Yellowfin Updates iPad App, Integrates Storyboard with Mobile BI
Business intelligence company Yellowfin has updated its native iPad app with amobile version of its Storyboard feature that allows users to search, share, and view analytics and reporting dashboards using their iPads. The version will replace the last release in November 2011. The Australia-based organization also offers apps for the iPhone and Android.
"Users are able to integrate fully interactive BI content with a familiar presentation format, enabling people of any business background to easily share and benefit from data-based insights anywhere, anytime," said Yellowfin CEO Glen Rabie in a statement.
That makes the tool particularly valuable for sales representatives who might want to pull up figures on the go. The mobile capabilities come along both with privacy settings that allow users to keep a chart private, as well as data security consistent with the rest of Yellowfin’s offerings.
Acccording to Dresner Advisory Services' 2012 Mobile BI study, more organizations plan to equip their employees with mobile BI. Two out of five organizations expect that more than 40 percent of their users will access business intelligence exclusively through their mobile devices by 2014, making mobile offerings a growing part of business intelligence.
The iPad update supports Yellowfin's positioning as a user-friendly form of analytics, designed for people without data-heavy backgrounds. Rabie described the application as a way "to change the way people use Mobile BI by shifting the focus from technology to people," citing the app's ability to "bring report interaction, market-leading ease of use, and information collaboration together within a single application."
Demand as a whole for mobile BI is increasing, with market intelligence company TechNavio predicting an annual growth rate of 27 percent from 2012 to 2016 in its "2012-2016: Global Mobile Business Intelligence Market" report.
Yellowfin's reporting interface displays PowerPoint-like views of graphs, which are visualized in a variety of formats, including heat maps, trellises, bar charts, and trend lines. Data can be shared between users and modified, encouraging users to use Yellowfin to inform their company's decision-making process and driving adoption of the platform. In the decade since the company was founded, Yellowfin has signed up 1 million users from 600 companies.