Yellowfin celebrated its 20th Birthday last month and it enabled me, once again, to reflect! I seem to be doing a lot of “reflecting” these days!!
Leading up to the celebrations, I was asked to comment on our experiences with Yellowfin and I wrote the following: “I took the decision to become the Yellowfin Distributor for Sub Saharan Africa 10 years ago and have thoroughly valued the relationship ever since. In any fiercely competitive market, the key to success is differentiation. Yellowfin’s product innovation and functionality, together with their “go to market” strategy and culture, has been instrumental in enabling AIGS Insights to build a successful and “different” BI and Data Analytics business.”
Clearly, they were happy with what I said since it is included in the quotes from Partners on their website!
In 2013 Yellowfin was very focused on the Asia Pacific region and, apart from North America, had very little direct presence anywhere else in the world. In those early days, Stephen van Rooyen (our Stephen!) was Yellowfin Technical Support for EMEA!
Fortunately, that changed quite quickly and the Yellowfin EMEA business was soon established, with an office in the UK.
The promotional activity around the 20 Years included a fascinating online interview by the current Yellowfin General Manager, John Burr, with 4 key members of the original Management Team – Co-Founders Glen Rabie and Justin Hewitt, with Brad Schaaf and Daniel Shaw-Dennis. It was extremely comforting to see that Brad and Daniel continue as key members of John’s current Management Team! If you get the chance, it is well worth watching! You’ll find it on the Website Landing Page under “Celebrating 20 Years of Innovation”!
The key take away for me was the realization that many of the unique and ground breaking features of Yellowfin – such as Signals and Stories – are still unmatched by any competitor!
As you know – because we continue to bang on about it – our unrelenting message is about value! Whenever a prospective customer or partner asks us about “cost” we assertively ask them to change their thinking! Almost every day we see demonstrations where our customers, and their customers, are deriving real value from their implementation of Yellowfin. Each one is different – because the use cases are invariably different, dependent on the type of business. However, the message is always the same, once the customer starts to utilize the analytical strength and versatility of Yellowfin and delivers the corresponding value, the “cost” is completely forgotten!
Last week we got together as a team for the first time in 2024 and, having put 2023 behind us, looked ahead at what 2024 will bring! Apart from the General Election, where we re-iterated the importance of participating, we have an incredibly exciting business year ahead! Under the guidance of Gustav and Stephen, our team has become a formidable force in helping our customers and partners identify and deliver the “value” and we are looking forward to scaling new heights and overcoming the new challenges that we know we will encounter!
Thanks to you for creating the challenges – please keep them coming!
