A Little Dirty Data Will Do

Being a little bit dirty can be good – especially as it relates to data. And although for many years notable BI experts supported the necessity of cleansing data to remove any inconsistencies, times are changing. The rigors of standardization and normalization may not always be required and new, alternative approaches to BI deliver accurate analytic results without the pain and cost of the “transformation” step in the extract, transform and load (ETL) process.

However, you can't just throw any raw data into a BI system and expect brilliant, contextually-relevant insight in return. But there are times when you may not need to go thoroughly cleanse every data set – if your solution can handle it. As opines Claudia Imhoff, an analyst with Intelligent Solutions Inc., “While such endeavors to achieve consistency and reliability are commendable – information needs to be trustworthy and consistent – these efforts may also be overkill in many cases.”

The economic realities of today’s business world require us to think differently about business intelligence and about the notion of data quality. "Locking information away in databases and subjecting it to cumbersome processes slows down decision making,” writes Imhoff, in her recent paper, Not All Data Needs to be Treated Equally!

In this era of rapid decision-making companies need to cut themselves some slack on the super-clean data standard. Not all data needs to be treated the same way. Often when you’re analyzing data around sales, marketing and customer relationships, just-in-time analysis is more important than ensuring the data is super clean. In her paper, Imhoff explores the different scenarios where just-in-time data delivers the right analysis at the right time.

Check out Imhoff’s paper or listen to the TDWI webinar "Making the Case for Just-in-Time Data" where she explored the benefits – financial and time – of leveraging alternative approaches to BI that skip the pain transformation.

PivotLink Names New CEO

Today is an exciting day at PivotLink – Bruce Armstrong has joined the company as our new President and CEO. Bruce has held CEO and other senior executive roles at several successful companies including Teradata, Sybase, Broadbase, KNOVA, and most recently at Kickfire. We are very excited to have someone of Bruce’s caliber and experience join the PivotLink team!

You can read more about Bruce’s background by checking out the press release. This is a very exciting time for PivotLink!

What makes cloud solutions secure?

When it comes to the Cloud, there have been plenty of red flags raised around security in the past several years. The old guard software companies say that companies going to the cloud are taking a security risk. CIOs hesitate to unleash data outside the corporate network because if a breach or a leak occurs, their job is on the line. Security consultants want to help by delivering your company advisory services and audits, but often these can come at a high price.

But is the cloud really not secure enough?  Most IT directors want assurances that Cloud providers deploy industry-standard security technology and processes. However, definitions of is “industry-standard” can vary. And data security is just one piece of the puzzle. IT needs to know that the Cloud solution provider can comply with their company’s own internal security policies and governance requirements. Not all Cloud solutions consider security at this level.

Your industry, the type of data you collect, your customers, applicable regulations and even corporate culture can further refine the level of security that you need, on-site and off-site. What is the business risk of the loss or theft of different data sets that will be in the cloud?

At PivotLink, we have built our product with a three-tier security strategy incorporating physical security, encryption, and role-based access. We also have regular audits by third-party experts to verify our security protection for customers. We use AES encryption up to 256-bits, the highest commercially-available encryption, and we also apply individual database security for each customer. We pay a lot of time and attention to security, because we know it's a top concern of companies.

Another variable is certification. Some Cloud providers rely upon the audits of their data center. They may say they are SAS70 certified, an audit that examines and tests the characteristics of internal controls for service organizations. But the SAS70 certification might apply only to their data center provider, which may not be enough. It's not just about the way data is stored but how people can handle, move and share it. We have developed our own internal controls, and are one of the few Cloud BI providers that has SAS70 type II certification.  Read more about PivotLink's security approach here.

Not all of our customers need this much security. But that’s the benefits of going with a Cloud provider that has a multi-layered security focus. You're going to receive the level of protection needed by the provider’s most stringent customer’s requirements. And you don't have to pay a premium for it. In the end, security is about the provider not the infrastructure. With the right partner, a secure cloud computing experience is definitely within reach.

What are your security concerns and how are you addressing them?

SaaS BI Gets More Respect

Software-as-a-Service-based business intelligence (BI) solutions are finally getting some serious attention from top analyst firms. In a recent press release, we highlighted Gartner, Inc.’s “Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms,” (January 2011) as an example. In the report, a global view of Gartner's opinion of the software vendors that should be considered by organizations seeking to use BI platforms, Gartner included PivotLink among the providers in the SaaS BI space. PivotLink was one of only four SaaS BI providers to qualify for the report. While the Magic Quadrant focuses on traditional on-premise solutions, I believe it reflects several interesting dynamics in the SaaS BI subcategory where we’re seeing steady momentum for departmental, midmarket and analytical application approaches.

In other research from the SMB Group, survey respondents confirmed their number one technology challenge is “getting better business insights from the data we already have,” and “40% of medium businesses plan to spend more in this area in 2011.”  According to SMB Group analyst Laurie McCabe, "Economic necessity has driven more SMBs to the Cloud, and once in, they are seeing mostly positive results – not only in terms of cost savings and time to solution, but in being able to re-deploy scarce (if any!) IT resources from application support and management to more strategic activities." PivotLink was highlighted in SMB Group’s “Top 10 SMB Technology Predictions for 2011” under number six, “The Transition to the Insight Economy Gets a Bit Easier.”

These major market trends underscore why the largest enterprises are looking seriously at SaaS BI this year. Here's why:

1. The Economy: IT budgets are still hurting. There's no evidence that companies will return to pre-recession spending levels anytime soon. If anything, the trend of lower cost IT is likely here to stay. With the widespread availability of affordable Web-based solutions delivering enterprise capabilities, our view is that companies will have a cautious approach to big budget IT projects for years to come. Consumer technologies such as Google Docs and Skype are getting better all the time, and finding their way into companies large and small. All this adds up to a demand – even expectation – for lower cost software and services. Gartner echoes this view, stating that cost was a much higher purchasing driver for BI in 2010 than 2009.


2. Consumerization of IT: The impact of consumer technologies on corporate IT strategy has been growing rapidly over the past few years. Employees are demanding, and increasingly getting, flexibility in the devices and tools that they use at work. Companies are finally realizing that by allowing choice and listening to what business users want, they can save money, increase user productivity and satisfaction, and deliver more business value from IT investments. That's why PivotLink has adopted a user-friendly interface that is intuitive for greater self-service. Employees need little if any training to create a report or dashboard. And analysts across the board agree that BI tools that are simple and “fun” to use will become more pervasive.


3. Ease of Use:  Part of the reason why traditional BI solutions have failed over the past years is that too few users were able to take advantage of the solution. BI tools are traditionally designed for analysts, not the average user. Yet the more actionable data that's available to any front-line employee, such as a customer service representative or a warehouse manager, the higher potential for better decision-making that can save a company money or increase sales. In fact, Gartner reports in the January 2011 Magic Quadrant that "ease of use" now surpasses "functionality" for the first time as the dominant BI platform buying criteria. This is where solutions with a better approach to BI are making a difference. PivotLink was built so that the traditional information consumer (person who reads the reports) could be an active user by easily exploring the data and building or customizing reports and dashboards. We have seen customers like Taleo and Tibuk2 benefit from a BI solution that is easy to use.


4. More Data from More Sources: Most companies using BI do not analyze a single data source. Instead analysis needs to span multiple sources to achieve the optimal results and increasingly, some of those sources are coming from external systems, such as social media platforms and supply chain partner databases. BI solution providers must make this integration quick and easy because IT departments don't have the time nor budget to compile, normalize and integrate data for its BI system. According to the January 2011 Magic Quadrant, another driver of BI growth will be solutions that "enable the analysis of large, volatile and diverse data." On average, PivotLink customers analyze data across three to five different systems including enterprise data warehouses and outside data sources.

We were excited to learn that when Gartner conducted the research for the Magic Quadrant, they found that our customers select us for these reasons: ease of use, data access and integration, implementation costs and efforts, and system performance.  We were also happy when SMB Group’s Laurie McCabe commented based on her research that, “PivotLink earned a spot in our predictions as one of the on-demand/SaaS BI solutions that is easy and inexpensive enough for many small businesses to use and get those important ‘aha moments’ from.”

I'm really interested to hear about your thoughts on the future of BI and how you think SaaS vendors can bring optimal value to the table.

We've Got the Best Customers!

The past year has been happily frenetic for us at PivotLink, as we have been adding customers and working on a host of new product features and solutions. We are now excited to be working with: Diamond Resorts, Starr Indemnity & Liability Company, DRT Manufacturing, LANDesk, Mark Logic, ECCO USA, RSM McGladrey, Adecco Group, Webroot Software, Mindjet, Nexant, Wine Management Systems, Freshpair, Fortify Software and others.

We are thrilled that our customers are gaining real value with PivotLink.  We have 15,000 users generating more than 2 million reports per month and ended 2010 with a renewal rate of 95% - no shelf-ware here. What's especially cool is that we are now seeing customers expanding the use of PivotLink across their businesses. Over 25% of our customers have more than 200 users accessing the solution. The Canada and Latin America divisions of a leading apparel manufacturer are using PivotLink for sales and purchasing analytics, and a global logistics and supply chain management services provider has expanded PivotLink to its critical parts call center. A recent press release on the “Intelligent Retailer” webinar with the Aberdeen Group confirms similar plans by other users, noting, “Macys.com is looking to expand the usage of PivotLink to increase multichannel selling collaboration with our stores partners.”

Other customer trends include the incorporation of multiple data sources. Today, 90% of our customers access more than one data source, including point of sales and inventory management systems, sales and marketing automation systems, and industry benchmarking data. We have several customers that are accessing data from five or more systems with many of those data sources being external to the organization. This is key since analysts, such as Gartner, are saying that a major driver behind BI growth this year will be the need to gain insight from "large, volatile and diverse data sets."

PivotLink exited 2010 with revenue up 40% year over year. This wouldn't be possible without our diverse range of customers, who have been pushing the envelope on BI technology and experiencing the benefits of the Cloud.

Check out our recent press release and read more about PivotLink’s momentum.

Getting to Meaningful Collaboration

I recently chatted with Claudia Imhoff about collaborative BI, a topic that looks like it will continue to be hot this year.  Vendors across the market tout “collaboration,” but if you look closely, the capabilities are merely cell notations, email alerts and occasionally IM support. Do these capabilities really foster collaboration?  Recently, Peter Schooff over at ebizQ posed the question: “Why do so many enterprises struggle with collaborative BI?” based on the article “Collaborative BI: Are We There Yet?” by Fred Powers. There were several interesting responses, but many still blamed system or tool limitations for the lack of collaboration.  Fred Powers expressed a different viewpoint: “Collaborative BI is a people problem; user adoption is the single biggest obstacle to enablement.” Instead at looking at the systems, he looked at the people implementing those systems as the limitations.  If IT is focused on a deploying a single, all encompassing solution, but access to that solution is limited to only a chosen few, how can it become collaborative? I responded with my thoughts on what is limiting collaborative BI, specifically around how it is deployed.

The essence of my response was that if collaboration is about getting more of the right people access to the information so that they can use and act on the analytics together, the more people need access. I believe that companies struggle with collaboration because access to traditional BI solutions is either limited to a certain circle of users (which limits collaborative opportunities) for either pricing reasons (price by seat) or for security reasons (inside the firewall).  SaaS can change that.  Coupling secure, role-based access with the flexible deployment model that easily provides access beyond the firewall means that employees, vendors, distributors, suppliers, etc. can work from the same unified view of business information and make more informed decisions – together. This sharing of insight across the value chain is powerful and gets to true collaboration – people working together off the same data set to get to a unified answer. However, this collaboration is difficult to reach unless the pricing model supports it. The value of BI is when users gain the insight. If the cost of sharing that insight is prohibitive, the collaborative battle is lost.  We have been successful seeing our business grow with our “alternative pricing pricing model.  We see the value in getting the insight into users hands, so our pricing model is based on usage (volume), versus seats.  Our customers see the benefit of scaling access to the analytics as the business requires and making it more pervasive.

This is my take on why companies struggle with collaboration.  How would you have responded to Peter’s question?

What does time-to-value mean to you?

Time-to-value is a pretty common term that refers to “quick software deployments” and assumes that once deployed, the solution produces business value.  But is rapid deployment the only measure of value in business intelligence? Or in other words is it the “time” part of time-to-value the important measure?  Sure quick deployments mean your investment starts producing earlier, but is that enough?

I would contend that the market has been misled by the emphasis on the “time” part of the equation. Deploying quickly is a core advantage of the SaaS model, so by this measure all SaaS solutions deliver time-to-value, right?  But if you consider the importance of the “value” achieved then clearly not all SaaS solutions would make the cut. I believe that time-to-value is about deriving sustainable value as your business changes. At PivotLink, we measure time-to-value as the time it takes to get to the value part of the equation. If you are unable to change/extend a data source, or explore the data in the way you naturally think about it, or add new users across your value chain as needed then fast time-to-value can’t be achieved. Delivering true time-to-value means your BI solution can constantly adapt to changing business conditions so you realize ongoing value from the solution vs. the value being halted as soon as conditions change.  Customers then get meaningful metrics and analytical dashboards that are deployed quickly and can adapt to dynamic business environments. They can easily scale, integrate new data sources, support new users on both sides of the firewall, provide flexible drill downs, and offer a secure environment to share results across the value chain.

We believe the full promise of time-to-value – one that continues to elude organizations with large investments in traditional on-premise BI vendors – can only be achieved by coupling powerful, adaptable technology with a SaaS business model.  What do you think?