Do you actually use the product that you or your company sells? Seems like a simple question, but last night as I was doing trend analysis on some customer data using Yurbi, it struck me how much we leverage Yurbi for our own internal use.
At first glance you would think, “of course I would use my own products”. But thinking back to some of the large enterprise software vendors that I have worked for, or partnered with in the past, the opposite was true. While I was out selling their Help Desk product, the vendor wasn’t even using their own Help Desk product internally. I remember one time when a vendor finally did switch to using their own technology. Most people in the company were complaining about how difficult it was and they didn’t like it. At the Gartner BI Summit last month, I even had employees of leading BI tool vendors tell me they didn’t use their own company’s reporting tools because they were too difficult!
I’ve said before that I came up with the concept for Yurbi based on what I needed to help run my business. So, I think it’s pretty important that our company uses it internally, so we can judge how good (or bad) our dog food tastes.
Here are just a few examples of how we use our own technology:
Instead of investing valuable developer time building administration interfaces to our internal systems (like license management, for example), we use Yurbi to securely provide information to the staff who need it and simple web integrations to do common tasks like extend a trial license, process a renewal, etc. It literally took a few hours to setup the business process in Yurbi instead of the weeks it would have taken a developer to build it from scratch (which is what normal companies do).
Similar to what I was doing last night, we can quickly do trend analysis on our own data to learn what’s working and not working in terms of marketing, sales, and operations. I’m able to combine that data in a dashboard to quickly access information from other related data like website analytics, Google adwords, etc., to gain deeper insight into trends.
Yurbi helps us effectively implement our listen, learn, and adapt approach by providing real-time dashboards on key performance indicators, which helps us improve communication with the team on our progress toward goals.
There’s a lot more we do and plan to do with Yurbi internally, but those are just 3 examples of how we eat our own dog food…and it does taste yummy (ruff-ruff).
I’m proud of my technical “chops” and I’d like to say that I know just enough in about every subject to be dangerous. Give me an example and I can tweak it until it’s exactly what I need. One of the things I love about modern Web 2.0 and/or SaaS software is that it’s designed for folks like me. You don’t have to be a hard core developer to do amazing things.
In my Software Hall of Fame, I list some of the solutions on the net that I leverage for our company. All of them require a little vision, time, and attention, but for someone who loves technology you can do some amazing things with them straight from the GUI, no programming or scripting required.
Yurbi brings that approach to the Business Intelligence space. I found years ago that I was unable to “tweak” my way around in the BI space. Mainstream applications like Crystal Reports required knowledge of SAP Business Objects proprietary programming and while I used to be a Foxpro wiz, I never felt like taking the time to learn Crystal. Even some of the solutions that are newer and popular today, like Qlikview, still require more programming than I would like to tackle. So, if I need to hire a consultant or leverage a developer from my IT staff for it, then it’s a good indication that it’s not the right product for me.
This gives you a little background on the vision for how we architected and developed Yurbi. Yurbi is clearly the easiest business intelligence solution for non-IT based end users, but there is still that technical piece of connecting to your database and mapping out a Yurbi App. Without the Yurbi App, Yurbi doesn’t know how to translate user requirements into the technical jargon required to speak to databases.
Introducing Yurbi AnyDB
We actually released it a few months ago, but we have been refining and improving it on a regular basis. We still have improvements to make, but I’m pretty excited that a non-database guy like myself can make it work.
So what does it take? Well, as I said, I know enough to be dangerous. I understand how database tables work, how they typically relate one table to another via a primary key. And I understand each field in a table has a data type such as character, integer, datetime, and others. That’s about it. My SQL query knowledge is limited to copying and pasting a select statement in the SQL Query Manager.
So, I issued myself a challenge. We use Deltek Time and Expenses for our time tracking system and we had an issue. Project Managers could only see the time charged to their projects if they were the timesheet approval of the technical consultant. For us that didn’t work because our consultants all report to a Consultant Manager and our Project Managers use various consultants on their projects (typical matrix organization). We purchased the Deltek reporting tool called Impromptu, but guess what? It is nothing more than IBM Cognos under the covers. No one in the company knew Cognos and I didn’t want to hire a consultant just to help me with this report. So, I decided to try to tackle the problem myself with Yurbi.
What I found is Deltek has a very complex database, for some reason the tables are all duplicated (not sure if that is normal or just out system). So, I contacted their support and found the administration guide that documented their data schema. With the assistance of that document, I was able to identify the tables that contained the key pieces I needed: Project Name, Employees, and Time Charged. The great thing about Yurbi, you only need to map the tables and fields you need. Deltek has over 100 tables and those 3 are the ones I need now (but I can always add to my app later).
My First Yurbi App
It took me about 2 hours of tinkering with the tables and experimenting with Left vs. Right joins. Yurbi made it easy. If one didn’t work, I just tried the other. The net result…I did it! With no SQL coding or programming knowledge, I made myself a Yurbi App and it works. I found myself spending the next 2 hours running numerous reports because I finally had access to an important piece of data that I had never been able to analyze. And boy was I surprised to see which of my staff had been putting the most time in the past few years! I never would have guessed who it was.
So that’s why I think Yurbi is the next big thing in the BI industry. When we say let Yurbi “Bring Your Data to Life” we really mean it. Give Yurbi a try and see how data-informed decision-making can change your organization (my project managers absolutely love my Yurbi App. I forgot to mention that I was able to securely give them access to only the Project Codes they manage). And best of all, if you do get stuck, our amazing customer support organization can get you up and running quickly.
Download Yurbi Community Edition today. Best thing about it…it’s free! All it just requires is a little tweaking by you or that person on your team that knows just enough to be dangerous (don’t worry Yurbi won’t allow them to cause any harm).
Thanks for reading,
David
I’ve been down with technology and software since Commodore 64. The past few years my passion has been setting the vision for Yurbi and watching it blossom into the amazing business intelligence solution that it is today (and constantly improving).
So I like good software and when I find it I try to use it. My definition of good software is in the context of what I, as a small-medium sized business owner, need. Software that is easy, intuitive, affordable and powerful.
Its been an amazing few years because a plethora (yes I used that word) of great apps, such as Software as a Service (SaaS), Web 2.0, and Social Networking software have exploded onto the scene. So I decided to put out a list of all the software applications I think are cool. Most of these I use for my businesses (5000fish and OakTree Solutions).
Take this list with a grain of salt. Although I did do my research and tried a lot of products before deciding on the ones below, my opinion and a cup of coffee…will get you a cup of coffee.
I’ll update this list as I find new and cooler apps. Feel free to comment if you have a suggestion for me to try out.
Hall of Fame (in no particular order)
Glance (acquired by Salesforce.com)
Pandora (hey, I can’t work without my music 
)
