Not so long ago, our CFO was looking at changing our financial system and it reminded me of a similar situation that happened when I worked at National Australia Bank many years ago. We changed our entire ERP because the organization needed to slice and dice their data differently. What they could have done instead was use analytics differently to extend the life of the products they had, so that’s what we’ve done.
When it comes to automation in the BI industry, I think a lot of vendors are holding back. It’s entirely possible to automate the majority of what data analysts do today, but vendors are reluctant to do this because it would impact data analysts and they’re a big gatekeeper in the buying cycle of analytic software.
Innovation in the BI industry died about 30 years ago. Sure the colors and format may be different but what’s delivered to business users is exactly the same and that's a real problem. I think this is because the industry spends more time thinking about how to make a data analyst’s life easier rather than helping business users get the most value from their data.
As a vendor of dashboards, I know it’s really important how people use them to effectively communicate their data to end-users. But I believe a well-designed dashboard is a rare thing.
People often ask me, what's the difference between Yellowfin and our competitors? The truth is I try not to look at what our competitors are doing. That’s because we focus on different end-users to our competitors.
We've received a lot of fantastic feedback from industry analysts about Yellowfin and where we're going as an organization. There are three in particular that have come out recently and made me really proud of what we’ve achieved.
The answer to creating an inclusive data culture is in your hands. At Yellowfin, we firmly believe that organisations are far more successful when all their people engage with data. And whilst this has always been the goal of organisations on their journey to being “data-led”, the reality is most are still a long way off. For this to happen, all decision makers need access to insights, in a way that they can understand, not just the data analysts.
We've got a brand new mobile application coming now out and lots of people have been asking me what’s in it. To be honest, it's much easier to tell you what's not in it - and that’s dashboards and reports. I can hear you saying, ‘How can an analytics vendor have a mobile app with no dashboards or reports?’ But the truth is no one really uses a mobile app to view dashboards or reports. It's the wrong format for looking at a clunky dashboard or detailed report.
Hidden treasure holds a deep fascination and the promise of great wealth. Did you know that there are still dozens of significant treasure hauls still waiting to be found across the globe? Gold bars and coins, pearls, jewels, and precious artifacts. Then there’s Forrest Fenn’s treasure (he’s still alive today). Fenn has buried his Pompeiian artifacts and other treasures worth approximately $2 million in the mountains north of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Our decision to change from a perpetual licence model to subscriptions was one of the great naive moments in Yellowfin’s history. It was about eight years ago and we had great sales growth but it was getting harder to start from scratch every year and sell more perpetual licenses. At the same time, our maintenance business was growing so we decided to flip our model and sell subscriptions. It seemed like a good idea at the time as none of our competitors were selling subscriptions.
