GoodData platform features and interactive demonstration overview

¶ … 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 more understandable using the GoodData platform. 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, sales trend per quarter or week, product consumption, and sales channels. The functionalities present in the Marketing dashboard (i.e., in-depth data reports available if the user clicks on the headers or numbers per item) are also available in the Sales dashboard. The third key feature, Satisfaction and Sentiment, takes on a different twist to data analytics in the advent of social media. Instead of the traditional way of asking satisfaction thru surveys, GoodData integrates in its application social media networks as part of its metrics. GoodData automatically connects social media sites as part of the company's data sources/references. From these social media sites, the application will compute for "social listening" and identify this according to specific demographic groups.

Data discovery is another interactive feature of GoodData, which puts into geographic perspective all data that GoodData processes. This feature identifies for the user which state in the United States or which country in the region contributes the most to the company' sales, has the lowest sales or revenue, among other metrics that the user can look into as part of his/her analysis and insight generation. Lastly, GoodData allows you to generate reports using a simple dashboard that does not require the user to know advanced methods and techniques in Excel or other data analysis program. It simply instructs the user what data or information will be included in the report, asks from the user a copy of the data or report, and the application converts this data report into a useful visualization or representation that the user can use and share with his/her team. All these key features in the dashboard intend to make the user feel comfortable making sense of actual data, and using this actual data to gain insights about the company's performance, and develop actionable recommendations based on this data and generated insights.

GoodData's data analytics dashboard has good promise for end users. What the company can further capitalize on is its business intelligence component, which the GoodData team can develop and make it more accessible to the end users. Currently, GoodData is offering this service in the form of consultancy, but perhaps business intelligence basics can be automated and developed into another application, or perhaps an extension of the current data analytics dashboard that GoodData already has, to enable the company promote its application as a holistic suite, providing both data analytics and business intelligence.