BI Scorecard Blog

Information Builders Hits Its Stride, Launches WebFOCUS 8

Information Builders hosted its annual user conference last week in Orlando, Florida, emphasizing the themes of intelligence, integrity, and integration.

President and Founder Gerry Cohen kicked off the general session by reminding the over 1000 attendees of the company’s mission: to help all customers access all of their data and deliver it to all people who make decisions.  The operative word  here is “all,” a point of difference as  Information Builders pursues both enterprise and SMBs, data beyond the data warehouse, and BI for decision makers beyond power users.

Cohen talked about the four factors he believes are most influencing the BI landscape: big data, mobile, cloud, and analytics. In terms of big data, Information Builders has continued to add interfaces for big data sources such as Teradata, EMC Greenplum, HP Vertica, 1010 data, as well as Hadoop. Beyond this, the company also recently released WebFocus Hyperstage, a columnar database that promises 10 to 1 compression but in some tests has achieved 40 to 1. It runs on commodity hardware, either Linux or Unix operating systems, with as little as 16 GB or RAM. The company has smartly bundled a trial version with the WebFOCUS server.

For mobile, Information Builders is betting heavily on HTML5 to provide device agnostic, author-once, render anywhere capabilities. The charting engine in WebFOCUS 8, released in April 2012, has been completely rewritten to render in HTML5. But with a twist and nod to iPad users, they also provide an iPad app dubbed Mobile Favs which provides off-line capabilities as well. Cohen challenged customers to pay attention to Microsoft in the mobile market, speculating that Windows 8 will change the mobile market. Time will tell!

While some larger vendors, such as MicroStrategy and SAP, have been pursuing BI in the cloud in their own data centers, Information Builders is taking more of a services and partner approach. Multitenant capabilities and more granular security are beefed up in WebFOCUS 8.

One of the coolest (and funniest) demos of the key note goes to theWebFOCUS Facebook adaptor. Sales Engineer Dan Grady took real-world Facebook comments about Wal-Mart’s promotional push in the
 steak market. Customer reaction and the explicit, but well-harvested posts were enlightening. While many vendors, from niche to large BI vendors, are providing sentiment analysis, the difference here seemed to be the integration with the BI platform, ease of implementation, and degree that a business user can investigate and drill into the patterns.

Beyond the keynotes and track sessions, the customer sessions and one-on-ones shored up my view that one of Information Builders most important differentiators is its customer service.  For example, International Financial Data Services Canada, a leading provider of investment funds record-keeping and services, recently selected WebFOCUS over other BI solutions. Sara Hilliard, VP Product Management explained, “We had all the vendors create dashboards and a set of reports. Information Builders did better and at every opportunity, they exceeded our expectations” Echoing this thought, CIO Maurice van Veghel from Sligro Food Group, a 2.4 billion Euro Dutch grocery chain, said in their proof of concept, they provided each vendor with sample data and business questions. Then in the POC demo, they changed the business question, much as happens to IT during development.  “Whoever could best adapt to that change, that’s who won.”

What’s been your experience with your BI vendors? Tell me here in the 2012 Successful Bi Survey.

 Sincerely,

Cindi Howson, BI Scorecard

Information Builders Steadily Carves BI Niche

Some industry analysts (not I) were once predicting the death of pure-play BI vendors as a consequence of mega vendor consolidation in 2007. Yet Information Builders is thriving, with double-digit revenue growth, a loyal customer base, and continued  innovation. Their customer list is something to brag about across multiple industries and sizes, from American Express to New York Police Department to Helzberg Diamonds.

At the annual Information Builders user conference, Summit, in Dallas, Texas, this week, President and Founder Gerry Cohen described the company’s goal in simple terms, “To continually deliver new technology and solutions to use your data to make smarter decisions.” 

Cohen demonstrated new capabilities in its upcoming WebFOCUS 8 release that includes a more intuitive interface for business users, developers, and system administrators. All the modules will leverage the consistent Microsoft concept of ribbons, a design the vendor first introduced in its business query tool InfoAssist a few years ago.

Consistent with the buzz at many BI conferences in the last year, mobile made it to the main stage, but with a twist. As I wrote in the article, Managing the Mayhem of Mobile, Information Builders mostly relies on a WebApp for mobile BI. The WebApp automatically determines which device is being used to access dashboards and reports, then renders that content either in HTML5 for an iPad or in Flash for Blackberry Playbooks or Android Zoom tablets. The appeal for the WebApp approach is that reports don’t need to be rewritten for particular devices and more functionality. However, performance and usability is often inferior to native apps. Information Builders takes the novel approach of blending browser and app. They offeri a device-based app, called “Mobile Faves”, for the iPad and iPhone. With Mobile Faves, users can save their reports and dashboards locally to the device (security is still required against the WebFOCUS server); if they are saved as an Active Technologies report, then users can continue to filter, change the chart type, and add calculations all in off line mode. Native iPad gestures with touch, tap, and pinch are all supported.  It’s the first I’ve seen a vendor blend both approaches of Web and device-specific app in a rather seamless way.

An updated Visual Discovery module (an OEM from Advizor Solutions) was also part of the keynote. Information Builders has sold this product for years, but with limited customer adoption. I suspect the recent buzz from specialty vendors Tableau, TIBCO Spotfire, and QlikTech has increased interest in this product as the hands on lab for this product was standing room only. The new version will integrate InfoAssist with the visualizations from Visual Discovery, moving what is now a developer- and desktop-centric design to a more business user, Web authoring work flow. While the product has a cool-factor and some compelling, interactive visualizations, the visual design process is not as intuitive and automatic as in either Tableau or Spotfire, or in the newer tools I’ve seen from MicroStrategy and IBM Cognos.

Although Information Builders is innovative, they could do a better job at communicating their innovations. For example, as I talk about in my cool BI classes and webinars at TDWI, the convergence of social networking with BI is certainly cool and promising in bringing decision makers together. It was only by chance, then, that I stumbled across Information Builders new integration with SalesForce Chatter and SAP Streamwork, due out this July.

One thing that Information Builders does not like to talk about, but that customers do, is the FOCUS language. It’s a differentiator that lets customers build robust reporting applications, bypassing some of the limitations of SQL that can hinder other BI tools. The vendor says too many industry analysts and competitors like to use FOCUS as a scare tactic suggesting their product requires coding; it doesn’t. But as one customer explained, “it’s nice that I have an option for reports with complicated logic.” In this regard, many of the reports built in WebFOCUS are not just reports, but instead, highly parameterized, interactive applications.

Attendees at the conference consistently praised this vendor for their customer service and partnership mentality. While one could argue that conference attendees will be skewed on the positive side, our successful BI survey and other industry surveys reflect a similar theme. (Be sure to take the 2011 Successful BI survey here to rate your BI vendor.) In fact, Information Builders is one of only three BI platform vendors that have consistently gotten the highest marks in both account management and support in our side-by-side Strategic BI Scorecard®.

A customer in the messaging industry described their newly launched extranet reporting and dashboard solution. If you are a banking customer, frequent flyer, or have school-aged children, chances are you’ve received a phone call or email from them in the last year warning of low funds, delayed flight, or snow closing. They are the SaaS engine behind a lot of banks, airlines, and schools to do outbound communication. They described how one of their applications saved a mail order prescription drug company millions of dollars a day in returned or damaged drugs by allowing customers to more precisely schedule delivery time.

One industry in which Information Builders has a strong toe-hold is in law enforcement. With some prebuilt data models and reports, they have been able to cite success in providing multiple police departments across the country insight into staffing levels and crime patterns. A few years ago, the Richmond Police department won awards from both TDWI and Gartner. The same police chief has now moved to Charlotte, NC, and started a similar BI initiative. Crystal Cody, Systems and Application Manager, described how all officers now have a virtual roll call in squad cars. “Before, if the officer came on a later shift, he might have missed an APB (all points bulletin) announcement from the morning. Now, officers have the same dashboard in all police cars.” WebFOCUS RSTAT was a differentiator in a competitive BI tool selection.  WebFOCUS RSTAT (released in mid 2009) is a graphical user interface to the open source R statistical language. Predictive models built within RSTAT can be executed and embedded directly within a WebFOCUS report, pushing results of predictive models to the front line. Attendees were also buzzing about the presentation from the NYPD that reconstructed crime scene data, making BI as interesting as an episode of CSI.

Cindi Howson, BI Scorecard

Information Builders Celebrates 35 Years in BI

Few BI vendors can celebrate a 35-year anniversary as Information Builders did this week at their annual user conference in Orlando, Florida.

There are a lot of ways that this pureplay vendor likes to buck the trend in the BI world. They remain privately held and based in New York. Some predicted their demise following the industry consolidation in 2007, and yet, they continue to grow and innovate. In fact, they get the highest marks on BI Scorecard’s “innovation” category. And while a company’s president would typically use the key note to inspire and talk about strategic directions, president Gerry Cohen used his keynote to delve into a deep discussion of new features in its latest release, getting as technical as SQL chasm traps and the FOCUS MATCH command.

From a marketing perspective, the company is most excited about WebFOCUS 8, due to release by the end of the year. From a practical point, though, there is a lot to tout in WebFOCUS 7.7 that released over the weekend. The two most noteworthy improvements are that users can now build their own dashboards and well, the MATCH thing. Information Builders historically touted a “guided ad hoc” to self-service BI in which reports are developed by IT but highly parameterized for casual users to interact with. It first released InfoAssist in 2008 to provide business users a richer authoring interface. This tool was fine for answering simple business questions, such as “Sales by Customer” but not for queries that involved two fact tables such as “Open Orders and Payments by Customers.”  A developer would have to custom code such a report using the FOCUS MATCH command or HOLD files. Competitively, this was InfoAssist’s biggest shortcoming that is now resolved in WebFOCUS 7.7.

One of the most interesting customer conversations was with Chris Brady, CIO of Dealer Services Corporation. Dealer Services provides financial services to independent used car dealers. She reinforced my view that mainstream analytics is the next big wave in BI. Dealer Services had started out building predictive models with a dedicated statistical package. Extracting data from multiple data sources and creating the models was a barrier. With WebFOCUS Rstat (first released last June), a developer can access data and create models all from the same WebFOCUS Developer Studio interface used to create reports. So the results of the model can be readily embedded as a column in a WebFOCUS report. Brady was also recognized by CIO Magazine 
  this week for the significant impact their implementation has had the company and ensuring dealers could continue to get financing during the credit crunch.

As I left the hotel, I caught a glimpse of what must be their most loyal customer or partner. Check out this photo of a license plate from Virginia – WebFOCUS. I didn’t even know this was allowed!

Regards,

Cindi Howson, BI Scorecard

 

Who Needs BI When There's Active PDF?

Information Builders kicked off its annual user conference in Nashville, TN, this week on an upbeat note to the tunes of marching band, a furry mascot, and a comedian. Yep, comedian Greg Schwem (very funny!) preceded the official keynote by President and Founder Gerry Cohen. It was a novel start to a BI conference, but with the economy struggling and some attendees having to travel here on their own dime, it was an upbeat start to a smaller than usual conference.

The most intriguing part of Cohen’s keynote was VP Daniel Ortolani’s demo of a new feature of Active Reports called Active PDF. With Active PDF, the entire range of Active Reports capabilities (sort, filter, chart) are now available from within a PDF document (see here for an example but make sure you have the latest Adobe Reader). While Information Builders’ positions Active Reports for a mobile work force, I see the value as much broader to any information consumer, including customers, suppliers and regulators who receive currently static reports and documents. For example, as a residential electricity consumer, I would love for JCP&L to send me an Active PDF e-bill so I can figure out which months our consumption flags us as a high consumption electric user. (Heck, I leave our thermostat at 78 in summer, and we even have a portion allocated to wind power! But let’s not digress). 

By a show of hands, less than 5% of Information Builders customers at the conference are using Active Reports. Whether that’s due to the product positioning or that it is an optional server-add on, I don’t know. (Customers: care to comment?) However, the vendor is offering customers a free trial license as part of its latest 7.6.9 release of WebFOCUS. The reports are water marked until the product is actually licensed, a smart way to entice customers to try the product. Enhancements to InfoAssist (see here for an in-depth product review) also made the key note. InfoAssist, released last November, is the vendor’s solution for business users, and as Cohen conceded, is an area the vendor had not previously put much emphasis on. The most noteworthy change in 7.6.9 is support for OLAP cube-browsing, including SAP BW, Oracle Hyperion Essbase, and Microsoft Analysis Services.

The customer presentations and discussions are what make going to these conferences most worth the trip. In particular, Ford Motor Company, who recently decided to standardize on WebFOCUS as part of their BI tool strategy, reflected an interesting theme I’ve encountered with several Information Builders’ customers. While business users have demanded business query tools to avoid the IT report backlog,  report chaos has sometimes ensued. This is as much a BI tool issue as an organizational challenge.  When a business query tool is deployed, IT still has an active role to play in managing shared and re-usable reports, but such changing roles is rarely considered on the road to self-service BI. Meanwhile, historically, Information Builders was criticized for being too developer- and application-centric. And yet, the ability to build a reporting application (versus a single report) is in fact a differentiator, but one the vendor seems not to emphasize. To be fair, perhaps it’s because that capability doesn’t fit neatly into an existing tool category. And of course, the value of this ability is more appealing to companies who have a centralized approach to BI and in which there is a strong IT-business relationship, minorities on both counts.  But the ability to build one reporting “application” with parameters for which data to display, how to filter the data, and the desired output, clearly is a lower cost proposition than hundreds of users developing hundreds of variations of similar reports.

Lastly, insurer Nationwide shared insights on a community service project they’ve done with the Columbus, OH school district that gives principals and teachers access to information on student data with a vision of improving graduation rates. In the two years since the reporting project started, high school graduation rates have improved from 50% to 75%.

Their story is one more example that shows BI is not only about improving business performance, but also, in making the world a better place!

Regards,

Cindi Howson, BI Scorecard

On Self-service BI and European Soccer

  You know that I am a big football fan, Packers in particular, because of my son, but everything I know about soccer (aka European football), I have learned from my English husband.

What does this have to do with BI? Information Builders just launched this cool new soccer dashboard of the 2009 Champions League. As I wrote about rich reportlets in this Cool BI article, such an interactive report is what most users envision for self service BI. Users don’t want “ad hoc” as in staring at a blank screen with 1000 possible data elements to choose from.  No. Most information consumers want to interact with an existing report or dashboard as a starting point.  Self-service  BI means users don’t  have to go to IT for a relatively simple enhancement request to get a sort, filter, chart, new calculation added to the report.

The soccer dashboard uses Information Builder’s Active Reports, an optional module first launched in 2006.  Based on a combination of Java Script and XML (AJAX), users can save this file locally and still have a high degree of interactivity while disconnected. To launch, click the link “launch the full report.”    So to sort the data, you click the down arrow on each column. Want to know who has the most fouls? It’s Atletico Madrid. This sort option is not something a programmer had to explicitly add to a report definition or user interface. Instead, it’s automatically available when the report is saved or rendered as AJAX output in the   same way you would save as PDF.

A bigger question of course is whether or not these fouls are worth it. Does aggression on the field result in more goals? With Active Reports, you can readily create a scatter plot (Fig3) by right-clicking on the Foul column. The chart shows there is a “slight” relationship between higher number of fouls and goals-scored. Unfortunately, the hover over only shows the coordinates of 5 goals to 21 fouls. It would be better if the hover displayed that this is from the German team of Bayern.  I think you would agree, though, that this level of interactivity is a big improvement over some web-based BI tools that seem to only automate former paper-based reports or that would require users to go into a sophisticated design environment. For the record, while Information Builders was one of the first to provide such robust interactivity using AJAX, some other  vendors now have varying degrees of rich reportlets via Flash. Information Builders supports both AJAX and Flash output.

Sadly, so far the Brits are not looking too good in this. But we are only a few weeks into the tournament, and as our favorite Leeds United never makes it to this level anyway, I guess I should focus only on the BI aspects of this app! So for a more in-depth review of Information Builders’ BI capabilities, check out the BIScorecard Information Builder's Overvew report.

Regards,

Cindi Howson, BIScorecard