Birst Launches Predictive Sales Analytics
San Francisco-based Birst, a maker of business analytics software, announced a new version of its analytics platform for sales organizations today. As is quickly becoming all the rage in the realm of business analytics, Birst is aiming to get companies to take their eyes off the rearview mirror and start looking at what the road ahead has in store.
In what the company claims is an industry first, Birst for Sales Analytics now offers predictive analytics capabilities. It also boasts tighter integration with sales force automation (SFA) applications.
Birst CEO Brad Peters told Enterprise Apps Today that Birst for Sales Analytics utilizes a series of machine-learning algorithms to generate predictive insights from vast stores of data and from a variety of sources. While reluctant to go into too much detail about the company's technology, the ex-Siebel executive did say the product is “using predictive modeling tools that are out there as well as cutting-edge research tools.”
Birst for Sales Analytics supports major SFA applications, including Siebel, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, SugarCRM and NetSuite. Birst is really going the extra mile for Salesforce.com. When integrated with Sales Cloud for Salesforce.com, Birst for Sales Analytics “delivers in-context analytics and collaboration capabilities via Chatter for more actionable business insights,” according to the company.
Peters says users will be shown new insights via the familiar Salesforce.com UI. For instance, while evaluating an account, Birst may inform an account executive of “what are they likely to buy.”
The release caps a busy year for Birst. In January, the company teamed with ParAccel for a Big Data product offering designed for smaller companies. In the spring, Birst secured $26 million in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital.
This summer, Birst brought the data warehouse to the desktop with its Distributed Business Analytics product, a tool that grants users access to a centralized data warehouse without requiring IT intervention.
Today, Birst is leveraging its prowess in data warehousing to help businesses drum up sales.
“Lack of time series and trend analysis on snapshots of data over time limits the richness of analytical insights. Birst for Sales Analytics uniquely solves these challenges by providing a complete data warehouse that enables answers to the most sophisticated analytical questions posed by complex sets of data spanning multiple disparate data sources,” said the company in a statement.
Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.
Pedro Hernandez contributes to Enterprise Apps Today, and 11Press, the technology network. He was previously the managing editor of Internet.com, an IT-related website network. He has expertise in Smart Tech, CRM, and Mobile Tech, Helping Banks and Fintechs, Telcos and Automotive OEMs, and Healthcare and Identity Service Providers to Protect Mobile Apps.
