The Business Application Research Center’s (BARC) The BI Survey is the globe’s largest annual worldwide, and vendor independent, study of Business Intelligence (BI) software users.
The BI Survey 13 is the 2013 edition, and twelfth iteration, of the study.
The BI Survey 13 was based on data derived from 3,149 survey respondents. The survey offers insight into how and why organizations utilize BI technologies, and offers direct – apples-for-apples – comparisons between the BI market’s premier BI products across important functional, performance, scalability and support criteria.
Yellowfin a standout performer in The BI Survey 13
“Yellowfin enables its customers to realize strong business benefits quickly. The ability for customers to achieve desired business benefits is one of the study’s most important KPIs, representing a significant win for Yellowfin and its clients.
“As an integrated solution with pervasive BI features, Yellowfin is easy to use and deploy, facilitating swift business user independence and resulting in remarkably high penetration rates throughout its client organizations.
“Yellowfin is clearly the leader in innovation, implementing new and differentiating developments in cloud, collaboration and Mobile BI earlier than many of its competitors. Market-leading innovations, matched with the product’s modern look and feel, contribute to high rates of customer recommendation. Customer satisfaction regarding product and query performance, as well as vendor support, is rated excellent.”
Yellowfin: Top performing BI vendor in crucial product and customer satisfaction KPIs
Of the 30 market-leading BI products examined in the latest version of The BI Survey, Yellowfin ranked first in nine of the study’s crucial assessment KPIs, including:
- Innovation: Combines the ‘Cloud BI’, ‘Collaboration’, ‘Mobile BI’ and ‘Advanced information design’ KPIs to measure the product’s level of innovation
- Cloud BI
- Mobile BI
- User recommendation
- Project length: How long the product takes to implement
- Chosen as standard: How often the product is chosen to standardize on by respondents in multi-product sites
- Proportion of employees: The percentage of employees that use the product
- Total Performance: A combination of the ‘Query performance’ and ‘Performance satisfaction’ KPIs
- Query performance
Yellowfin was also ranked as a standout performer in many KPIs in the three Peer Groups – “Enterprise Reporting Vendor”, “Dashboard Vendor” and “Ad-hoc Analysis Vendor” – in which it was categorized.
“Yellowfin’s outstanding performance in BARC’s The BI Survey 13 – the world’s largest and most respected annual study of global BI software users – underlines our innovative approach to BI. This result demonstrates the ability of our product to exceed the performance of the industry’s most well-known BI tools in critical product and services metrics. It also highlights Yellowfin’s ability to deliver the breadth of world-class features that modern BI users demand, while surpassing their expectations.”
Enterprise Reporting Vendor Peer Group performance
Yellowfin was ranked first for 11 KPIs within the Enterprise Reporting Vendor Peer Group, which contained 10 products. Other products in this group comprised: Arcplan, Evidanza, IBM Cognos BI, Information Builders, Microsoft SSRS, MicroStrategy, Oracle BI Foundation Suite, SAP BO Web Intelligence and SAP BW.
Yellowfin was the top ranked Enterprise Reporting Vendor in:
- Project length: How long the product takes to implement
- Proportion of employees: The percentage of employees that use the product
- Chosen as standard: How often the product is chosen to standardize on by respondents in multi-product sites
- User recommendation
- Cloud BI
- Mobile BI
- Innovation: Combines the ‘Cloud BI’, ‘Collaboration’, ‘Mobile BI’ and ‘Advanced information design’ KPIs to measure the product’s level of innovation
- Query performance
- Performance satisfaction
- Total Performance: A combination of the ‘Query performance’ and ‘Performance satisfaction’ KPIs
- Vendor support: Measures user satisfaction with the level of vendor support provided for the product
Yellowfin was also identified as a leading Enterprise Reporting Vendor in:
- Business benefits achieved
- Goal achievement: The extent to which projects reach the goals initially set
- Business achievement: The extent to which the product delivers business value and helps organizations achieve their goals
- Competitive win rate: Based on the percentage of wins in competitive evaluations
- Collaboration
- Implementer support: Measures user satisfaction with the level of the implementer’s support for the product
Dashboard Vendor Peer Group performance
Yellowfin was ranked first for 10 KPIs within the Dashboard Vendor Peer Group, which contained 11 products. Other products in this group comprised: Arcplan, BOARD, Dimensional Insight, Evidanza, Information Builders, Logi Analytics, MicroStrategy, Oracle BI Foundation Suite, QlikTech and Tableau.
Yellowfin was the top ranked Dashboard Vendor in:
- Proportion of employees: The percentage of employees that use the product
- Chosen as standard: How often the product is chosen to standardize on by respondents in multi-product sites
- User recommendation
- Cloud BI
- Mobile BI
- Innovation: Combines the ‘Cloud BI’, ‘Collaboration’, ‘Mobile BI’ and ‘Advanced information design’ KPIs to measure the product’s level of innovation
- Query performance
- Performance satisfaction
- Total performance: A combination of the ‘Query performance’ and ‘Performance satisfaction’ KPIs
- Project length: How long the product takes to implement
Yellowfin was also identified as a leading Dashboard Vendor in:
- Business benefits achieved
- Business achievement: The extent to which the product delivers business value and helps organizations achieve their goals
- Competitive win rate: Based on the percentage of wins in competitive evaluations
- Collaboration
- Vendor support: Measures user satisfaction with the level of vendor support provided for the product
- Implementer support: Measures user satisfaction with the level of the implementer’s support for the product
Ad-hoc Analysis Vendor Peer Group performance
Yellowfin was ranked first for nine KPIs within the Ad-hoc Analysis Vendor Peer Group, which contained 19 products. Other products in this group comprised: Bissantz, Corporate Planning, Cubeware, Cyberscience, Dimensional Insight, IBM Cognos BI, IBM Cognos TM1, Infor, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft SSAS, MicroStrategy, Oracle Essbase, Phocas, SAP BO Web Intelligence, SAP BW, SAS, Tableau and TARGIT.
Yellowfin was the top ranked Ad-hoc Analysis Vendor in:
- Proportion of employees: The percentage of employees that use the product
- Chosen as standard: How often the product is chosen to standardize on by respondents in multi-product sites
- User recommendation
- Cloud BI
- Mobile BI
- Innovation: Combines the ‘Cloud BI’, ‘Collaboration’, ‘Mobile BI’ and ‘Advanced information design’ KPIs to measure the product’s level of innovation
- Query performance
- Total performance: A combination of the ‘Query performance’ and ‘Performance satisfaction’ KPIs
- Project length: How long the product takes to implement
Yellowfin was also identified as a leading Ad-hoc Analysis Vendor in:
- Business benefits achieved
- Business achievement: The extent to which the product delivers business value and helps organizations achieve their goals
- Collaboration
- Performance satisfaction
- Vendor support: Measures user satisfaction with the level of vendor support provided for the product
- Implementer support: Measures user satisfaction with the level of the implementer’s support for the product
Ranking and criteria (KPIs)
The BI Survey 13 includes ten aggregated KPIs, which can be absorbed at a glance. It also includes a set of 21 normalized KPIs, which are referred to as ‘root’ KPIs, for each of the 30 products assessed within The BI Survey 13. The ‘aggregated’ KPIs are aggregations of these root KPIs.
This year, sets of KPIs have been calculated for each of the seven Peer Groups. The values are normalized on the whole sample. Peer Groups are used to ensure similar products are compared against each other both in fairness to the vendor and for the benefit of the customer. The groups are essential to allow fair and useful comparisons of products that are likely to compete.
For further details about KPIs used in BARC’s The BI Survey 13, see the summary document outlining the definitions and calculation methods, HERE >
The goal of this document is to help the reader spot winners and losers in The BI Survey 13, using well-designed dashboards packed with concise information.
About Peer Groups in The BI Survey 13
Vendors in BARC’s The BI Survey are segmented into different Peer Groups based on how survey respondents – end-users with first hand experience using vendor products and services – reportedly utilize vendor solutions.
Peer Groups are used to ensure similar products are compared against each other both in fairness to the vendor and for the benefit of the customer. The groups are essential to allow fair and useful comparisons of products that are likely to compete.
About The BI Survey 13
Now in its twelfth year of publication, The BI Survey is an annual report based on the world’s largest vendor independent survey of BI and Performance Management users. The BI Survey 13 attracted over 3000 responses. The BI Survey 13 uncovers the truth about why real-world organizations select BI products, how they use them, and with what success. It also compares the leading products on the market across a number of headline criteria, such as performance, scalability and vendor support.
The survey is published independently by BARC and, unlike many other surveys, it is not sponsored by any vendor. The questions are devised entirely by BARC’s BI analyst team. The BI Survey 13 enables the comparison of leading BI products across multiple criteria, in order to establish which tools are the best fit for particular organizations and industries. It also reveals the best practices that lead to the most successful BI projects, saving time and money in research hours and consulting fees.
About BARC
The Business Application Research Center — BARC — is a leading independent software industry analyst delivering information to more than 1000 customers each year. For over ten years, BARC has specialized in core research areas including Data Management (DM), BI and Enterprise Content Management (ECM).
In April 2011, BARC merged with Le Centre d’expertise des Progiciels (CXP), France’s largest business software analyst to form one group of companies. With more than 80 employees (40 analysts) and around 2000 operating companies as customers, the merger creates Europe’s largest enterprise software analyst firm with offices in Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. CXP complements BARC’s expertise in software markets for BI, DM and ECM with its extensive knowledge of technology for IT Service Management, HR, ERP and CRM.