Global business intelligence (BI) and analytics vendor, Yellowfin, has officially released the latest version of its BI software, Yellowfin 6.3, following a series of launch Webinars held across Tuesday 28 and Wednesday 29 May 2013.
Analysts and customers have described Yellowfin’s new “Timeline” module, the centrepiece of Yellowfin 6.3, as “Facebook for BI”.
“The Timeline function in 6.3 is impressive,” says Yellowfin partner, teaching associate at Monash University and principal consultant at Minerra, Steve Remington. “It’s the first truly meaningful BI collaboration functionality I have seen – It’s Facebook for BI.”
Independent BI analyst and member of the internationally renowned Boulder BI Brain Trust (BBBT), Ali Rebaie, comments via Twitter: “I really like the social features of @YellowfinBI – moving Collaborative BI to the next level.”
Yellowfin CEO, Glen Rabie, says that the release, available for download now, was focused on extending the collaborative capabilities of Yellowfin.
“Yellowfin 6.3 delivers our customers the most immersive and social analytics experience available on the market today,” says Rabie. “We understand that the best decisions are not only fact-based, but are derived with input from multiple people. We know that Collaborative BI has the capacity to promote easier knowledge sharing and therefore better, faster decision-making.”
Global analyst and advisory firm, Gartner, backs Rabie’s position. The firm found that 80 percent of BI projects fail, citing poor communication and collaboration as the primary culprits.
Premie Naicker, MD of Yellowfin South Africa, points out that there’s data, and then there’s insight, and real insight isn’t possible with only one view of the data.
“The MySpace and Facebook generation has taught us to take a different approach, and this latest release of Yellowfin proves that this approach is not only a growing trend, it is the only way forward.”
Timeline records a users’ specific activities and interactions within Yellowfin in realtime. The result is a searchable, personalised, chronological catalogue of the particular movements of, and anything related to, each individual user within Yellowfin.
“This personalised Facebook-esc ‘wall’-like feed displays everything relevant to a user – from which reports they’ve viewed, the discussions in which they’ve engaged, the content they’ve created, shared or need to approve, as well as any alerts and notifications,” says Rabie.
Users can directly interact with each other and analytic content via their respective Timelines. Timelines are also configured to ensure data security. Users can set their Timeline to private, meaning other users can only access their Timeline upon request.
“The all-new Yellowfin Timeline encapsulates a users’ relationship with Yellowfin in one place,” says Rabie. “Timeline stimulates the type of user engagement, transparency and communication required to instil an organisational culture of data-based decision-making and achieve BI ROI. We anticipate that, over time, Timeline will replace the dashboard as the default logon interface for most Yellowfin users.”
Independent BI analysts Claudia Imhoff and Colin White asserted the need for a purpose built collaboration module such as Timeline – to support information sharing and discussion within a BI environment – in their article Collaborative BI Sets Stage for Collective User Action:
“Organisations can implement collaborative interaction and information enhancement features using the capabilities currently offered by, or being added to, BI tools. Supporting collaborative decision-making, however, requires the use of a collaborative platform or a separate system designed specifically to meet the need for collaboration in the decision-making process.”
The major additions and improvements within Yellowfin 6.3 focus on three key product areas in collaboration, usability and data visualisation.
New collaborative BI features and functionality make it easier to share and consume data and analysis. These features include:
* Timeline – eEmpowers users to monitor and understand their relationship with BI content and relevant decision-makers; and
* A discussion module – makes engaging in dialogue with other users – and linking BI content (reports and Storyboards) to those discussions – more useful and user-friendly.
Enhanced usability throughout the application makes content creation and analysis faster, simpler and easier. These enchantments include:
* Dashboard Sub Tabs – enables users to create multiple tabs within a single dashboard tab. Sub tabs allow users to logically group content together by passing filters, between tabs, across dashboards.
* Dashboard Help – assists users to understand how to utilise key features of a Yellowfin dashboard via informational pop-ups. Pop-ups appear over key dashboard elements and explain their purpose and usefulness.
* Confirm Edit Message – the Confirm Edit Message is a pop-up notification that activates when a user attempts to edit or delete BI content, including reports, dashboards and discussion groups. This addition enables users to understand the impact that any alterations made to BI content would have on specific users and user groups, allowing them to communicate any changes, or intended changes, to affected persons.
Yellowfin 6.3 includes a number of fresh data visualisation features to make it easier to build more insightful and intuitive BI content, while supporting deeper, faster analysis. Additions include:
* Brushing – enables users to quickly select or exclude data points on a chart. Users can simply point, click and drag to highlight the area of data they want to eliminate from their data set, or isolate and explore in greater detail.
* Coloured Metrics for Series Selection – allow users to assign a specific colour to each metric, supporting easier data analysis through consistent colouring.
* Report Summaries – encapsulate the key metrics and trends within a report, and are displayed as mini KPI-type charts along the top of a report, for easy at-a-glance understanding.
“The focal point of many BI tools today remains with the data. Yellowin’s focus on getting the right information to the right people at the right time so they can make well-informed decisions is evident in this latest release, which takes BI into really new and exciting areas.
“This reinforces our belief that Yellowfin is the best BI tool on the market, which was one of the reasons we chose to become the local distributor of the product,” Naicker concludes.
