Whitepaper: "Yellowfin Reporting" enables Embedded Business
Intelligence
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Embedded reports are a standard requirement of most applications. But
users are increasingly demanding more sophisticated reporting from
applications - seeking such features as custom report design, ad hoc
report creation and analytics. Developers that want to embed business
intelligence (BI) and reporting features into applications must find a
balance among requirements, cost and development time.
Today visionary software vendors and developers are blurring the lines
between analytical and operational processes by embedding BI software
into their applications. They understand the benefits of process-driven
BI, operational dashboards, and ad hoc reporting from transactional
systems. They also realise that their applications are the source of
organisational information and that embedded BI is a key requirement to
meeting their client's management information needs.
Embedded BI is an integral part of a business application or process,
not a separate application. It is typically a major component of the
core application adding tremendous value for the customer. In some
cases it becomes the face of the application for users who only need
read access to the data.
As customers seek embedded reporting in their applications vendors that
do so will develop competitive advantage, build customer loyalty and
extend the life of their product within their existing customer base.
To achieve the competitive benefits of embedded BI, application
developers need to select underlying technology that will support the
basic requirements of the environment. These requirements are:
* Real Time BI - Embedded BI acts on real time data, not time delayed
data stored in a separate warehouse or OLAP cube. A key factor in this
is the source of the data - it comes from the application (or uses the
same source as the application), not a data warehouse or data mart.
* Seamless Integration - Users do not want to switch applications
between undertaking operational and reporting activities. Integrated
security and look and feel assist create a seamless integration between
the host application and reporting.
* End User Centric - Embedded BI is much more end-user focused than
traditional BI. With embedded BI you cannot assume that your users has
knowledge of both the BI application and the data set being analysed.
Embedded BI needs to be significantly easier to use without training.
Yellowfin® Delivers on the promise of embedded BI
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Traditional BI vendors have spent years building monolithic standalone
applications. Their approach to embedded BI has been to create
extensions to their core standalone application, and these extensions
allow you to integrate their solution with yours, not embed. An
additional hurdle is that these systems work best doing after-the-fact
analysis against a data warehouse and are aimed at the power user, not
the average user. Yellowfin Reporting has stepped in to fill this
void. Yellowfin has been designed from the ground up to be embedded
inside other systems. With Yellowfin you can bring ease of use and
real-time data analysis to business users that need to make rapid
decisions. Yellowfin supports embedded BI by being:
Designed for the end user
Yellowfin has been designed to enable end users to author their own
reports - the report designer is not a technical tool for developers.
It is so easy to use and requires no understanding of the underlying
database being queried. As a result it requires less user education
and is less of a drain on your end user support team. Your clients
will be thrilled with Yellowfin capability embedded in your
application.
Delivering real time reporting
Yellowfin has been architected to ensure efficiency and low impact on
OLTP databases. We understand that your application is critical to
your business users and performance must be compromised. With
Yellowfin you have the flexibility to report from both relational data
sources, through ROLAP, as well as cubes. You choose how you wish to
report from your application.
Easy to integrate
Yellowfin can easily integrate into your application. Look and Feel,
Security and authentication, and Web Services allow you to achieve the
level of integration that you desire. The Yellowfin integration
roadmap will assist you to embed Yellowfin into your application within
days not weeks.
Unlike other Reporting and Business Intelligence products there is no
proliferation of different applications on various servers talking
inefficiently to each other - it's all self-contained as a single web
application for all purposes - administration, design, report
development and report delivery. In many cases Yellowfin will be only
an incremental addition to your application resource requirements
rather than a whole other application system.
Flexible in Licensing and Pricing
At Yellowfin we understand that you are embedding Yellowfin into your
application not the other way round. As such our approach is to work
with you to understand your licensing and pricing model and develop a
mutually agreeable go to market strategy.
www.yellowfin.com.au
