Yellowfin Adds Social Sharing for Business Intelligence Boost
Yellowfin today previewed new features in the upcoming 6.2 version of its namesake business intelligence software. Having already established a footing in the mobile realm, this time the company plans to boost adoption of its BI platform by integrating social enterprise capabilities.
There's a big problem with self-service business intelligence applications, according to Yellowfin CEO Glen Rabie. Workers simply aren't using them, despite industry-wide efforts to make BI more user friendly.
Worse, these BI-averse professionals are letting opportunities pass them by.
“The consumerization of BI only got it half right – we needed to make BI easier; and we have. But most people don't want to write reports or do self-service analysis. They just want answers,” states Rabie in a company release.
The software maker points to recent studies from TDWI and BIScorecard that find business intelligence adoption hovering around 25 percent. Gartner blames poorly implemented communication and collaboration capabilities for a staggering failure rate of 80 percent for BI projects.
Yellowfin plans to reverse that trend by baking more collaboration and sharing features into its business intelligence software. The software looks — and works, the company hopes — more like a social network than an enterprise app. The company's inspiration: Google+.
Yellowfin's goal is to turn “one percenter” from a pejorative term into a font of BI insights. Rabie cites a statement from Bradley Horowitz, VP of Product for Google+, who said Google applied the 1:9:90 rule to Google+ because “social software sites don’t require 100 percent active participation to generate great value.”
Thus, one percent of users generate content, nine percent mash it up and share it, and the other 90 percent consume it.
Yellowfin hopes this same approach will heighten business intelligence's profile in the workplace. New content sharing features and presentation tools will enable the few that dive deep into the company's BI offerings to spread their insights, and potentially lure coworkers into running and sharing analyses of their own.
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.
