The Business Intelligence (BI) industry is not only growing exponentially but it has also undergone consolidation with industry giants inching towards a multi-cloud data analytics strategy. The recent big-ticket acquisitions in this space — Google’s $2.6 billionOpens a new window investment on Looker, Salesforce’s $15.3 billionOpens a new window bet on Tableau and Cloudera’s acquisition of Arcadia Data signals the importance of enterprise-grade data management, data preparation, and data visualizations tools.
With the market trending towards self-serve BI, augmented analytics, data automation, and collaborative BI, we’re seeing ever-widening use cases of BI tools. Major BI players SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, MicroStrategy, and Salesforce are now competing with disruptors like Domo, GoodData, Birst to offer custom BI solutions for a wide range of use cases.
In this column, Meet the Disruptors, Toolbox catches up with Yellowfin’s co-founder and CEO Glen RabieOpens a new window , who founded the company in 2003. Sydney-headquartered YellowfinOpens a new window counts several Fortune 500 customers among its client base and specializes in combining data analytics with transactional applications used by businesses to deliver insights that help in decision-making. The solutions provider also clinched a position in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and BI for seven consecutive years.
Rabie discusses the importance of BI and analytics tools for business users, the impact of open sourcing on the analytics industry, the biggest trend in the data analytics space in 2020, and why analytics tools and solutions should be developed keeping the needs of business users, and not data analysts, in mind.
Disrupting the BI and Analytics Industry
Yellowfin took shape as a BI solutions and data analytics firm in 2003, a time when BI was dominated by IBM Cognos and SAP BusinessObjects and was yet to be democratized at scale. Rabie and Justin Hewitt, COO aimed to develop analytics toolsOpens a new window that were affordable, user-friendly, and effective. The duo developed products to help businesses analyze data without having to hire dedicated data analysts.
Prior to setting up Yellowfin, Rabie worked for National Australia Bank in roles such as Senior Business Consultant and Global Manager where he experienced how difficult it was for non-technical people to use complex data analytics tools. “I was working as an analyst on a data warehouse project. We came across difficulties with cost and getting adoption within the business of the tools we were using. Because of this problem, I saw an opportunity.â€
Rabie, who bootstrapped the company to success credits his entrepreneurial streak for making him quit his day job. “I come from an entrepreneurial family and I always wanted to have my own business. On a personal level, it was for the crossover of owning my own business, seeing an opportunity and having a good idea to take to market that was the catalyst for me to start Yellowfin.†he said.
On Why Yellowfin Succeeded
“We started very small,†he said, “but something that’s unique about starting a web application when we did was that it was very relatively new, and the customer requirements of the time were fairly low. We were the first entirely web-based BI product on the market. The people who bought us were early adopters and were prepared to take come on a journey with us, giving us a great opportunity. From there, we focused on building a fantastic product. We focused on how we went to the market, the customers we got and the markets we went after.â€
“The whole idea was that when we started to think about analytics and we thought about our customers, we fundamentally were trying to solve problems that business users had, not data analysts had.â€
“We’ve been very focused about a partner model. 80% of our revenue is indirect and comes via partners, helping us scale and grow with relatively little funding. However, if you started a business like ours today, the hurdles would be incredibly high, and we would have to fund things much earlier to get to where we are now.â€
Rabie chose to take a different route right from the outset— building analytics dashboards for business owners and users with no experience in data analysis. “The whole idea was that when we started to think about analytics and we thought about our customers, we fundamentally were trying to solve problems that business users had, not data analysts had.â€
According to Rabie, all of Yellowfin’s solutions are based on the collaborative nature of analytics versus just the simple analytic component of it. “Since then, we’ve added Yellowfin Stories and we’ve gotten better at thinking about the focus around the business user and around how they collaborate with data continues to be our major differentiator.â€
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Solving Challenges Faced by Businesses in Data Analytics
With the advent of Big Data, efficient data analytics became important to generate insights and trends and to support faster decision-making, better understand customers’ needs, risk identification, and gain greater visibility and control over company finances.
Rabie believes business leaders should finalize the use cases for which an analytics solution is needed before choosing one. This is because analytics tools serve various purposes, such as generating operational reports and solving executive and board strategic reporting.
“Once you identify your use cases, I’d approach the vendors in the marketplace that you believe could solve your problem. Push them to prove that they can solve your use cases. Every vendor can create a pie chart, a line chart or a dashboard, but it’s the way in which you support those particular use cases that make the vendors different,†he says.
In the hotly contested BI market, Yellowfin has set itself apart from market leading competitors such as Oracle, IBM Cognos, SAP, MicroStrategy, Domo, Qlik Sense by bagging several marquee clients across industries. Some of the top names include Honda, Vodafone, NHS, Xerox, BMC, Coca-Cola, NTT Docomo, Kodak, and ANZ. Given how voice and speech analytics is gaining traction, Rabie is strengthening the product portfolio with new developer dashboards, Natural Language Query (NLQ) and Yellowfin Present.
The key differentiator for Yellowfin is offering embedded use cases to clients. This involves putting analytics in conjunction with transaction applications used by businesses and helps solves problems faced by users in a workflow. The company also specializes in ensuring large deployments to provide context around available data. “What Yellowfin does differently is that we have the ability to create data stories and to provide context. For example, why did the numbers change? Because of this, an experienced businessperson is able to provide their knowledge and add to data to create narratives and presentations around the findings.
“The third way we’re very different is our capacity around augmented and automated analytics. We have the ability to automatically analyze data, discover insights and deliver those insights to the business users which set us apart,†he adds.
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Taking on Open Source and Edge Computing Route
Open sourceOpens a new window software tools and edge computingOpens a new window are two trends that are poised to shape the direction of analytics in the coming decade. While open-sourcing allows developers to refine a software, test its security credentials, and curate it for various use cases, edge computing enables data analysis at the edge, increasing the speed of operations and cutting down latency.
Despite the rising adoption of edge computing for data analytics, Rabie says Yellowfin hasn’t embraced edge as the company prefers the model of data coming back to a central location for analysis. “It is possible to do some analysis at the edge with Yellowfin, but the reality is for the workloads that we do in the use cases that we solve, we tend to be far more in a centralized rather than at edge computing capacity,†he adds.
Rabie also reveals that open-source analytics tools are unlikely to impact revenues generated by licenced tools. Both Pentaho and Jaspersoft— two major open-source vendors have been acquired and are no longer in the open-source domain. “I think this model just hasn’t worked for the open source community, so I don’t see a huge challenge for that space,†he says.
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Data Analytics Market, Impact of Acquisitions, Trends & Future Direction
After 2019 proved to be a banner year for BI firms, Rabie believes the industry will continue to see consolidation but there still are many competitors vying for a piece of the pie. “What’s interesting about the analytics market is that in reality, although we all look the same, when you scratch the surface, different products are solving unique problems and use cases. It’s not uncommon for enterprises to have multiple analytic solutions in place,†he says.
As for the next big disruption in BI and analyticsOpens a new window , Rabie intends to place his next bet on automation. “The tools around automation are still very new and we’re still discovering the best way to deliver insights to people in a way that makes sense for them and their business.â€
Rabie opines that acquisitions could turn out to either be a blessing or a bane for analytics companies. While Yellowfin views acquisition as an opportunity to grow and be differentiated in the marketplace, some organizations tend to lose focus when they become part of a much bigger machine and their priorities also change overtime.
Way Forward
In 2020, aside from sweetening its product portfolio with a new mobile app, NLQ, and promoting Yellowfin 9, Yellowfin is aiming at ramping up its presence in North America while continuing to lead from Australia.
“What’s interesting about the analytics market is that in reality, although we all look the same, when you scratch the surface, different products are solving unique problems and use cases. It’s not uncommon for enterprises to have multiple analytic solutions in place.â€
“The biggest growth for us is in North America, but we’re also seeing incredible outcomes in Europe as well. We’ve been growing successfully in Japan and we will continue to stay focused on our key regions where there is a greater global analytic spend. When you look at the proportionality of our spending, that’s where we’re putting the proportionality of resources in making ourselves global,†says Rabie.
Yellowfin also intends to add a new mobile app to its stack, given that the practice of accessing BI dashboards, metrics, and KPIs on mobile devices is rising quickly and is among the major trends in the BI industry for 2020. The company’s immediate plans also include new developer dashboards and Natural Language Query (NLQ) engine.
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Maintaining a Work-Life Balance and Advice for Young Entrepreneurs
The BI and analytics industry is growing rapidly, adding jobs, generating revenue, and servicing many industries, but the pressure to build better analytics tools and staying ahead of the pack is taking a toll on workers. According to SAPOpens a new window , a career in data science involves long working hours, challenging deadlines, the possibility of getting overwhelmed by data, the difficulties in finding the right algorithms to derive certain results, and stiff competition.
“You’ve got to love what you do, work incredibly hard and enjoy the pace of it. But if you’re not motivated by the problems you’re solving currently at work, then you probably should be doing something else.â€
To reduce work-related stressOpens a new window , Rabie believes in disconnecting completely from duties and turning off devices to spend time with family and friends. However, that is easier said than done. “Disconnecting is probably one of the big challenges for me,†he says.
Rabie believes that young data engineers should always stay motivated and disconnect when they have to. “You’ve got to love what you do, work incredibly hard and enjoy the pace of it. But if you’re not motivated by the problems you’re solving currently at work, then you probably should be doing something else,†he says, in closing.
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About Glen RabieOpens a new window :
Rabie is the co-founder and CEO of Yellowfin – an analytics and BI software company he founded in 2003 to create user-friendly, affordable, and effective analytics solutions for businesses. Under his leadership, Yellowfin has featured in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for seven consecutive years. Prior to co-founding Yellowfin, Rabie worked for National Australia Bank in multiple roles, including Senior Business Consultant and Global Manager.
About Yellowfin:
Yellowfin is a global BI and analytics software vendor with a suite of intelligent products powered by automation. Boasting clients like Honda, Xeros, BMC, Coca-Cola, ANZ, NTT Docomo, Kodak, Vodafone, and NHS, it has been named among Gartner’s Magic Quadrant in BI and Data Analytics for seven consecutive years. More than 27,000 organizations and over three million end-users across 75 countries use Yellowfin’s products every day.
About Meet the Disruptors:
Meet the Disruptors features disruptive players across specific verticals in Big Data, Cloud, AI-as-a-Service, and other domains. The column profiles the company’s business model, technology stack, and business strategy and how it foresaw an opportunity that incumbent players missed and built a profitable business model around it.
How do you think the use of data analytics to derive business intelligence will shape up in the future? Comment below or let us know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!