Glen Rabie

Stories and the natural selection of data

November 30, 2015 by Ted Cuzzillo

The problem with data storytelling, Yellowfin CEO Glen Rabie said to me the other day, is this: What happens to the story if the data tells a story they don’t want to tell? The data just gets wiped away. “The people who’re putting the story together will pick and choose what data to use.”

“Has it always happened?” he said. “Yes it has. Data is just another component. As purists we say that’s outrageous, but as a storyteller you say that’s legitimate.”

That’s what scares some people, mostly those who’ve led business intelligence to where it is today. Their dream of pristine truth pointing magnetic north, if not true north, turns into a bête noire as stories approach.

Later, though, they awake to a brighter day for data. Stories may not be pure, but data’s no virgin, either. And more people understand stories than they understand data.

Glen’s first job after university was preparing data and commentary for a group of executives. If they didn’t like the data, he recalls, they just excluded it from their reports. He also discovered that the commentary was the important part, not the data. He left off the commentary one day and was told to put it back.

Has it always happened? Yes, it has.

BI industry builds tools for itself: Yellowfin CEO

August 11, 2014 by Ted Cuzzillo

Why aren’t the data industry’s tools more widely adopted? Data-industry experts have fretted for years over the estimated 5 percent penetration. Yellowfin CEO Glen Rabie has an explanation.

“We never contextualize applications,” he said at the recent Pacific Northwest BI Summit. “We always talk about the homogenous product. We don’t know the consumer. We don’t tailor.”

We don’t talk about the “who.” Who uses our tools? And how they’re used? The marketing rarely distinguishes one industry from another. In fact, even when you read closely, you can’t find a unique selling proposition.

Perhaps worse, says Glen, the tools don’t accommodate different modes of comprehension. Contrary to the market buzz, not everyone is basically visual. There’s also audio and, yes, words.

Take the group of lawyers he works with, for example. “A chart means nothing,” he says with a shrug. “But give them 1000 words, and that means something to them.”

When people in the data industry look around for reasons to explain the disappointing penetration into business, they should instead look within the industry. “We’re building the tools for ourselves,” he says, and that leaves out a lot of users. Tools assume too much analytical skill or at least too much motivation when the value can’t be demonstrated.

Instead, he looks tools that aren’t even labeled “analytical.” When you plan a trip on Google Maps, for example, you see which route is fastest.

Self service BI, dead or alive?

September 10, 2012 by Ted Cuzzillo

A brief stir erupted several Friday mornings ago when Yellowfin CEO Glen Rabie declared to the Boulder BI Brain Trust that self service business intelligence is “dead.” It was one of those statements that makes you sit up and listen — one that leads you all the way to a surprising observation that now drives Yellowfin strategy.

If there had been a death, a body would surely have shown up, at least reports of missing solutions. We would have had to contact the family, starting with Tableau, Spotfire, and who knows who else. It’s a big, busy clan.