Collaborative Business Intelligence: Part of a bigger picture

Posted by: Yellowfin Team

The continued uptake of, and planned investment in, Collaborative Business Intelligence (BI) has been flagged by leading industry analyst groups, including Gartner, Forrester Research and IDC. But why will its importance grow?

Well, because increasing investment in Collaborative BI is merely a symptom of a far broader trend towards the integration of social and collaborative technologies within the business environment. The enterprise software industry at large is scrambling to incorporate information sharing features, made infamous by Facebook et al, into their own product offerings. And organizations are only too eagre to embed social business technologies throughout operational processes and functional workflows, as evidenced by Saugatuck Research’s latest research, 2011 Social Business Technology Survey.

Business users in the drivers seat as the consumerzation of enterprise software intensifies

The survey, conducted between July and August 2011 in partnership with Information Management magazine, details results from 224 respondents regarding their company’s use of social business technologies. Most survey participants said that they were already using some form of social business technology at work.

The report highlights two crucial shifts:

  • That BI and other enterprise software initiatives are increasingly driven by business rather than IT
  • The continued consumerization of BI and other enterprise software (the emergence of technologies designed for mass deployments and aimed at non-technical business users)

The report revealed that 59% of business executives have been using social business technologies for two or more years, compared to only 38% of IT executives.

Benefits of social business technologies

The top three reasons given for using and adopting social business technologies were:

  • Facilitate knowledge building / sharing / repository (40%)
  • Improve / facilitate collaboration between employees (39%)
  • Support marketing initiatives / activities (34%)

Concerns regarding social business technologies

The top three concerns associated with the deployment and use of social business technologies were:

  • Security / liability exposures (46%)
  • Doubts about the ability to govern effectively (40%)
  • Poor workflow / process integration (38%)

Yellowfin: Dispelling the concerns

Unsurprisingly, the top concerns for those adopting and implementing social and collaborative software are security, manageability and integration.

As a single-integrated BI application, Yellowfin’s unique social and collaborative components adhere to Yellowfin’s robust security framework, and are therefore simple to govern. As for integration? There are no integration concerns – it’s all part of the one product.

Where to next?

To check out the complete Saugatuck slideshow visit: http://www.information-management.com/photo_gallery/1_21/10021044-1.html

To find out more about Yellowfin’s market-leading Collaborative Business Intelligence capabilities, visit our showcase page: //www.yellowfinbi.com/YFSite-Social-And-Collaborative-Business-Intelligence-100879

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