Yellowfin CEO, Glen Rabie, has presented to the renowned Boulder BI Brain Trust (BBBT) – a gathering of Business Intelligence (BI) thought leaders and acclaimed industry analysts, receiving outstanding feedback regarding Yellowfin’s distinctive approach to the “human consumption” of data.
What’s the BBBT?
The BBBT is a BI forum based in Denver, Colorado. The BBBT is a gathering of leading BI analysts, experts and practitioners, who participate in regular half-day briefings with ‘interesting and innovative BI vendors’.
The reciprocal arrangement enables the analysts to stay abreast of the latest technology and business developments of prominent BI vendors. In return, the analysts deliver objective critiques, as well as offering strategic product and brand positioning advice.
Collaboration and consumer-oriented BI
In a wide-ranging briefing – facilitated by BBBT host and President & Founder of Intelligence Solutions, Claudia Imhoff – Rabie discussed Yellowfin’s overarching product and go-to-market approach, focusing on continued efforts to enhance Collaborative BI features and functionality.
Intelligent Solutions is the company responsible for coordinating the BBBT and producing its events.
Rabie’s presentation concentrated on updates introduced in Yellowfin’s two most recent product releases – Yellowfin 6.2 and Yellowfin 6.3 – which are aimed at enabling people to effectively integrate analytics into natural collective decision-making processes.
Major talking points: Storyboard and Timeline
Yellowfin’s ‘Storyboard’ – a fully integrated and interactive PowerPoint-like presentation module for BI content – and ‘Timeline’ – a Facebook-esc ‘wall’-like feed which creates a searchable, personalized, chronological catalogue of each individual users’ specific activities and interactions within Yellowfin – formed major product talking points during Rabie’s briefing.
“Yellowfin delivers our customers the most immersive and social analytics experience available,” said Rabie in relation to Yellowfin’s ongoing focus on collect decision-making. “We understand that the best decisions are not only fact-based, but are derived with input from multiple people. We know that Collaborative BI has the capacity to promote easier knowledge sharing and therefore better, faster decision-making.”
Yellowfin BBBT podcast
Listen to the podcast of the subsequent one-on-one interview between Rabie and Imhoff, which focuses on:
- Analytics-based collaborative and consumer-oriented decision-making
- Yellowfin’s top performances in comparative industry reports The BI Survey 12 and Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study
- Yellowfin’s international expansion via its reseller-oriented go-to-market business model
Feedback
Yellowfin received high praise from the participating panel of BI analysts for its ability to effectively humanize and facilitate BI decision-making processes. Analyst queries and comments were voiced publicly, in real-time, via the Twitter hash tag #BBBT. Highlights from this Twitter stream included:
- Julie Hunt @juliebhunt [Founder and Principal Consultant of Julie Hunt Consulting – strategies for B2B software solutions]: @GlenRabie using @YellowfinBI #BI presentation module #Storyboard for his slides today – very slick stuff #BBBT #Collaboration
- Claudia Imhoff, PhD @Claudia_Imhoff [BBBT host and Present & Founder of Intelligence Solutions]: Interesting – @YellowfinBI wants to be the middle tech between traditional BI and data science. A gap that needs filling! #BBBT
- Bence Arato @BenceArato [CEO of BI Consulting and organizer of the Budapest BI Forum]: @YellowfinBI aims to hit the middle ground between the traditional BI tools and the newcomers #BBBT
- Josep di Paolantonio @JAdP [VP & Principal Analyst for Constellation Research and President at InterActive Systems & Consulting Inc]: #BBBT @glenrabie says @YellowfinBI facilitates bringing the insight from #DataScience to the rest of the organization.
- Colin White @ColinJWhite [President & Founder of analyst firm BI Research]: Another congrats to @YellowfinBI for being number 1 in @howarddresner ’s Wisdom of the Crowds survey! #BBBT #BIWisdom
- Arato: @YellowfinBI also strong in the Euro-focused BI Survey by BARC. Top in dashboards, mobile BI usage. #BBBT pic.twitter.com/tUt3EZV9JG
- Ali Rebaie @AliRebaie [Founder & BI consultant of Rebaie Analytics Group, and Founder & President of the first PASS SQL Server & BI chapter in Lebanon]: Interesting – 500 new customers this year for @YellowfinBI #BBBT
- Imhoff: Innovation (tied to realistic usability & value for custs) = priority for @YellowfinBI #BBBT #BI #Analytics #Collaboration
- Hunt: @YellowfinBI understands that tech co’s can make good money by doing what’s right for custs instead of rigid approach to purchases #BBBT
- Jorge Garcia @jgptec [BI, DWH & Business Performance Management Research Analyst at Technology Evaluation Centers]: It is always refreshing to hear a vendor putting customer satisfaction upfront besides power, performance… @YellowfinBI #bbbt
- Arato: Interesting customer wins by @YellowfinBI: large UK mobile deployment & University of Konstanz in Germany: //www.yellowfinbi.com/YFCommunityNews-University-of-Konstanz-generates-new-insight-with-Yellowfin-Business-Intelligenc-128377 … #BBBT
- Bill Pearson @Bill_Pearson [Founder of BI & analytics consultancy firm Island Technologies Inc]: From a reseller perspective, @YellowfinBI model is straightforward, so customer needs and relationships actually drive the deals … #BBBT
- Imhoff: Excellent model! RT @juliebhunt: @GlenRabie talking about strong support from @YellowfinBI for partners/resellers, from small to large #BBBT
- Arato: Under the motto "New people, locations & partners", @YellowfinBI working hard to build a global reseller channel and partner network #BBBT
- Imhoff: Refreshing business model from @YellowfinBI- fair & equitable treatment 4 all customers, partners. @glenrabie wants to sleep at night! #BBBT
- Lyndsay Wise @wiseanalytics [President & Founder of BI consultancy firm WiseAnalytics]: I like @YellowfinBI @glenrabie BI outlook – think it’s fresh and we need more of it based on what is perpetuated in the market. #BBBT
- Hunt: Barriers to adoption, usage of #BI solutions: ’complexity, relevance & prescriptive advice’ per @glenrabie #BBBT @YellowfinBI
- Barry Devlin @BarryDevlin [Respected BI consultant, lecturer, author and Founder & Principal Consultant for analyst firm 9sight Consulting]: #bbbt Discussion leading to collaboration from @YellowfinBI starts in human mind – see Chap 9 Business unIntelligence (my new book out soon)
- Arato: In @YellowfinBI, the associated color for a metric could be set in metadata layer creating consistent appearance in all reports. Nice! #BBBT
- Imhoff: Love this: @YellowfinBI allows you to put a watermark (e.g., trusted data, private data) – a level of governance needed to trust data! #BBBT
- Arato: Usage tracking is built in the @YellowfinBI app and serves as a lineage tool: Who uses the dashboard I’m creating/modify/deleting? #BBBT
- Arato: In 6.3 @YellowfinBI has introduced Timelines as a tool to support collaboration. Shows all events, Followers & Favorites. #BBBT
- Paolantonio: #BBBT @YellowfinBI sold on a subscription model, license active or not. Customers get value and continue license, scaling up of down
- Imhoff: Next version of @yellowfinbi contains a complete rewrite of how users will create content. Out in November-December timeframe #BBBT
- Arato: The web-based user interface of @YellowfinBI is quite slick and has nice visuals. #BBBT
- Pearson: The ability to do selective zoom-in, on exactly the area you choose, enables precise contextual focus … @glenrabie @YellowFinBI #BBBT
- Imhoff: A lot of thought went into @YellowfinBI interfaces: who’s using it, what capabilities should they have, what ones aren’t needed, etc. #BBBT
- Garcia: Interesting feat: A poll incorporated within @YellowfinBI collab capabilities. . Gr8 use case for improving the decision making proc #BBBT
- White: Nice collaborative capabilities being added to @YellowfinBI. No longer a standard BI tool but a product designed for decision making #bbbt
- White: Another great #bbbt from @YellowfinBI. Many thanks to @glenrabie for an interesting and interactive session.
- Imhoff: Wow – I am thrilled with @YellowfinBI ’s progress. Many thanks to @glenrabie for this very interactive and interesting #BBBT session.
- Pearson: @glenrabie Thanks for the insight re: the impressive features, as well as industry / human consumption considerations! @YellowFinBI #BBBT
- Paolantonio: Wondrous #BBBT today with @YellowfinBI @glenrabie leading the way to collaboration in decisions through a well-thought-out BI tool.
- Devlin: #bbbt Excellent session from @YellowfinBI and #glenrabie – different way of thinking about PEOPLE in BI than most vendors. Refreshing!
- Rebaie: Thanks @glenrabie & @YellowfinBI for the session yesterday. It’s refreshing to witness your novelty in this disruptive phase!
Thanks to the BBBT
On behalf of the entire team at Yellowfin, a sincere thank you to the BBBT and its contributing analysts for participating in some very exciting, constructive and entertaining dialogue.
Glen is already looking forward to his next opportunity to engage your collective minds on the ever-developing BI marketplace and Yellowfin’s associated product and business strategies.
Best regards,
The team at Yellowfin