PivotLink Bows Analytic Sales, Marketing and HR Apps

"Prebuilt analytic applications" is getting to be one of the most-used phrases in business intelligence. The latest to use it is software-as-a-service BI vendor PivotLink, which yesterday introduced prebuilt analytic apps for sales, marketing and human capital management.

PivotLink's ReadiMetrix applications are designed to work with other SaaS environments. The sales app, for example, is pre-integrated with the standard and customer data models used by Salesforce.com. The marketing app works with SaaS apps from Marketo (and, soon, Eloqua). The human resources (HR) app is designed for the Workday SaaS-based ERP data model (though it also works with on-premise Oracle PeopleSoft ERP).

The "prebuilt" part of the new offerings includes analytic key performance indicators (KPIs), reports and collaborative dashboards said to speed access to BI insight.

"These applications take a matter of days to implement, they are very visually appealing, and they're designed to help business users make decisions, not just look at data," said Quentin Gallivan, PivotLink's CEO, in an interview.

The sales app provides 56 KPIs, 17 reports and four dashboards detailing sales pipeline velocity, lead conversion forecast accuracy and sales performance. The marketing app provides 42 KPIs, 10 reports and four dashboards exploring prospect and lead generation, lead-to-opportunity analysis, lead source and cost analysis, and opportunity segmentation and profiling. The HR app has 17 KPIs, 12 reports and six dashboards analyzing compensation and benefits, attrition, span of control and compensation-to-performance.

Despite their prebuilt nature, the ReadiMetrix apps can be customized to add on-premise data sources and additional services, metrics, reports and dashboard displays.

"The goal is get quick wins with identified data sources, but we expose the sources, the data definitions and the specific calculations so you can go in and tweak the calculations if necessary," said Dyke Hensen, PivotLink's senior vice president of product marketing. "We also take a columnar approach to data, so we can add new data sources and metrics without breaking the schema or altering fact tables."

Plenty of conventional, on-premise BI software vendors have introduced or are adding prebuilt applications, so it's only natural that SaaS-based BI vendors would follow suit. Last November, SaaS-BI vendor Oco launched prebuilt customer and sales management analytics with integrations to multiple backend systems.

PivotLink's ReadiMetrix applications are available immediately. Subscriptions for the sales and marketing applications start at $12,000 per year. The HR app starts at $24,000 per year. Over the next six months, PivotLink plans to introduce additional ReadiMetrix applications for supply chain management, retail, order management and other, partner-developed applications built on the PivotLink platform.