One of the really big trends that we're seeing in the analytics space, is the move towards talking about the analytics experience. Analytics experience is about supporting or triggering decisions and transactions. This is a shift from what I would describe as the passive use of analytics, where people were expected to use dashboards and reports that didn't add a lot of value to their transactions or decision making. The difference sounds subtle, but it's really quite profound.
For example, we're a big user of Salesforce. Salesforce has reports but they don’t do the job that we actually need them to do for us. The reporting that you get is pretty much about the here and now but it doesn't really drive decision making in terms of managing your sales organization.
We’re using data to really drive behavior, make decisions and move the organization forward. Our sales dashboard has been built to optimize an outcome and a process flow rather than just show us a point in time. It supports active decision making and processes, so that we have much deeper visibility into every deal, and can manage our salespeople effectively. It’s not just a passive dashboard, it’s been built using best practices around analytics and with a view to how people will use the analytics to drive action, trigger or support transactions.
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Cue Yellowfin
So, we've extracted the data out of Salesforce, merged it with our financials and created a dashboard specifically designed to support our sales organization. This gives us much deeper visibility into where each deal is at and allows our entire sales organization to have a bridge to plan management meetings. They go through the current month and quarter, and look at every deal that is in the pipeline and discuss what deals they need to close to hit our numbers. They know what's in the pipeline, what's upside and what we’re forecasting. Our team can then click on the dashboard and it'll open Salesforce so they can update it immediately. Those changes then flow through back into the dashboard in real-time so they can see the results in the meeting. This sounds like terribly simple stuff but the reality is CRM software doesn't actually do it. The simple dashboard in Salesforce doesn't give you that detail and interactivity within the workflow. The dashboard is passive. It’s the old school way of working with data.
We’re using data to really drive behavior, make decisions and move the organization forward. Our sales dashboard has been built to optimize an outcome and a process flow rather than just show us a point in time. It supports active decision making and processes, so that we have much deeper visibility into every deal, and can manage our salespeople effectively. It’s not just a passive dashboard, it’s been built using best practices around analytics and with a view to how people will use the analytics to drive action, trigger or support transactions.