DrivenBI Helps Companies Drive Analytics to the Next Level

Privately held company DrivenBI was formed in 2006 by a group of seasoned experts and investors in the business intelligence (BI) market in Taiwan and the United States. Currently based in Pasadena, California, the company has been steadily growing in the ten years since, gaining more than 400 customers in both the English and Chinese markets.

Led by founder and CEO Ben Tai (previously VP of global services with the former BusinessObjects, now part of SAP), DrivenBI would be considered part of what I call a new generation of BI and analytics solutions that is changing the analytics market panorama, especially in the realm of cloud computing.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak with DrivenBI’s team and to have a briefing and demonstration, most of it in regards to their current analytics offerings and the company’s business strategy and industry perspective, all of which I will share with you here.
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How DrivenBI Drives BI
DrivenBI’s portfolio is anchored by SRK, DrivenBI’s native cloud self-service BI platform and collaboration hub.

SRK provides a foundation for sourcing and collecting data in real time within a collaborative environment. Being a cloud platform, SRK can combine the benefits of a reduced IT footprint with a wide range of capabilities for efficient data management.

The SRK native cloud-centralized self-service BI solution offers many features, including:

• the ability to blend and work with structured and unstructured data using industry-standard data formats and protocols;
• a centralized control architecture providing security and data consistency across the platform;
• a set of collaboration features to encourage team communication and speed decision making; and agile reporting and a well-established data processing logic.

SRK’s collaborative environment featuring data and information sharing between users within a centralized setting allows users to maintain control over every aspect and step of the BI and analytics process (figure 1).

Figure 1. DrivenBI’s SRK self-driven and collaborative platform (courtesy of DrivenBI)

DrivenBI: Driving Value throughout Industries, Lines of Business, and Business Roles

One important aspect of the philosophy embraced by DrivenBI has to do with its design approach, providing, within the same platform, valuable services across the multiple functional areas of an organization, including lines of business such as finance and marketing, inventory control, and resource management, as well as across industries such as fashion, gaming, e-commerce, and insurance.

Another element that makes DrivenBI an appealing offering is its strategic partnerships, specifically with Microsoft Azure and Salesforce.com. DrivenBI has the ability to integrate with both powerhouse cloud offerings.

I had the opportunity to play around a bit with DrivenBI’s platform, and I was impressed with the ease of use and intuitive experience in all stages of the data analytics process, especially for dynamic reporting and dashboard creation (figure 2).

Figure 2. DrivenBI’s SRK dashboard (courtesy of DrivenBI)

Other relevant benefits of the DrivenBI platform that I observed include:

• elimination/automation of some heavy manual processes;
• analysis and collaboration capabilities, particularly relevant for companies with organizational and geographically distributed operations, such as widespread locations, plants, and global customers;
• support for multiple system data sources, including structured operational data, unstructured social media sources, and others.

As showcased in its business-centered approach and design, DrivenBI is one of a new generation of BI and analytics offerings that enable a reduced need for IT intervention in comparison to peer solutions like Domo, Tableau, and GoodData. These new-generation solutions are offered through cloud delivery, a method that seems to suit analytics and BI offerings and their holistic take on data collection well. By replacing expensive IT-centric BI tools, the DrivenBI cloud platform is useful for replacing or minimizing the use of complex spreadsheets and difficult analytics processes.

DrivenBI’s Agile Analytics
My experience with DrivenBI was far more than “interesting.” DrivenBI is a BI software solution that is well designed and built, intuitive, and offers a fast learning curve. Its well-made architecture makes the solution easy to use and versatile. Its approach—no spreadsheets, no programming, no data warehouse—is well-suited to those organizations that truly need agile analytics solutions. Still, I wonder how this approach fits with large BI deployments that require robust data services, especially in the realms of merging traditional analytics with big data and Internet of Things (IoT) strategies.

To sample what DrivenBI has to offer, I recommend checking out its SRK demo:

(Originally published on TEC's Blog)