BOARD International: Cognitive, Mobile, and Collaborative

Business Intelligence (BI) and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) software provider BOARD International recently released version 10.1 of its all-in-one BI and EPM solution. This release includes new user experience, collaboration, and cognitive capabilities, which will enable BOARD to enter into the cognitive computing field.

By incorporating all these new capabilities into its single BI/EPM offering, BOARD continues to uphold its philosophy of offering powerful capabilities within a single platform.

With version 10.1, BOARD aims to improve the way users interact with data significantly. The new version’s interface introduces new user interaction functionality in areas such as user experience and storytelling and is a major improvement on that of the previous version.

BOARD gave me an exclusive overview of the main features of version 10.1 and the company's product roadmap. Read on for details.

Getting On Board with Cognitive Technologies

With version 10.1, BOARD seems to be making its solution fit for a new era centered on machine learning. The solution uses natural language recognition (NLR) and natural language generation (NLG) capabilities to offer users new ways to interact with data (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. BOARD’s assistant (image courtesy of Board International)

For instance, users can now create an entire report in a drag-and-drop interface. They can also directly ‘talk’ to the system through spoken and written language. The system uses search-like strings that automatically translate human speech into words, words into queries, queries into reports, and finally reports that include the most important insights from the source information.

One key aspect of these features is that users can create a report by simply writing a search string or request. Specifically, BOARD uses a fuzzy search mechanism that searches the string for character sequences that are not only the same but similar to the query term to transform this request into a machine-generated report (Figure 2).

Figure 2. BOARD’s machine-generated report analysis (image courtesy of Board International)

BOARD can also identify, recover, and list reports that match the search criteria, such as reports generated by other users. This capability speeds up the solution development process by enabling users to identify existing work that can be used for a new purpose.


In-context Collaboration

BOARD has also improved its collaboration strategy, specifically by facilitating communication between users. The vendor has introduced an in-context collaboration feature that enables users to share their analyses, communicate via live chat, and enabling multiple users to edit and author reports in a single interface. Embedded security (Figure 3) ensures users have the right level of access and defines user groups. This enables users to share analytics securely and seems to improve the overall analysis of data and the development of analytics apps.

Figure 3. BOARD’s embedded collaboration features (Courtesy of Board International)

User Experience and Storytelling

BOARD is also continuing to focus heavily on customer experience and functional efficiency.

The latest version of BOARD’s BI and EPM platform has redesigned user interfaces, including a color-coded tile menu with icons to improve hierarchy management and touchscreen usability. In addition, the configuration panel now offers more time and analytics functions.

10.1 also introduces Presentations—a new storytelling capability that enables users to personalize their reports and save them as a live presentation. This enables users to share presentations that incorporate live information rather than static images and graphs with other users and groups, improving user collaboration.

This new feature lets BOARD stay up to date with current trends in BI and compete with other players in the field that already offer similar capabilities, such as Tableau and Yellowfin.

Mobility, Cognitive Capabilities, and Collaboration: BOARD’s Bet for the Future

BOARD also explained that it‘s paving the way for medium- and long-term product advancements.

In its latest release, BOARD has ensured its HTML 5- based client will replicate all the functionality of its existing Windows client interface in future. This will enable users to choose between mobile and desktop devices.

10.1 also introduces, new mobile apps and add-ons, which widen BOARD’s intrinsic analytics and data management capabilities and the solution’s mobile functions and features.   The company is also currently reinforcing the product’s interaction with the Microsoft Office software stack in a continuous effort to help users increase productivity. This will help users conduct BI and EPM analysis more easily as they will have access to embedded analytics services within the standard Office applications such as Word and Excel.

Lastly, 10.1 also includes more features for accessing big data sources and cloud-based technologies and has partnered with cloud CRM and Business Software leader Salesforce.com.It’s also worth noting that BOARD is now expanding its North American presence. Specifically, the vendor is increasing the number of its human and material resources to reinforce its marketing and sales efforts and support and services capabilities.

BOARD 10.1 offers a good balance of analytics and enterprise performance management capabilities. It could be a solution for those looking to start using analytics or enhance their existing analytics capabilities.

(Originally published on TEC's Blog)