling alternative to spreadsheets.