It begins with a question

At emanio we have realized that the world of business intelligence and analytics has become lost in a sea of charts, dashboards, drill-downs and SQL statements. At the end of the day, business intelligence, is about answering business questions. "What happened to sales last month?" "Why did the western region out-pace the rest?" "What caused us to miss our numbers?" These and millions of other questions inspire business users each day to dive into the murky waters of data analytics, only to get lost. In fact, as late as 2012, BI abandonment rates were still higher than 80%.

emanio is a new beginning. A true revolution in data analytics driven by one passion: making data analytics as simple as asking questions. In the end, it's the only way to bring the business user closer to the truth.

What's with all those bubbles?

Charts, charts and more charts. The BI industry seems to believe that throwing more types of charts at the problem will magically make it go away. But what happens when your business users don't know how to analyze those charts? Confusion ... frustration ... abandonment. It's the bane of every business intelligence deployment. In fact, between technical challenges and abandonment rates, most BI projects still only have a 5% chance of success! And it's getting worse. According to a 2012 report by the McKenzie Group, by 2016 the US alone will have a shortfall of nearly 1.5 Million business users with analytical skills. Throwing more bubble charts at them does not help.

At emanio we think that business intelligence software should be smarter. It should guide business users through the discovery process, providing feedback and assistance at every step.

Self-service is DOA ...

Self-service BI: It's been the dream of the business intelligence industry since day one. A system so easy to use, so intuitive that business users would flock to it. Creating charts and dashboards in record time - publishing them to their fellow users, engaging in active creative dialog, and bringing happiness to all. But what if business users don't want to create charts and dashboards? What if business users just want answers to their business questions? What if all they want to do is solve problems? A 2013 Ventana Research report shows that 67% of BI evaluations focus on Usability, with the need to collaborate (67%) and deliver information (63%) top in evaluation criteria.

In fact, a late 2012 survey by TechTarget's Wayne EcKerson found that only 36% of the survey respondents gave their BI self-service programs a grade of "good" or "excellent.

At emanio we believe that users should be empowered to uncover the answers to base questions that drive their business. We believe that "discovery" is an unplanned process that must be streamlined to the user and that must happen in the most natural way possible.

Dash-BORED... not dashboard...

A 2012 article by Ventana Research CEO Mark Smtih says it all: "...the basic presentation of a number of charts on the screen has not improved significantly and worse yet neither has the usefulness of the charts. Let’s face it: It’s a big mistake to place several bar and pie charts on a screen side by side and assume that business viewers will know what they mean and what is important in them. We cannot assume that individuals in an audience have the ability to interpret charts and draw the right conclusions from them; just being pretty or interactive will not communicate the desired message." What more can we add? static dashboards don't work, they only provide a small subset of the data that users need every day.

At emanio we believe that users should be exposed to information that is relevant to them every day, regardless of the source of that information, the author or its originally intended purpose. If you have the rights to know, you should get the information - period.

Collaborate ... but with who?

Gluing a chat window to a dashboarding system does not "collaborative business intelligence" make. From looking around the sea of software solutions that do just that, however, you'd think that everyone has forgotten about their open Yammer, MSN Messenger or other collaboration software windows floating elsewhere on their desktop. How exactly do you know with whom you should collaborate? How do you uncover the wealth of hidden know-how that has never been exposed to you only because it was generated in another department by another person who has nothing to do with your job or responsibility? How does the sales manager discover that an operations manager four states away has discovered a defect is causing a high rate of product returns? How do we get them to collaborate?

At emanio we believe that data - and shared discovery of data - should be the driver to collaboration. That people should come together automatically when they seek questions to related topics.