Kicking off 2019: New customers, new products
Our financial year came to a close at the end June and Yellowfin had another solid year of growth. There was consistent growth across all regions – in Europe, Japan, APAC and the US.
The new financial year has got off to a great start
After taking a deep breath at the end of the financial year, we’ve jumped straight into another year – and things are already looking good. We closed out July 101% of budget and the whole organization is gearing up for our version 8 release. We believe it’s going to be a game changer in the way the whole industry thinks about analytics.
In our initial conversations with prospects and customers they’ve been blown away by the new release. We also did a demonstration for a group of analysts and their feedback was that there’s nothing like it in the market today.
I believe this release will really drive our business forward this year. We’ve been a bit bullish about its impact on our sales organization. Because the new product release is so different to anything else in the market, we expect to see much shorter sales cycles and many more opportunities coming our way.
Connecting with customers on the road
During July I also spent time visiting our offices in Japan and the US – it’s always great to get back on the road. I spent a week in Japan where our team put on an event for about 150 customers and prospects. We were able to demonstrate our new release and get some great feedback. It was also good to see how well the team works together – there’s about 20 people in the office and they look after about 500 customers.
While I was in the US I attended the Pacific Northwest BI & Analytics Summit. It was fantastic to spend a few days with thought leaders in the industry talking about where the industry is going and thinking about how that impacts us.
Deal of the month: Yellowfin sits side by side with Power BI
Finally, the deal of the month was with a large French manufacturer called Vallourec. Vallourec operates in the energy sector and has over 19,000 employees. They’re a Power BI user but there were some significant gaps in terms of their governance, control and enterprise functionality. Now they’re using Yellowfin side by side with Power BI to plug those gaps.
This deal was brought to us by the German analyst firm BARC. It validates their strategic recommendation that Yellowfin + Power BI can solve enterprise needs.
We believe we’re best suited to the enterprise space. It’s in the larger deployments that you need infrastructure to support and govern the data that’s delivered to the organization. This deal really proves our positioning in the marketplace and that’s a great way to kick off the new year.