BI player Yellowfin hopes for big splash in UK channel
Business Intelligence vendor opens new Milton Keynes office and plans 10 new hires
Business intelligence (BI) player Yellowfin has today announced it is expanding its UK operations by opening a new office and talking up its plans to recruit staff.
Founded in 2003, privately held Yellowfin delivers BI and analytics software which allows customers to see their data organised in a dashboard.
The Australia-headquartered vendor is now focusing its efforts on expanding its UK channel presence in order to accommodate its growth ambitions.
About 80 per cent of its revenue currently comes through the channel, but its newly appointed EMEA managing director Peter Baxter said he is planning to boost this figure.
"We are going to grow our business by embracing the channel in the UK and in other parts of Europe, so my goal by the end of this year is to be a 100 per cent channel-based business," he said.
The firm's new office is in Milton Keynes and will be home to 10 partner-focused staff who will come on board in the coming months.
Baxter would not say how many new partners Yellowfin is seeking, but said they would be essential to its growth plans.
"We want to be at $100m (£65.6m) [in global revenue] in three years' time. If that's through 50 partners or 250 partners, then so be it," he said.
Yellowfin – which operates a single-tier channel model in the UK and has 30 partners on its books – claims to be looking to recruit "BI-ready resellers" with a good customer install base and great professional services capabilities.
Baxter said Yellowfin is different from its competitors in that it offers clarity to its partners in its sales approach, and said that some of Yellowfin's rivals "have very confused routes to market", and are unsure if they want to go direct or not.
According to Baxter, Yellowfin offers a very competitive partner programme, which includes lead generation, sales and technical training and offers 30 per cent margins on all its products to its partners.
Some of Yellowfin's notable European customers include the NHS, Honda and Germany's University of Konstanz.