Here’s part 2 of ‘Fresh Features’ of Yellowfin 9. And this week, we’re looking at Signals. Signals is Yellowfin’s unique and powerful automated data discovery product. It will automatically scan your dimensional data and find any significant changes in your data. Then, it automatically sends you an alert, complete with analysis and correlations to help you take swift action to nip issues in the bud or build on successes.
One of the really interesting topics in business intelligence is the desire for organizations to take action from data. While most use dashboards as a source of information, it certainly doesn't prompt or drive them to act. This means you can’t close the loop on your insights and the decisions that they drive.
With so much packed into the latest Yellowfin 9 release, we figured it would be great to let you know about some of the coolest features (which will really transform how you do analytics!) in this series of blog posts - Fresh Features. At Yellowfin, we’re super excited that you will be benefiting from the huge amount of work our development team have been doing behind the scenes to complete revamp Yellowfin’s look, feel, and functionality.
One of the core reasons that organizations invest in analytic solutions is because they want to get everyone in their organization on the same page. They want everyone to understand what's happening and why it's happening so that individuals know what they need to do to be successful and drive outcomes for the organization.
In the ideal world, when a developer builds a dashboard, they want that dashboard to be used to its fullest extent. Dashboards would engage users with their design, provide users with both information and the means to take immediate action (without leaving the dashboard), and become part of users’ everyday workflows.
Starting a software company today is very different than it was 15 years ago. The fundamental reason for this is that mega-vendors now exist across all product ranges. For any product you can think of there is already a mega-vendor in the space delivering it in the cloud. This means if you want to start a software business now you have to do it differently. If I was starting out today, there are three things I would do.
Awards are great. They’re a little piece of recognition for all the work you’ve put into something. Whether it’s a big name attached to the award, like Gartner or BARC, or a lesser-known name, every award says something about the business given it. And Yellowfin was just awarded three by FinancesOnline - the Supreme Software award, Expert’s Choice award, and the Great User Experience certificate. So what do they say about this organization?
It was easy to start a software company 15 years ago. There was a huge transformation from desktop to the cloud and that created an opportunity for any vendor to establish their place at the table offering cloud-based software. But it’s now more difficult to create new products that are significant and compete because we have mega-vendors in the cloud. The days of being able to bring a really significant product to market are over.
Business users haven’t adopted the dashboard wholeheartedly. Some of that is history, some of that is data illiteracy, and some of that is the fault of dashboard platforms themselves - how and who they’re designed for.
One of the challenges with being a fast-growing SaaS vendor is that you're so consumed with running your business that you're unlikely to stop and take a breath. If you’re growing quickly, there can also be a perception that you don’t really need to look at what’s happening in your business. Instead, you may divert resources to building a new product or marketing rather than actually thinking about your business.
