Some holiday cheer - Birst named a Finalist for Red Herring Global 100

Pass the eggnog!  Birst not only won the Red Herring North America 100 in 2009, but we have also been named a Finalist for the Red Herring Global 100, a competition to win the title of one of the Top 100 Tech Startups in the World.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="354" caption="Bring on the holiday cheer!"][/caption]

We are looking forward to presenting Birst's case - this has been a phenomenal year for us.  We have seen:

• Rapid customer growth, including major customers like Rackspace Hosting, Children's Choice, and YMCA Metro Atlanta.  With even more customers to be announced early next year!


• A move to a larger and newer headquarters, to accommodate our growing Birst Team.


• Over 20 new systems integrator partners have joined the Birst Partner Network, including some of the largest and most experienced partners for Salesforce.com.  This dramatically expands our expertise in core areas such as analytics for sales, marketing, HR, supply chain, and executive decisionmaking.


• International customer growth, particularly in the UK.


• Major product developments that put Birst at the forefront of business intelligence in the cloud. The Birst team clocked some long hours this year to make sure that customers received the most powerful and easiest to use BI solution available.
  
  
  
  • The first comprehensive BI suite in the cloud, from ETL to data warehouses on the fly, to pixel perfect reporting.
  
  
  • Birst Live Access, which makes Birst the *only* BI provider capable of evaluating both uploaded and on-premise data in the cloud.
  
  
  • Birst for Salesforce, the premier offering for Salesforce implementations, which has won us tremendous new customers who are interested in better reporting and analytics with Salesforce data combined with othery key business data
  
  
  
  


• A strong start with our OEM partner RightNow, for enterprise level analytics for customer experience management.


• Awards! Birst won a number of major awards in 2009, including:
  
  
  
  • The Red Herring 100 North America, for leading technology companies
  
  
  • The TDWI Best Practices Award 2009 for Dashboards and Scorecards, along with our longtime customer RBC Wealth Management
  
  
  • The Web Award for Software Standard of Excellence
  
  
  • Recognition by InsideSales for having industry-beating best practices for sales professsionalism and performance.  Birst was the only business intelligence company to be recognized.
  
  
  
  

This honor only confirms Birst's leadership in on-demand business intelligence and demonstrates how SaaS BI is becoming a force for companies large and small.

We are hoping to be able to showcase all of these accomplishments at the Red Herring Global 100 Conference in Laguna Nigel in mid January.  For more information on the conference, check out the conference website.

Enjoy the holidays, everyone!

Things to catch at Dreamforce '09 before you go

The Birst Team has been having a blast showing off Birst 4 and Birst for Salesforce at Dreamforce '09.  Thanks to all of the folks who have stopped by our booth, #1210.  We've been having some great conversations and signing up lots of free trials!

If you come by this morning, you can meet David Taber, author of Salesforce.com Secrets of Success.

Since today's the last day of the Expo Floor, here are a few of my Dreamforce favorite things and people that you should make sure that you catch:

In the BI/Analytics Category:

• Cloud9 Analytics comic book.  Kudos to Cloud9 for having a great integrated marketing outreach plan for Dreamforce.  I half expected their booth staff to be dressed as superheroes. Special shout out to Don Tyler, their communications person, who put together the "Sales Ops Hero" comic book.  You should pick one up.  Just be aware that the Birst team doesn't actually wear pocket protectors and look like they stepped out of a 1950's Nasa rocket launch meeting.  :-)

 

• Say hi to Jerome Pineau in the GoodData booth and take a chance on winning a solar backpack.  Jerome is a blogger/Twitter fanatic that I've been following for a while now.  Charming guy, very knowledgeable, and it's nice to know that he actually does exist.  He also has good taste in wine and food, so ask him for a good restaurant for lunch.  You can also enter to win a GoodData solar backpack, which is one of the most nifty giveaway gifts I've seen at the show, and learn more about the benefits of SaaS BI.  Jerome is on Twitter @JeromePineau

 

• Say hi to Darren Cunningham in the Informatica booth and learn more about Informatica Cloud Services. Darren is knowledgeable about Salesforces, SaaS BI, and the new Informatica 9 data integration in the cloud.  Yet another person who's got some good perspective.  Like Jerome, you can also follow him on Twitter: @dcunni  Informatica is also giving away a snazzy Tag Heuer watch.

 

Vendors with fun stuff:

• Stop by the Astadia booth and pick up your pair of free Crocs.  After cruising Dreamforce for the past few days, your feet may thank you for it.


• Which reminds me - the Deloitte booth has the most Purell I've ever seen in one place.  So if you've been shaking hands all day, stop by to sanitize them, talk to Deloitte, and get some candy.  They also have some nice couches for sitting on while you talk to them.


• What can I say? I want a Smart car.  Xactly has one on raffle. Go sign up. (Yes, they're small.  Great for people who live in SF, though. Easy parking!)


• Plush toys for the kids: Birst has flying pigs.  Another vendor down our row has flying monkeys.  Collect the set!


• Photo opportunity: you probably got your picture with the Salesforce characters (which allows you to participate in the conversation - Is Chatty scary or fun?).  Dun & Bradstreet also has a talking robot in their booth that's good for a fun photo.  Catch it before it goes!

 

Have a great time in these last hours of Dreamforce!

Birst at Dreamforce - come by for a demo and free gift!

Dreamforce is finally upon us!  We are looking forward to showing off how easy it is to get started doing the sales reporting that you need in Birst.  And we're looking forward to meeting you and giving you one of the fun, free gifts we have available.  We have heard that registrations are now at 14,000, and we don't have *that* many gifts, so stop by booth #1210 as soon as you can to make sure that you get one.

Here's what's going on with Birst at Dreamforce:

• Tuesday, November 17th - Grab a cocktail and come by booth #1210, 6-8pm
  
  
  
  • Kick off Dreamforce in style by coming to the Welcome Reception and cruising the Expo floor.  Tonight's your best odds of getting a gift.
  
  
  
  

 

• Wednesday, November 18th - Demos all day long until 8pm.  And pick up a gift.
  
  
  
  • The Birst Team will be delighted to show you a demo of our Birst solutions.
  
  
  • Birst for Salesforce
    
    
    
    • Learn how you can get up and running quickly with dashboards and reports, including pipeline, forecasting, and snapshots of your Salesforce CRM data.
    
    
    • See why we're 5 Star Rated on AppExchange!
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Birst for Force.com
    
    
    
    • Learn how Birst can easily connect to the data kept in any Force.com-based solution, as well, and how you can analyze data across Salesforce CRM and Force.com Apps
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Live Access - new in Birst 4!
    
    
    
    • Come learn about the hottest new feature from Birst - the ability to analyze data in the cloud, while leaving it safe and secure in your on-premise data warehouse.  This was the killer feature at the latest TDWI World Conference in early November.  Now it's at Dreamforce!
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

 

• Thursday, November 19th - Come to the Cloud Crawl Party at the Temple Nightclub with Birst.
  
  
  
  • Stop by the Birst booth to get your stamp to attend the Cloud Crawl Party on Thursday night!  Join the fun at the Temple Nightclub with Birst.
  
  
  • Missed the demos on Wednesday?  We'll be showing off Birst all day Thursday, as well.  Come learn why companies like Rackspace Hosting chose Birst over all other on-demand BI solutions for their Salesforce CRM analysis.
  
  
  
  

 

• Friday, November 20th - Meet "Salesforce Secrets of Success" author David Taber at the Birst booth, #1210
  
  
  
  • David Taber will be signing copies of his book and discussing how analytics can help you become more successful with Salesforce.
  
  
  • Also, find out how you can sign up for David's webinar on Dec.3rd and how you can download a free chapter of his book.
  
  
  
  

 

We're looking forward to seeing you there!

Announcing Birst 4: The first and only Comprehensive Cloud BI Suite

Birst is pleased to announce Birst 4, The Comprehensive Cloud BI Suite. Birst 4 is the first and only full-featured, fully integrated business intelligence solution, including advanced ETL services, data warehouses created on the fly, and integrated reporting services, such as Smart Dashboards, pixel perfect reporting, and alerts.   Birst 4 is the only cloud BI solution that is comprehensive, enterprise class, and yet affordable and easy to use, so that even small businesses and departments of enterprises can get up and running quickly.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="354" caption="An operational analytics dashboard in Birst 4"][/caption]

 

Like enterprises, even small and midsize organizations can have complex BI needs. Birst 4 meets the needs of the most demanding business intelligence environments by expanding upon Birst’s automated, integrated business intelligence to help companies along three main areas:

Any Data Anywhere

• Birst Live Access


• Birst Unified Metadata Model


• Birst Cloud Connectors

Greater Control and Capability

• Advanced ETL Services


• Enhanced Administration and Catalog Management


• Birst Reporting Services


• Birst Alerts and Exception Reports


• Birst Application Templates, including Birst for Salesforce.com

Empowering the Business User

• Smart Dashboards


• Drag and Drop Pivot Tables

The key features from each of these areas are:

• Birst Live Access
  The newest addition to Birst Data Services, Birst Live Access allows organizations to make direct use of pre-existing data warehouses, datamarts, or local databases, leveraging Birst’s advanced analytical capabilities without having to upload data. Data stays securely behind the firewall, but can be analyzed “in the cloud” with Birst, as well as analyzed in combination with data from other uploaded sources, such as spreadsheets or uploaded databases. Birst Live Access allows sophisticated organizations to make the most of existing data resources without having to upload information to the cloud.  Learn more about Live Access.

 

• Birst Advanced ETL Services
  Extending Birst’s automated analytical data store functionality, Birst Advanced ETL Services allows organizations to create very sophisticated and layered data transformations that traditionally have required complex and expensive on-premise ETL tools. Fully integrated into Birst’s Unified Metadata Model, complex transformations are far easier to create and faster to deploy, and it’s far easier to ensure metadata consistency.  Learn more about Birst Advanced ETL Services.

 

• Birst Reporting Services
  Birst provides a fully integrated reporting environment that includes pixel perfect reporting, operational reporting, banded reporting, alerts, and operational, real-time and exception reports. In traditional BI solutions, each of these elements is often provided separately and requires integration. Birst is the only SaaS vendor to provide fully functional report authoring and distribution services.  Learn more about Birst Reporting Services.

 

• Smart Dashboards
  The upgraded Flex dashboards now offer business users even greater capability to explore data trends and discover answers to critical business questions entirely on their own, without any reliance on IT or specialized business analysts. Advanced filtering, drill-down capability, and "drag and drop" controls put answers at business users' fingertips, without coding. Learn more about Smart Dashboards.   
  
  

Customers are already excited about Birst 4.

Existing Birst customers have already thoroughly evaluated the new Birst 4 solution and are giving it strong reviews.  “Children’s Choice is dedicated to providing high quality childcare, and our existing Birst deployment has already given us tremendous insight into performance improvement opportunities that uphold our tradition of excellence,” said Dan Lawler, CFO of Children’s Choice, a provider of early care and education programs to children and families.  “After getting a sneak preview of Birst 4, we’re excited about the advanced functionality and improvements for business user self-service reporting. We’re looking forward to deploying it broadly throughout our organization.”

 

 

 

For the Birst 4 press release, click here.

For an overview of Birst 4, click here.

Where to find Birst at TDWI Orlando

TDWI Orlando is already upon us!  I hope that everyone is enjoying the warm Florida weather.

Here's where you can find Birst at TDWI Orlando this year.

Find Birst on the Exhibit Floor in Booth #207.  Catch a demo and a flying gift!

• Find out how Birst enables Pervasive BI at your organization with fast, easy, affordable, and complete BI solutions.


• Get a free gift - it flys and it makes noise!  It's a proven winner with kids.   


• Enter to win a Wii to take home to show off to family and friends.


• Exhibit hours are Tuesday, 11:15 AM- 2:15 PM, as well as 5 to 7 PM


• Exhibit hours on Wednesday are 11:15 AM to 2 PM

 

See Brad Peters, Birst CEO, and see a sneak peek of our latest release at Cindi Howson's "Cool BI" Session on Tuesday, Nov. 3rd.

Cindi Howson, the keynote speaker at TDWI Orlando and a leading analyst, is teaching a session on the latest innovations in business intelligence.  The session starts at 2:15 PM.  Learn more about the Cool BI Session.

Brad Peters joins a panel discussionon at Steve Dine's "BI In the Cloud" session on Thursday, Nov. 5th. 

Stephen Dine, the President of Datasource Consulting, is leading a new session called "BI In the Cloud" on Thursday.  This is a full day session, starting at 9 am.  Brad Peters will be participating in a vendor panel during the afternoon portion. Learn more about the BI In the Cloud session.

And be sure to check online for our big announcement on Tuesday, November 3rd!

Where to find Birst - TDWI Orlando, Dreamforce and more

The Birst Team is having a busy Q4.  A crack team of ours just got back from rave reviews at the Cloudforce Toronto event, where we showed off our ability to create Salesforce CRM pipeline reporting dashboards in just a few minutes.

Here's where you can find us next:

• RightNow Summit Americas, October 26 -28, 2009
  

Come find out how RightNow Enterprise Analytics, powered by Birst, is bringing fast, comprehensive analysis to RightNow customers.

The RightNow Summit was a big hit last year, and we're looking forward to another fun few days at the Broadmoor Resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  We'll try to beat our mechanical bull riding score from last year.

• Midsize Enterprise Canada, October 28, 2009
  

Birst is a Gold Sponsor of this premier IT leadership event, held in Toronto at the Westin Harbor Castle.  We're looking forward to some great conversations with IT execs from leading companies across Canada.

• RightNow Summit EMEA, November 2-4, 2009
  

The Birst Team travels to Brighton to meet with the European customer base of RightNow and show how RightNow Enterprise Analytics is bringing improved insight to its European customers.

We're assuming that there will be no mechanical bull at this event, so we're looking forward to what the RightNow event team has in store for the Gala Dinner on Nov. 3rd.

• TDWI World Conference, Orlando  November 2-4, 2009
  

While some of the team is enjoying bangers and mash in Brighton, another part of the Birst Team will be enjoying the autumn in Orlando at the TDWI World Conference.

Brad Peters, Birst CEO, will be participating in two panels in the event, Cindi Howson's "Cool BI: The Latest Innovations" panel on Tuesday, as well as Steve Dine's "BI In the Cloud" session on Thursday.

Birst is also planning a big announcement on Tuesday, November 3rd (more on this later), and you should be sure to get your Birst giveaway quickly at the Birst booth, since we had overwhelming demand at our last event.  We're sending more this time, but they go quick!

• Dreamforce, November 17-20, 2009

Birst is a Bronze Sponsor of Dreamforce, and based on the enthusiastic response at the Cloudforce Toronto event, we're looking forward to a great time showing off our ability to quickly create Salesforce CRM dashboards and reports in Birst.

We'll also be showcasing some of our customer success stories, hosting a "Salesforce Secrets of Success" book giveaway, and showing how pigs can fly (stop by the booth!).

Can't make it to any of these events?  We'll be happy to give you a personalized demo of Birst over the web, just contact us.

 

The anxiety of the times: startups and the question of survivability

Having experienced the unbelievable turmoil in the markets in the past 12-18 months, there's no surprise that people are questioning the viability not only of major companies, but of younger, less established ones, too.

Birst was founded in 2004.  If you had asked us then if there would ever be a time that Birst would be thriving in an environment in which Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch were not, we would have laughed.  Those enormous, brand name companies going under or getting sold at a deep discount while our young company prospered? That was about as likely as a titan like General Motors going into bankruptcy, surely.

And yet all of those things happened.

So it's understandable that companies would be concerned about the viability of vendors from whom they want to buy mission-critical products and services.  Boris Evelson of Forrester recently raised this concern on Twitter, reflecting the anxiety that has arisen about on-demand business intelligence vendors in the wake of LucidEra's closure.

Established, traditional business intelligence companies have been particularly eager to use the LucidEra story to discredit the entire on-demand business intelligence category because on-demand BI can offer a better deal to customers - powerful BI that's rapidly deployed, at an affordable price.

So if you're one of the growing number of companies interested in this better BI value proposition, how can you overcome concerns about viability?

Here are a few things that we would consider if we were looking at BI vendors, in terms of viability alone:

1. What’s your financial strength? Birst, for example, raised over $10mm in financing last fall and has no need to raise additional financing for the next few years, if ever.  Birst raised funds during a particularly tumultuous time in the market, yet still raised it in just 10 days.  That's record time.

There are multiple ways to consider financial strength:

• Amount of financing raised, and how long this funding should last


• Current revenue base


• Growth in bookings in revenue over the past 12 months


• Cash flow position

 

2. How solid is your customer base? Birst has a diverse, solid customer base, including enterprise customers with large deployments, which ensures that the company has a strong revenue base and can continue to serve your needs in the future.

There are various ways to evaluate a customer base:

• Size of current customer base


• Growth rate of customer base


• Composition of customer base (lots of small companies providing small cashflows, large companies providing large cashflows, or a mix?)

 

3. What is your renewal rate? SaaS BI companies are paid on subscription, which renew monthly or annually.  So SaaS BI companies are generally invested in the long-term satisfaction of their customers.  The higher the renewal rate, the more satisfied their customers are.

 

4. Do you have customer references?  Who is the longest-subscribing customer that you have? You should be provided with case studies on existing customers or provided the contact information of a current customer who can candidly discuss their experience.  Preferably, it would be a customer who has subscribed for a lengthy period of time.

One strong indication is if customers win awards for their solution.  Birst's customer RBC Wealth Management, one of the largest wealth management companies in the US, recently won the prestigious TDWI Best Practices Award for Dashboards and Scorecards.  RBC Wealth Management has been a customer of Birst's for multiple years.

Doing due diligence on vendor viability is important, for any solution that you're purchasing - be it CRM, ERP, or BI.  The above are the types of questions that companies have to ask of all of their vendors.

Even when you're dealing with a very large company, recall that divisions of large companies are often shuttered or simply cease ongoing product support.  Many large technology companies have been on an acquisition spree in the past few years, and subsequently stop supporting whole product lines on which customers have depended for years.  So even if the company looks really strong as a whole, make sure that you're asking tough questions of the division within that company from which you're actually purchasing a solution.

Purchase anxiety will be unavoidable over the next few years.  Just make sure that you're asking the right questions and getting good answers before you buy, if the solution you're considering is Oracle, SAP/BusinessObjects, or Birst.

(As an aside, I particularly liked the interactive chart that the New York TImes published last weekend of the contraction and expansion of the financial industry in the past 12 months. Click here to see it.)

Another myth falls by the wayside- IT execs *do* like SaaS

The Birst Team recently returned from the Midsize Enterprise Summit in LA, which focuses on IT managers and decision-makers for midmarket companies.  We expected to hear many tales of woe - midsize organizations are often large enough to have decently sized IT teams and a deep understanding of technological complexity and capability, but really not enough resources to go around. It can sometimes feel like the curse of knowledge - you know enough to realize that you're in a tough situation, but you don't have the resources to get out of it.

And the squeeze has only gotten more intense over the last 12 months, as IT teams have had to grapple with economic realities, streamlining teams and budgets.  Of course, the list of demands on IT rarely goes down, leaving the team feeling beleaguered.

So we were expecting to see some signs of wariness in the attendees at the event.  What we found, however, was a souped-up crowd of IT executives ready and eager to tackle their 2010 projects, and open to new ideas about the best way to do so.   The on-demand business intelligence story, with its message of powerful analytics, fast deployment, and affordability, really found a receptive audience at the event. (It also didn't hurt that we had a fun giveaway that even our competitors were asking for.)

So it was nice to see this conference demolish another myth about SaaS - that IT departments don't like SaaS and won't approve it.   On the contrary, these IT execs were excited about the possibilities of SaaS and how it can help their under-resourced IT teams accomplish more without heavy capital investment and implementation time.  It's nice to see these forward-thinking execs yet again proving the conventional wisdom wrong.

(Birst has already demolished one of the most pervasive myths - that enterprises don't buy it.  That's news to our customers Securian and RBC Wealth Management.)

Birst is back from TDWI - big fancy plaques and a story of sabotage (?!)

Thanks to everyone who stopped by the Birst booth at TDWI.  The Birst team had a blast meeting so many people excited about the possibilities of BI and enjoyed all of the demos that we gave.

Big thanks to Shawn Spott, the RBC Wealth Management winner of the Best Practices 2009 Award for Dashboards and Scorecards.  We didn't realize until we got to the event how many people applied this year, and we were surprised and humbled to see that we had won against some big deployments of traditional enterprise BI.  It's really a credit to the vision of the RBC Wealth Management team that they had such a bold view of what BI could accomplish, and were willing to work with a relatively newer company to make that vision a reality.

Shawn and Birst each got their own big, heavy plaque to take home to the office.  For a picture of the win, click here.

And thanks to the analysts and journalists who took the time to meet with us at the event. Next time I go to TDWI, I want to go as an analyst.  In addition to their long hours meeting companies, seeing demos, and sitting in on sessions, they knew how to get the most out of a conference -- Shawn Rogers has some great pictures of his time sailing on a boat, enjoying the libations at Whiskey Girl, and noshing at Croce's in the Gaslamp District.  You can see it all on his Twitter profile: http://twitter.com/shawnrog

And one funny story from the BI Executive Summit.  TDWI does a great job of setting up so that it's easy for companies to demo their solutions to attendees.  So it was a bit of a surprise to find our power suddenly go off during the BI Executive Summit reception on Monday night, which was prime demo time.  Our intrepid Sales Engineer followed the various cords until they terminated at a power strip that had mysteriously been switched off.   The power strip was located in IBM's area, where the employees seemed strangely unsurprised and, in fact, downright bemused at our discovery.  Hmmm. . .

Birst at TDWI World Conference San Diego, 2009 - where to find us

Birst is out in force at the TDWI World Conference in San Diego over the next three days.   Here's where to find us:


Monday, August 3rd: World Conference and BI Executive Summit

• 8 A.M. Keynote: RBC Wealth Management and Birst receive their TDWI Best Practices Award 2009 for Dashboards and Scorecards


• Noon: Brad Peters, CEO, and John Pierson, VP of Sales and Marketing, are at the Executive Summit Networking Lunch


• 5pm - 7pm: Brad Peters, John Pierson, and RBC Award Winner, Shawn Spott, are at the Exec Summit Reception and Exhibition

Tuesday, August 4th: World Conference

• The show floor is open! Come visit Birst in Booth #109. Be sure to get your stamp to win a Wii and the Wii Sports Resort package.
  
  
  
  • 11:30 AM, Shawn Spott, TDWI Best Practices Award Winner, will be discussing the high ROI dashboard implementation at RBC Wealth Management. Presentation is in the "Birst Theater" in the Birst booth area.
  
  
  • 1:30 PM, Shawn Spott does an encore presentation of his award-winning Birst deployment
  
  
  
  


• 3:35 PM Executive Summit, Shawn Spott and Brad Peters give a detailed overview of the RBC Wealth Management case study


• 5 PM Come meet the Birst crew during the reception.  Julie Mayhew will be happy to give you a detailed walkthrough of Birst.

Wednesday, August 5th: World Conference

• 9:15 am, Executive Summit: Brad Peters participates on a panel discussion "The Future of BI"


• The show floor is still open! Come visit Birst in Booth #109. Last day to get your stamp to win a Wii.
  
  
  
  • Noon: Brad Peters presents "Closing the Decision Gap" Presentation is in the "Birst Theater" in the Birst booth area.
  
  
  • 1:30 pm: Brad Peters encore presentation of "Closing the Decision Gap"
  
  
  
  

We hope to see you there!

Where to find Birst - TDWI World Conference, MidSize Enterprise, Dreamforce

Want to meet up with Birst in person?  See a demo of our solutions and hear about our award-winning customer implementations?  Or just want to take home some lovely Birst logo ware?

Here are the events that Birst will be attending in the next few months:

• August 3rd-5th, 2009. TDWI World Conference, San Diego. Birst is a Platinum Sponsor of the BI Executive Summit and is also sponsoring the main event.  Come visit our extra large booth and hear Shawn Spott of RBC Wealth Management talk about his award-winning implementation of Birst.  Click here for details on the TDWI World Conference and BI Executive Summit.

• September 13-16th, 2009.  MidSize Enterprise Summit West, Los Angeles. Birst is an Event Sponsor of this invitation-only summit for the IT execs of larger midsize businesses.  To find out more about MidSize Enterprise Summit West and to get yourself invited, click here.

• November 17th-20th, 2009.  Dreamforce Global Gathering, San Francisco. It's the Cloud Computing Event of the Year, brought to you by salesforce.com.  Birst is a Bronze Sponsor of Dreamforce.  Come by and hear about how salesforce.com customers like Rackspace Hosting are using Birst analytics to better drive sales and improve their business.  To learn more about Dreamforce, click here.  To see Birst's AppExchange posting, click here.

If you can't make it to lovely San Diego, Los Angeles, or San Francisco (really, it's sunnier in November than in foggy July, it's a much better time to be here), you can always just set up a demo of Birst by contacting the Birst team, and we will be happy to send you a lovely digital memento photo of the view from Birst world headquarters in downtown San Francisco at the time of your demo.  It will almost be like being here in person.

Considering alternatives to LucidEra - some thoughts

Lately, we've frequently been asked our opinion on the solution options that former LucidEra customers have, since we're one of the vendors who offer an alternative.

As believers in the value of SaaS BI, and also believers in the value that LucidEra was providing its customers, we'd like to offer some of our thoughts about how to approach finding a new solution that fits your unique needs.  The vendors are fairly diverse and have different strengths and weaknesses.  Here are the things that we would think about if we were considering our options:

1. Salesforce.com AppExchange certified partners vs. non-certified? LucidEra was an AppExchange certified solution with very positive rankings (a strong testament to their product, marketing, sales, and support teams).  What this means is that Salesforce.com had reviewed their solution, checked that it indeed provided the general services that it claimed, and gave it a throrough security review.

You can check very quickly if a solution is AppExchange certified. Just click here and type the vendor name into the "Find Apps" search box.  If the vendor has a posting, they're certified.

2. Ability to handle multiple data sources vs. Salesforce.com data only. Some vendors can connect your Salesforce data with information from other systems, like finance, operations, or marketing.  This can be helpful, since it can provide you with a broader range of analysis that looks across your business.  Other vendors have very specific applications that are geared only towards Salesforce.com data.  The latter might be appropriate if you're confident that you only want Salesforce.com-specific analysis today and in the foreseeable future.

One note of caution - you might need multiple data sources and not quite realize it.  For example, did you want to see pipeline lead to close with actual revenue generated?  Then you're connecting sales automation data with finance data.  So give this point careful consideration as you consider what reporting you really want to see.

3. Ability to handle custom objects in Salesforce - need it or not? Many companies have gone beyond standard Salesforce CRM functionality and have built custom areas within Salesforce to better serve their particular business. These are known as "custom objects."  If you have custom objects, it is very likely that you want some analysis and reporting on them.  If so, be sure that the vendors that you are considering can do this.

4. How much power and flexibility do you need? Some vendors are providing reporting applications - targeted solutions that can quickly provide a range of standard reports, mostly on standard information, like pipeline analysis.  Others, like Birst, are providing that reporting plus the ability to create automatically updated dashboards, create custom reports on the fly (known as ad hoc reporting), and the ability to "drill into" reports and see greater underlying detail (known as data exploration).  A vendor with this kind of capability is regarded as a general BI solution, not just an application.

Given the current economic climate, you probably have some concerns regarding vendor viability, as well. There are a few things you can ask about here, as well, such as:

1. What's your financial strength? Birst, for example, raised over $10mm in financing last fall and has no need to raise additional financing for the next few years, if ever.

2. How solid is your customer base? Birst has a diverse, solid customer base, including enterprise customers with large deployments, which ensures that the company has a strong revenue base and can continue to serve your needs in the future.

3. What is your renewal rate? SaaS BI companies are paid on subscription, which renew monthly or annually.  So SaaS BI companies are generally invested in the long-term satisfaction of their customers.  The higher the renewal rate, the more satisfied their customers are.

One thing that might surprise you about our criteria is that we don't consider cost of the solution to be a big differentiating factor.  Total Cost of Ownership is certainly something to keep in mind and should be on the general consideration list.  But one of the best things about SaaS BI is that it is generally significantly more affordable than traditional on-premise BI solutions.  Going with *any* SaaS BI vendor is likely going to be a big TCO win on this front, so it doesn't make sense to simply evaluate on price.  Finding a solution that meets your needs is most important.

If you're looking for more opinions on this topic, Aberdeen recently came out with a Market Alert discussing LucidEra and future options.

"On-Demand BI Takes Off" - Brad Peters in Information Management

Brad Peters, Birst CEO, recently had an article published in Information Management about the upswing in demand for on-demand business intelligence by companies of all sizes.   Here are a few key points from the article:

Why On-Demand BI Makes Sense

• Rapid time-to-value. Results are delivered in weeks rather than months or years, putting valuable analytics in the hands of business users who can have the greatest impact on revenue and profits.

 

• More affordable implementations. Results are delivered at less cost, because both the software and services components are dramatically reduced.

 

• Greater flexibility. Dashboards and reports can be made accessible to business users who initiate and complete their own analysis and report creation, so the system can keep pace with ever‐evolving business needs.

 

"On-Demand Business Intelligence" covers a surprisingly broad range of solutions when you take a close look at it, and so interested companies need to think carefully about what their needs are and which benefits make the most sense for them.  Here's a summary of how Brad breaks down the three general options:

 

The ASP Approach. These vendors take existing BI software, develop custom solutions for their customers, and deliver it online as a service, often employing standard data models to accelerate the deployment process. This approach reduces the cost and deployment time of the solution by providing BI expertise using standard data models and absorbing hardware costs for their customers.

For customers, the ASP approach is appropriate in situations where standard functionality is desired from what is essentially a hosted version of an on-premise software solution. Customization may be limited, however, and require deployment times comparable to on-premise installations, limiting the value proposition.

 

Pre-built application approach. The second group of on-demand BI vendors has approached the problem differently. Instead of applying traditional tools and labor to address customer needs, they have built targeted applications for known data sources such as Salesforce.com or Oracle Financials. 

These vendors aim to lower deployment time and cost by prebuilding integrated applications or sets of reports, thereby enabling multiple customers to benefit from a single application or report set. . . The prebuilt application approach can be deployed quickly, targets a key area (such as sales analytics) and meets basic needs. There are limitations regarding the amount of customization, breadth of data sources to analyze and analytical depth.

 

The integrated Saas BI approach. Another category of vendors has developed broadly deployable SaaS platforms that can quickly be configured to analyze any data across the organization. These vendors have created new software platforms fundamentally designed for on-demand delivery that offer speed, flexibility and cost advantages. These solutions typically have the following characteristics: 

 

•  
  
  
  
  • 
    
    Built specifically for on-demand delivery (not a hosted version of an on-premise solution): one, single version that gets upgraded automatically, a single, consolidated platform (the entire software stack) and deployment methodology;
  
  
  • 
    
    Leverages automation for deployment and user provisioning, so deployment time is dramatically reduced;
  
  
  • 
    
    Handles multiple data sources and databases; and
  
  
  • 
    
    Easily allows customization and full analytical capability.
  
  
  
  

 

Integrated SaaS BI offers high value with deep customization and flexibility, and can more easily evolve and scale as business needs change and grow. If a customer’s needs are basic and strictly limited, however, this level of solution might not be necessary.

 On-demand BI is gaining increasing ground as customers realize that it is a fast, affordable, and powerful way to address critical BI projects.  Not just for small and midsize companies, recent events, such as RBC Wealth Management's win of the TDWI Best Practices award for its Birst implementation, show that enterprises are successfully adopting on-demand BI as well.

 For the full article, click here.

RBC Wealth Management wins the TDWI Best Practices Award 2009 for Dashboards and Scorecards

The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI), the premier educational institute for business intelligence and data warehousing, has awarded Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Wealth Management its Best Practices Award 2009 for Dashboards and Scorecards.

Royal Bank of Canada is using Birst to power its "RBC Dashboard."  RBC Dashboard is a business intelligence dashboard that distributes key metrics and reports to its financial advisors, the people who are the front line organization of RBC Wealth Management and have some of the most frequent and involved interaction with clients.  The dashboards have improved benchmarking of financial advisor performance, helped advisors to identify attractive client segments, and provided better tactical information to front-line on how to approach their business.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="135" caption="Congratulations to the  RBC Wealth Management team!"][/caption]

The RBC Dashboard has demonstrated a rapid and strong ROI for Royal Bank of Canada Wealth Management. Advisors using RBC Dashboard increased deposits with targeted households and improved asset gathering over their entire business.

Shawn Spott, Vice President, Manager of Marketing Research at RBC Wealth Management, will be accepting the TDWI Award on behalf of RBC at the TDWI World Conference 2009 in San Diego on August 3rd.   He will also be discussing the details of RBC's award-winning solution with TDWI attendees on Tuesday, August 4th, in the Exhibit Hall.

Birst, a Platinum Sponsor of the BI Executive Summit at the conference, will also be on hand to answer questions and demonstrate its BI solutions.

For more information on RBC's win, check out the press release.

Birst goes to Boulder for the BI Brain Trust

Brad Peters, BIrst CEO, and Stefan Schmitz, Sr. Director of Product Management, ventured to Boulder, Colorado this morning to meet with the sharp minds at the  Boulder BI Brain Trust.  The BI Brain Trust is a group of analysts with deep and broad experience in BI, so it’s a very lively, well-informed audience.  They definitely put Brad, Stefan, and Birst through their paces, and it looks like Birst was up to the challenge.  We hear that there was a full house in Boulder, along with many analysts participating by phone and Twitter.

Here are some interesting comments from the very active Twitter stream.

Please note that some of these have parenthetical comments to fill in missing context:

Birst’s financial strength:

Claudia Imhoff: “Birst is well funded - over half of their funding is still in the bank. May be profitable next year. That is fast!”

Average customer size shows that Birst serves full range of customer sizes:

Richard Hackathorn: “Typically 50 users per customer with the largest customer having around five thousand users.”

 

Smaller companies have complex BI problems, too, and need powerful BI

Neil Raden: “Brad (Peters, CEO of Birst) is right. Smaller companies have difficult, even complex analytical problems, not just very large companies.”

 

John Myers: “Birst is for people who aren't [experts at BI and DataWarehousing] or are annoyed with stuff like Microstrategy.”

 

The Birst approach – automation, better ease of use – fits the needs of many companies

Merv Adrian: “Volume of data and users are important. Skills don't linearly scale with them, even when needs do. That's an opportunity.”

 

User interface:

Neil Raden: “Very nice UI. Well done.”

 

Analysts are interested in Birst and the on-demand BI concept

Shawn Rogers: “This Boulder BI Brain Trust hits a new record for Tweets (comments) over 125 and still going. Birst sparked a great conversation and debate today - Nice job Brad!”

 

Shawn Rogers: “I'm impressed - solid foundation. They will provide a unique value to their prospects.”  (Note: punctuation added for clarity.)

Watching the lights go down at LucidEra - lessons learned

It’s always unfortunate to see a fellow startup shut its doors, even when you compete with it, since strong competitors validate the overall concept for which we’re all fighting – the benefits of on-demand business intelligence.  The benefits are real. The value to customers is real.  Unfortunately for LucidEra, their particular approach – specific applications, instead of general BI solutions -- proved itself weak in the marketplace.

Here’s one fellow competitor’s opinion on what they got right and what they missed.

What LucidEra got right:

• LucidEra was a strong evangelist for why on-demand can be a faster, lower cost, and more effective option, and the industry is better off for it.

• LucidEra understood that, for many companies (and especially small and mid-size ones), having a solution that can be up and running quickly is very important.   Companies want answers as quickly as they can, and if given the choice between an expensive, time-consuming deployment and a quick one, they’ll pick the quick one.

• LucidEra also understood that where BI can be most powerful is at the point where it really impacts the business – at the front lines, like the sales team.

 

What LucidEra missed:

 

• Customers want full-fledged BI made easier, not simplified applications. LucidEra’s solution to the customer need for quicker and easier BI was to offer applications instead of a true BI solution.  This meant a standardized data model approach and standardized reports. This approach requires customers to adapt their business problem to the LucidEra solution, when what customers really wanted was a quicker, easier solution that fit their particular business needs.

• The ability to handle multiple data sources matters. To simplify deployments and deliver quickly, LucidEra started off focusing on Salesforce.com data only.  However, customers often wanted to combine that data with information from other systems, like their marketing, finance, and operational systems.  While LucidEra started moving in this direction later, it prevented them from getting crucial customer momentum when they needed it.

• Customers want the flexibility and power of true BI. While customers like rapid deployments, they also want to know that the system is powerful enough to answer spontaneous business questions or identify and address unusual trends as they arise – all things which you can get from a traditional BI solution.  And they want a system that will grow with them as their needs grow.  If you wanted something other than that standard report, how easy was it to get there?  It appears that they didn’t have a strong answer for that.  There are a lot of components that go in a true Business Intelligence solution – LucidEra was hoping that customers would be willing to sacrifice power and flexibility for speed and low cost.  It seems that customers want the power along with the speed and low cost.

 

There may be some industry naysayers out there who will wave LucidEra’s demise around as a flag of surrender for the overall on-demand business intelligence space.  I think that this is shortsighted.  While LucidEra may be an example of why overly targeted BI applications don’t have a large enough market to survive, it is not a harbinger of doom for the overall on-demand BI industry.

There are other vendors out there, Birst being one, who offer the speed, low cost, flexibility, and scalability that customers demand.  They are thriving because they are doing right what LucidEra got right, and they are also providing the pieces that were missing.

For companies interested in learning more about Birst as they consider their options after LucidEra, you can read more about our solution at birst.com/salesforce or you can find us on the Salesforce.com App Exchange.

Birst is also offering a “Quick Switch” program whereby LucidEra customers who switch to Birst by August 1, 2009, will receive 25% off of subscription services. For more information, contact the Birst Team.

 

Birst now available on the Salesforce AppExchange

We are happy to announce that Birst is now available on Salesforce.com's Force.com AppExchange.

In our recent Early Summer Release, Birst introduced Salesforce Connect, a data connector that allows salesforce.com customers to easily analyze their Salesforce CRM data, including custom objects, within Birst.

So, you're probably thinking as you yawn, don't a lot of other companies do this already?  What's the big deal?

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="160" caption="It's more exciting than you think."][/caption]

There are a few big reasons that this is an exciting development. Yes, other companies connect to Salesforce information and analyze it.  What Birst does differently is:

• Analysis and reporting on custom objects, in addition to standard Salesforce data. Many companies have customized their Salesforce solution to fit the unique information and processes required by their business. So they have built what are known as "custom objects."  Other solutions can easily handle standard data, but they can't analyze nor report on custom objects.  If it were important enough for a company to build the custom objects in the first place, they probably want some reporting on them.  That's where Birst comes in.

• Analyze your Salesforce information with information from other systems and databases that are important to you. Birst also allows business users to analyze data from other systems, such as marketing, finance, and operations, along with their Salesforce CRM data. This means that you can run reports that you simply can't do with other solutions -- you can see, for example, which marketing campaigns (marketing system) are driving opportunities in Salesforce CRM and real revenues (financial system).

• Enterprise class business intelligence that's easy to use and scale. If you are a larger company, you're probably looking beyond standardized charts and reports - you want in-depth analytics that's easy to use and easy to scale over time.  Before, your only choice was going with Salesforce in combination with a complicated, traditional BI provider.  Now, you have an easier to deploy, easier to use, on-demand option.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="207" caption="Did you say custom objects and multiple data sources? Now we're paying attention."][/caption]

It's for reasons like these that Birst has already been chosen by customers like Rackspace Hosting.  As Sean Wedige, the Vice President of Sales Technical Operations at Rackspace Hosting said, “Birst was the only vendor that we believed could quickly get us a powerful business intelligence solution that not only handles custom objects, but also combines information from other systems".

Salesforce Connect is available to all levels of Birst customers, including users of the introductory free version, Birst Free. Birst also offers rapid implementation services for custom deployments, and has a network of systems integrator partners to assist with implementations.

You can see Birst on the Force.com App Exchange by clicking here.

To check out the full press release and see what else Sean had to say, click here.

To go to the Birst for Salesforce microsite, go to www.birst.com/salesforce

Birst's Early Summer Release 2009 now available!

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of Birst's Early Summer Release 2009.  This release features major improvements to the Birst user experience. Now it’s even easier to create the reports and dashboards that you need to run your business effectively.

Feature improvements include:

• New Flex interface for ad hoc reporting that’s more intuitive and easy to use


• Expanded array of advanced chart types, including gauges


• Easy “click” menu of options helps you quickly to do what you want to do in the ad hoc reporting area


• Easy “color picker” speeds the time to create custom formatted charts


• New “set-based” filter type


• Dynamic data-driven assignment of users to groups, for easier user management

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="306" caption="Early Summer Release 2009!"][/caption]

All Birst customers will be automatically upgraded to the benefits of the Early Summer Release 2009. All of your existing data, reports, and dashboards should transition smoothly to the new version.

To learn more about the Early Summer Release 2009, including feature descriptions and an FAQ, go to birst.com/earlysummerrelease2009

Not a Birst customer yet?  Even people who sign up for free today will automatically get the Early Summer Release 2009.  Click here to request a free account for the leading on-demand business intelligence solution available today.

Thanks for your continued support, we hope that you enjoy the Early Summer Release.

From ad gurus to data geeks - Andrew McAfee on the diminishment of Don Draper

Andrew McAfee, the MIT professor who has a blog on the business impact of information technology, recently posted a compelling article titled "The Diminishment of Don Draper."

Don Draper is the lead character from AMC's mid-century advertising drama, "Mad Men."  For those not familiar with the series, Don pulls in big advertising consulting fees for delivering suave, charismatic pitches for consumer products. While hailed as a genius or a guru, it's not really clear, as McAfee points out, that Don actually generates a positive ROI for his clients.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="320" caption="Got an ROI for that, Don?"][/caption]

McAfee proposes that companies are moving towards a more data driven decisionmaking model, even when it comes to more historically fuzzy areas like advertising and marketing.  He cites the major hurdle to this more data-sensitive model as mostly culture oriented - that is, companies often don't have the true organizational and political will to run experiments and find out the truth.  They often decide what to do, then marshal "facts" and arguments to support the pre-made decision.

While I don't disagree with this, I think there is another issue at play here, and it's demonstrated by the positive example he cites of Staples office supply using the market research company Affinnova to help determine which packaging design options are most appropriate for their recycled office paper line.  Affinnova broke down the different elements of package design and, in a very cool experiment, tested those 22,000 potential combinations before 750 panelists over the course of a week.  The resulting patterns in preference for design, font, color, etc. led Staples to redesign their packaging.  While no results are given, it's presumably a success.

The only catch?  Staples presumably has a huge market research budget and the luxury of taking the time to hire the consulting firm, set up the study, run it for a week, and analyze the results.  So even if your organization wants to be data driven, unless you have the dollars and the time to do this, companies may be wondering if their only choice is to turn to your internal Don Draper to make a best guess at what the customer wants.

Rather than resort to Don, I would suggest that you can turn to your internal business intelligence solution to analyze the data that you already have to get an answer more affordably, and faster. It might not be as cool an answer as Affinnova can provide, but you can examine how historical package changes have impacted sales, analyze current buying trends, and come up with a more rational triangulation. Ifyou're using an on-demand business intelligence solution, achieving this should take limited amounts of time and funds, and leaves you with an ongoing analysis that gives you more insight over time, rather than a consulting report that reflects just a moment in time.

If you're curious about McAfee, check out his blog. He provides refreshingly rigorous, thoughtful, and lengthy blog postings about technology and business.  He is currently an Associate Professor in the Technology and Operations Management area at Harvard Business School, and a visiting Associate Professor at the Center for Digital Business in the MIT Sloan School of Management.

"Year of Selling Dangerously" now on Slideshare

One of our most popular webinars has been our "Year of Selling Dangerously" webinar about sales tactics and the sales analysis that you need to know in tough times.

We've now made the slides available on Slideshare, so that anyone can benefit from these sales reporting and analysis tips.

The Year Of Selling Dangerously - Sales and Analytics Tips for Dangerous Times

View more OpenOffice presentations from birster.

If you'd like to see the full webinar, click here. To learn more about Birst and sales analytics, click here.