¶ … Business Intelligence: GoodData Software as a Service (or SaaS) applications have been gradually and increasingly growing as emergent forms of both product and service that provides solutions to companies' business intelligence needs. One of the emerging products in the SaaS market is GoodData, which offers business intelligence and data analytics solutions to businesses. GoodData markets itself as an application that caters to the end-user, that is, the product (application) can be used by the individual, with or without any high level knowledge of data analytics and business intelligence.

GoodData is the brainchild of software developer Roman Stanek. He founded the company in 2007. Even before he established GoodData, Stanek is already an active player in the software development industry, having founded and established Netbeans (Java development environment) and Systinet (SOA governance platform). Both of Stanek's earlier ventures were acquired by software development giants, Sun Microsystems in 1999 and Mercury Interactive/Hewlett Packard in 2006, respectively.

Since its inception, GoodData has steadily strengthened its positioning in the SaaS market for business intelligence and data analytics. Competition is fierce in the SaaS market for the business intelligence/data analytics category, with GoodData being pitted against other emerging leaders in the market, such as Klipfolio, Business Objects, and Domo. Currently, GoodData's clientele is composed of companies from entertainment and media (Time-Warner, Disney, Discovery, and Century Holdings), technology (Prezi, Bolder Thinking, Mindflash, Emerald Cube, Autopilot) and retail and ecommerce (Raise, Sparefoot, Red Bubble, Bonobos).

GoodData's application on data analytics seeks to provide its clients with business insights using the data they already have, only made useful and...

Looking at the GoodData dashboard, clients will be able to analyze their own data, and interpret it based on their needs. Data is shown visually through tables and charts, including report templates that help the user look and review the data within each dashboard item more thoroughly. The company's business intelligence solutions, meanwhile, come in the form of consultancy services, wherein the GoodData will help their clients derive insights from the data shown in the dashboard, and providing more ways on how the clients can manipulate and analyze their data to gain better understanding of their customers and sales and marketing data.
Since the dashboard and its back-end features make up the heart of GoodData, the end user must have an understanding of its key features and commonality with other data analytics applications available in the market. The dashboard is composed of five (5) key features: Marketing, Sales, Satisfaction and Sentiment, Data Discovery, and Create a Report. Under the Marketing dashboard, key metrics such as demographic reach, channel impressions and sentiment, and marketing campaign effectiveness are measured and displayed. Data shown can be based on monthly, quarterly, annual data. Within each metric shown, the user can click at the headers and/or numbers, and s/he will be directed to another page or a pop-up window, displaying the actual data used to compute for the said metric. The user also has the option to change the kind of visual display or representation used in the dashboard. As needed, the user also has the freedom to change the metric included in the marketing dashboard, making it more customized and suited to the information needs of the user.

The Sales dashboard features metrics and data commonly found in both online and traditional businesses: total units sold, total revenue,…