What is the best way to evaluate an analytic solution?

Generally in evaluating an analytic solution you are looking to ensure there is a technical fit between what you want to achieve and the products you are evaluating.

Typically these requirements include:

• Content creation workflows – how easy is it to create content and share it with others
• Design flexibility – can I create content that meets my design requirements
• Analytic capability – how much advanced analytic capability does the tool provide
• Data and application security – does it meet my security criteria
• Integration capability – how can i integrate it into my software or website
• Deployment and maintenance – can i manage it in production easily

Through a combination of technical demonstrations (live or pre-canned), technical documentation and a hands on test drive with your data you should be able to address all your concerns without the need for a lengthy or complicated trial.

Where do I start the evaluation process?

To help you get started with Yellowfin, we have created a complete integrated technical validation experience that will get you working with Yellowfin as quickly as possible.

1. You can start by watching the walk through video below.
2. Request a demo so you can get a deeper dive and answer any outstanding technical questions you have.
3. Request a ‘hands on’ test drive. This enables you to get a license for Yellowfin and prove the technical fit to your needs.
4. Additionally, there are a wealth of resources for learning available to the Yellowfin community, such as an active user forum, the Yellowfin wiki and University.

What kinds of support does Yellowfin offer?

If you have made it this far into your evaluation journey then you have just scratched the surface of what it means to be part of the Yellowfin network. As you complete your research and validation to find the right analytics solution for your business needs, know that the team at Yellowfin Support are the foundation for our long term relationship.

We have invested in both self-guided and team assisted support methods to ensure we cover all the needs that our partners might have while also knowing that our industry is evolving quickly and so should our support offering.

Once our partnership starts you will have access to our support offerings, global support team, university training platform, certification programs, product release updates, development and product wiki site, private portal access, marketplace, and or partner network that will support your business needs as your data culture is always evolving.

How does Yellowfin help me to deliver my project quickly?

After 13 plus years of helping customers move from concept to go-live we know that this is the most important first step of our partnership. As part of your onboarding journey you will be assigned a dedicated Onboarding Specialist as well as your Customer Success Manager who will work together to ensure go-live and continuous success with Yellowfin.

We have built out our onboarding process, which we call Launchpad, to ensure we have a formal project kick-off session to define milestone dates, define what success looks like, and have all parties understand who is accountable for each step in our go-live project. We will work together to:

• Outline project design needs
• Define and build the supporting product architecture
• Agree on a testing plan
• Deploy Yellowfin to your end users

Working together we will deliver on the agreed to go-live objectives but this is just the start of what it means to build and manage a data culture. Once live on Yellowfin your Customer Success Manager will work with your team to define a success plan that will focus on how we support your business objectives as your business evolves.

Going live is just one milestone step in your data journey. Ensuring continuous value and supporting your business needs takes a continuous effort and partnership to ensure year on year success is achieved.

Community Support

We have a private user community that allows you to view the top user questions, product ideas, and product issues happening within Yellowfin. Our community is also the central place to review product release notes and monitor important announcements related to product and company updates.

Support based on community sharing allows us to group share knowledge and experiences across a vast number of customer industries and use cases. The community search engine allows users to search the community knowledge base, open community posts, and is also linked to the Yellowfin product wiki.

Our global support desk team builds new knowledge base articles based on community questions, request trends, and product changes so the knowledge content we share is always evolving.

We also have private ticket options so you can submit an issue directly to our global support desk team who will work with you to answer any questions or product stability issues quickly. The core objective of our global support desk team is to support you with any product stability concerns and if needed manage any product escalations to our product development team.

Describe the enhancement request process and how these are prioritized

Enhancement requests are first raised through the Yellowfin Community, where the other clients are able to add feedback and vote on individual ideas. Each month our product team will review the list, and choose those which are the most feasible, popular, and will have the largest impact for inclusion in our next minor release.

Escalation of enhancement requests is done through your customer success manager, and will be analyzed on a case by case basis.

Documentation
Yellowfin is committed to providing our customers with access to our collective and shared knowledge. We know as part of your evaluation process you need as much information and validation of what is possible to ensure you select the right product for your business needs.

Our documentation team is charged with ensuring we provide a clear pathway for our partners to find what they need quickly across our community knowledge base, product wiki, technical developers wiki, and our university. We know that many of our partners learn in different ways and thus need documentation resources that cover summary level details, deep dive how-to’s, and mix in video content to allow you to use our resources to move forward in your data journey with the right tools to get the job done.

Meet our Partners
Our partner network is built to support your data journey needs. From dashboard design to data architecture projects, our certified partners can work with you to ensure your data projects or on-going programs achieve the return on investment you expect.

Read more on our Partners

What skills do I need to use Yellowfin?

If you have a data background then our onboarding and basic user foundation training should cover your initial needs. Depending on the role you have within your data project or program we have a training course to help understand the Yellowfin terminology, best practices, and help take the unknown out of any general questions you might have as you deploy Yellowfin.

What are the Yellowfin training options?

During your onboarding process you and your team will have access to our Yellowfin University which will take you through the getting started training series. Depending on your comfort level with business intelligence this might be all you need to be on your way. If you require a deeper level of training, we have you covered. All licensed Yellowfin users have access to our five course foundation training that cover:

• Business user
• Analyst basics
• Analyst advanced
• Data administrator
• System Administrator

Once you have completed the foundation training you can move forward knowing you are armed with a solid foundation to deploy, manage, and evolve your Yellowfin platform. From here you can look at Yellowfin’s certification program to validate your knowledge to the next level.

How long does it take to learn Yellowfin?

Depending on your team’s background you can be up and running within a matter of days. However, not all business intelligence software is alike so we recommend you take the time to learn the terminology and how the end to end system works. We recommend that all users of Yellowfin go through our getting started series within the University. This course takes about an hour to complete.

For project and platform teams we recommend the University foundation training is completed to ensure the platform team understands the end to end system and learn our recommended best practice configuration and management steps to ensure on-going success. The five courses are made up of over 20 hours of guided learning that walk you step by step how to configure and manage Yellowfin. You will be given an instance of Yellowfin to use as your learning playground so you can follow along and apply what you are learning in a safe environment.

What continuous education options does Yellowfin provide?

Through the Yellowfin university, you will have continuous access to new courses offered with a focus on product release changes or new ways to use Yellowfin linked to industry driven changes in ways to apply data to drive deeper insights.

Once you are a Yellowfin customer, you will be notified when a new course is available or if any changes to courses you have taken in the past have been updated. We want to ensure that you and your team are staying current with our visionary product evolution every step of the way.

We also offer paid for consultant lead training, on-site or remote sessions are available. You can work with the team at Yellowfin to build a custom training to cover any gaps in team knowledge or use our foundation workbook training system as your guide.

What does a Yellowfin implementation look like?

Implementation of the Yellowfin application can be broken into a few components:

Server Provisioning – Initially, You will need to provision at least one server for the Yellowfin application, into an OS/environment of your choosing. At scale, this is most often several servers setup in an HA cluster. You will also need to install a configuration database.

App Security setup – Yellowfin provides functionality that enables highly complex data security and content access models. (User roles, content content folders, access filters, etc). This is typically done by your team and will typically require more planning and discussion than implementation effort.

Metadata layer Creation – The goal of the metadata layer is to set report creators up for success. A practical implementation will consist of an initial implementation period (~1 hour per view), and a series of recursive improvements as reporting needs are refined.

Report Creation – Depending on the amount of pre-built content that will be provided to the end users, this may be a small or substantial portion of your implementation. The more reports, and the more stringent their visual requirements, the longer this will take.

Application integration – you may want to configure anywhere from a simple SSO redirectly, to a fully embedded workflow. The complexity of your requirements will increase the time and resources required at this phase

How long does it take?

Based on the factors described above, a Yellowfin implementation can take anywhere from 1 week to 6 months depending on the complexity of your project, the readiness of your data and the scope of the analytics you want to deliver to end users.

Generally a MVP will be created within the first month and the application will be exposed to an initial set of users. This will then be refined and scaled over the next several months.

Delays to this process are generally caused by a lack of resources (no one to build reports), or unmet prerequisites such as an in-complete data warehouse.