We are in the midst of fundamental change. Exciting change. And to an extent, unpredictable change.
Gartner’s 2011 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms
As noted in our blog post – New generation Business Intelligence vendors encroaching on mega vendors – Gartner’s 2011 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms study shows that we are playing witness to a great shift in the Business Intelligence (BI) landscape – both in terms of solutions offered and user demand/sentiment. New-age BI vendors are eroding the market-share of traditional mega vendors, moving into space once exclusively the domain of the big boys.
Gartner attributes the growth of new-age vendors and their BI products to three product-oriented demand-side factors, saying that these new end-user focused BI products are:
- Intuitive and fun user interfaces
- Intuitive and interactive mobile applications
- User oriented and controlled data visualizations
Yellowfin’s two cents on the direction of the Business Intelligence market
To this, we added that the growing popularity of business-user focused BI software – offering the same depth of analysis as traditional BI platforms, with more intuitive functionality, reduced deployment and maintenance factors – coincides with three core industry trends:
- The rapid expansion of corporate data assets
- The consumerization of BI
- The rise of Agile BI
Preliminary trends from Dresner’s Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study
Now, Howard Dresner’s soon-to-be-released Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study sheds some additional light on user trends and mindsets.
The study is based on the experience of BI users, and is open to anyone with first-hand experience using their organization’s BI tool.
Dresner said that last year’s study “revealed some telling insights about the current state of BI deployments and has distinguished those vendors that have consistently delivered value to the customers they serve.”
This year’s survey will collect data from around 1,000 organizations.
On his Blogspot – Business Intelligence – Dresner says that, based on preliminary data, the study has exposed five trends:
- BI users are least happy with their BI provider’s “online training, forums and documentation” (support)
- BI users were most happy with the “robustness/sophistication” of their provider’s BI tool
- Users’ top demand is that their vendor’s improve the operational integration of their BI technology
- Nearly all respondents said they would recommend their BI vendor (94.5%)
- Most respondents consider their current BI vendor “strategic” (69%)
Business Intelligence: A partnership, not a dollar sign
So what’s so interesting about these results? What can we derive from them? Well, it seems that one point stands out above the rest. It’s the first one – the level of support offered.
Post sale, when the cheque has been signed, and the manly (virtual) handshakes have been completed, many vendors evaporate into the ether.
At Yellowfin, customers often tell us that they’re surprised at our level of support, training and documentation; not just pre, but during and post commercial discussions too.
In fact, whilst on a recent business trip to the United States, Yellowfin CEO, Glen Rabie, was told by a client during a meeting, that he “never expected to hear from Yellowfin again after the ink dried.”
We also recently received this email from a potential client assessing Yellowfin: “Kudos to you guys for nearly always responding to support queries within half a day. I started playing with your product (which I find awesome) a couple of months ago and your level of support has been fantastic.”
At Yellowfin, we understand that making Business Intelligence easy is a process – an ongoing partnership. We’re quietly confident that when Dresner releases the Wisdom of Crowds report, the results will reflect not only the quality of our product, but our commitment to our partners.