It’s an exciting time to be in the world of data and business intelligence.
Recent advances in AI and machine learning are not only changing the way we interact with data, but also pushing those of us who build analytics and BI platforms to think critically about how our products can best serve our customers moving forward. Some will always love getting hands-on with data—but that’s no longer the only option.
ML and AI are becoming mainstream tools, available to process vast amounts of information and uncover key insights in a matter of seconds. The potential impact of these technologies to expand who has access to information and improve how organizations make decisions is momentous. We are at the beginning of a new era of rapid innovation, technological advancement, and ideas sharing. One defined by technology that centers on people’s experiences and ideas, not the other way around. We are entering the Data Renaissance.
Over the past year, almost every notable BI vendor has come forth with a plan to integrate generative AI into their tools. We’ve seen promises of chatbots, auto-generated dashboards, and natural language search, but the hype cycle is ending. Customers are demanding real business value from GenAI.
Delivering natural language-driven, accurate, and trusted analytics is a non-trivial challenge. On its own, foundation models are built for natural language understanding but not for analytical computation. For example, GPT is unable to handle the complexity of business data. It doesn’t handle joins on multiple tables, it gets confused if a question has too many attributes, and has limited support for handling date functions. Moreover, there is no governance and security, so insights are not verifiably accurate.
To build ThoughtSpot Sage on the other hand, we augmented our patented relational search technology with the power of LLMs to provide a natural language front end on top of a robust, battle-tested computational engine that delivers accurate results on complex data at scale. Transparency is available at every step as well as advanced human-in-the-loop verification and training controls for users, analysts, and administrators. And we are thrilled to share that customers have reported up to 95% accuracy using ThoughtSpot Sage when compared to GPT alone.
At ThoughtSpot we are building a platform to help your business lead in this new era. One that centers the human experience, drives accurate outcomes and operates on a transparent and secure foundation.
Centering the human experience
To be human is to search for answers. We seek explanations for the unknown and look for order in the incomprehensible. And yet, despite our curiosity, humans are naturally creatures of habit. We gravitate towards familiar environments, tools, and languages—especially those that inspire balance and the comfort of certainty.
ThoughtSpot’s search-first approach to analytics is built to serve human curiosity, with a user experience designed for everyone. Ask any business question to ThoughtSpot and you’ll get answers in seconds, plus you can drill anywhere to answer the next question. It’s fast, yes, and it’s also grounded in over a decade of leadership in search-driven analytics and performance across billions of rows of complex data. The platform is multi-experience, letting you work with your data to uncover meaningful answers however you want to do it – whether code-first, low-code or code-free in natural language.
Here’s how our AI-powered analytics technology works for any and every kind of user today.
For analysts
AI-assisted SQL generation. ThoughtSpot joined forces with Mode in June 2023 to deliver one platform that serves the full spectrum of business intelligence users. With Mode’s new AI Assist, analysts can unlock the power of flexible SQL expertise, empowering them to effortlessly refine, create, understand, troubleshoot, and optimize queries for increased efficiency in generating valuable business insights.
For business leaders
Natural language search powered by LLMs. With ThoughtSpot Sage, ThoughtSpot’s GenAI-powered natural language search experience, anyone can ask questions like a business leader and get answers like an analyst. Built on the world’s most advanced relational search engine, ThoughtSpot Sage combines the power of natural language processing and generative AI with the accuracy of our patented search technology. With guardrails provided by analysts, anyone, regardless of technical ability, can uncover AI-generated insights in plain speak – both on desktop and mobile.
Conversational BI. Ask Sage builds on the ThoughtSpot Sage experience, allowing users to ask follow-up questions and interact with their visualization or chart through a familiar conversational experience. Ask Sage is iterative, transparent, and contextual allowing users to uncover the exact insight they’re looking for, no matter the level of granularity.
AI Highlights on Liveboards. Using SpotIQ, AI Highlights surface both expected and unexpected changes since your last visit, along with key drivers explained in natural language, so that you can easily extract the most important takeaways.
Putting outcomes first
Historically, the Renaissance was defined by humans, spurred by new technology, as they spread knowledge and information to pursue a brighter, more fantastic future. In the Data Renaissance, ML and AI advancements will similarly augment human intelligence by providing explanations for the here and now, automating predictions for the future, and bringing unprecedented access to information whenever and wherever you need it.
Many data and analytics vendors want to show you how quickly AI can build a dashboard or suggest a question to ask a defined dataset, but only ThoughtSpot is designed with your outcomes in mind. When we first introduced SpotIQ, the idea of putting machine learning in an analytics tool was relatively novel. This year we are enhancing SpotIQ with what-if and what’s-next capabilities to put even more decision-making power in the palm of your hand. KPI Monitor brings focus to your world by providing clarity to what’s changing and why, while ThoughtSpot’s mobile app makes these experiences available to you from anywhere. And, with ThoughtSpot Everywhere, you can scale GenAI-powered analytics into any app, product, or portal you’re building. Let’s take a closer look at each.
For analysts
SpotIQ. SpotIQ uses sophisticated machine learning algorithms to automatically uncover anomalies, identify leading indicators, isolate trends, and segment data to better understand your business, all delivered in seconds in natural language. In 2024, advancements to SpotIQ include more powerful change analysis, contextual results viewing, and forecasting and what-if scenarios. With out-of-the-box options and third-party integrations, you can choose the ML model that best suits the needs of your business.
For business leaders
KPI Monitor. Powered by SpotIQ, KPI Monitor generates insights that alert you to the most important changes in your business—what’s happening and why—all explained to you in natural language and delivered wherever you are via email or the ThoughtSpot mobile app.
For product leaders and developers
Embedded natural language search. Building on the embedded analytics experience with ThoughtSpot Everywhere, Sage Embed now offers GenAI-powered natural language search into every product and app—enabling you to compose and embed tailored data experiences for customers.
AskDocs: Developers can now ask coding questions in natural language and receive contextual GenAI-assisted instructions and code from the Visual Embed SDK in both ThoughtSpot and developer documentation.
Building a transparent and secure AI foundation
The Renaissance brought forth new ideas about the agency of humans to make their own decisions. Similarly, the Data Renaissance emphasizes the importance of independent decision-making, trust, and responsible implementation of new AI technology.
ThoughtSpot’s approach to AI is grounded in transparency, freedom of choice, and keeping a human-in-the-loop at all times, allowing you the freedom to choose the AI implementation strategy that best fits the needs of your organization. Here’s what that means for you and your teams.
For analysts
Advanced human-in-the-loop feedback. ThoughtSpot Sage offers the most advanced human-in-the-loop feedback capabilities on the market today, designed to keep you in control. We’ve built a patent-pending feedback loop that lets you teach ThoughtSpot Sage how to answer domain-specific questions accurately by providing associations between business terms and phrases and your data model. View and edit all queries, as well as word and phrase-specific user-generated feedback, to deliver highly interpretable and accurate results. Learn more about how this works.
AI controls. ThoughtSpot’s AI Center will be your destination for privacy, security, and control over all things AI in ThoughtSpot. Choose which AI models power ThoughtSpot Sage and SpotIQ, and select the option that best suits the needs of your organization—whether it’s the reliable familiarity of GPT-4, privately hosted GPT, or bring your own LLM.
Embrace the Data Renaissance
There’s no denying the impact of GenAI on data and analytics. It’s here, it’s putting your business, your people, and your ideas back at the center of data where they belong, and ThoughtSpot is the platform to help every business capitalize on the breadth and depth of its potential. By freeing you from uninspired number crunching, hard coding, and manual sharing, you and your entire ecosystem can discover the unthinkable and do the impossible.
Request a demo today or sign up for our upcoming webinar on February 29 to see how customers like MDAudit are sparking their own Data Renaissance with ThoughtSpot.
