9.6 is focused on Yellowfin features that enhance the way our customers build, design and embed stunning analytical content, which include data storytelling, augmented analytics, actionable dashboards — and provide a high ease-of-use experience. As always, you can read the full list of updates in our release notes page, and view our release highlights video below to see the new enhancements demonstrated.

Many organizations have considered or experienced a desire to take advantage of a cheaper platform, more feature rich-software, or to divorce from a vendor who is not delivering. But the pain of moving is simply too great to consider doing it. This is the state of being locked-in. In this blog, we explain what lock-in is, what it means for businesses searching for new embedded analytics solutions, and why it should be a consideration when choosing a platform.

Many people consider data-driven culture exclusively as one that comprises a large data team (analysts, data scientists), perfect data-sets neatly organized in a structured data warehouse, and the perfect tools to both access and utilize data in every decision made. Ultimately, however, much of data-driven culture comes down to a clear focus on the end-goal. Many people forget data is just an implementation, something that helps us in what we do.

Today, data is constantly growing in complexity and quantity. Ensuring your users consistently find reliable answers from their dashboards and reports for informed decision-making can be difficult if you don't actively guide them on on how to optimally use the analytics tools you provide. However, the challenge is exacerbated by the fact most BI solutions on the market today still tailor their tools to experienced analysts first.

For 20 years, standalone BI tools have failed to penetrate more than 25% of the average organization, with most workers using them once a week, according to Eckerson Group. While many modern dashboards are sophisticated and user-friendly, they are still often accessed as standalone tools outside of line-of-business applications. This separation means it isn’t guaranteed that users will adopt BI, or gain insight from their data.

These are a new class of vendors like Gainsight and C3 who are building applications based on the idea data will drive a transaction, rather than transactions driving the data. The challenge for every enterprise software vendor is how to respond to this threat because it's going to be difficult. For big vendors, you're going to have vested interests internally who don't see this challenge coming or don't know how to respond to it. Some may even underestimate the threat of the change.

We've moved from desktop to SaaS, to a real UX focus. Now we're seeing new vendors that are analytics-first. They’re creating new applications that are challenging the established players. Historically, applications were transaction-first; you build your software thinking about your workflow or the transactions that you want people to do.

Understandably, however, the many automation, AI and machine learning technologies that come with modern analytics solutions can sometimes be hard to keep up with. One area we get asked a lot about is ABM, which we offer with Yellowfin Signals, and what exact advantages it brings to the table for everyday analysis and insight generation.