* Information Builders takes business intelligence to remote and mobile employees.
Business intelligence technology has been getting a lot of attention lately. Announcements from a few different vendors share one common theme — getting relevant analysis tools quickly and easily into the hands of more employees, as opposed to a few select power users.
Microsoft last week detailed its plans to add a slew of new business intelligence features that will be available in the next version of Microsoft Office, code-named Office 12, due out in late 2006. It also is finalizing a new business intelligence server product, called Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005, which is due to be released this month.
For its part Siebel Systems last week announced the latest release of its analytic applications and business intelligence platform, Siebel Business Analytics 7.8.
This week it’s Information Builders that’s talking about business intelligence. Information Builders is due to unveil WebFocus Active Reports, a new offering that lets users access analytic tools wherever they are — in a corporate or branch office, from home or on the road. Users can create WebFocus Active Reports while they’re connected to a corporate network or offline. The idea is to take business intelligence to front-line workers, the company says.
It’s about making business analytics portable, says Rado Kotorov, a strategic products manager at Information Builders. Large enterprise customers were asking for ways to arm staff with data analysis tools that are easy to take on the road and customize as necessary. One key user segment is salespeople.
“As salespeople are visiting different offices and different clients, they should be able to interact with data, take certain pieces of the data – like a particular customer’s invoices — separate that data from the rest, analyze it, and create a separate output that’s tailored to the customer,” Kotorov says.
Users need access to dynamic reports with calculations, filters and visualizations even though they may not be connected to the Internet, he says. In the past, enabling offline data analysis required users to have a separate application for manipulating data, such as Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet application. But using Excel for more complex analytic functions is difficult, and sending code-intensive custom templates to end users requires significant bandwidth, Kotorov says.
Companies were looking for a way to simplify the process. “Most of the people would like to be able to filter the data in their reports and chart certain things, without losing productivity. They just want to click on a button and get it done,” Kotorov says.
WebFocus Active Reports gives users portable, near real-time data access in a familiar format. Users can create reports in connected and disconnected mode, so they can view and interact with a report even when they’re offline. In addition, users can separate combined reports and create customized outputs to send to other users through the WebFocus Report Caster without having to rerun queries.
The user interface is HTML-based. “We call it a packaged application. The data and interactivity are packaged in a single HTML page,” Kotorov says.
For exporting data, users can create a new, formatted HTML page with the filtered data and send it out through an e-mail command. “It makes it very easy to decouple information from the data set and distribute it to people,” he says.
WebFocus Active Reports will be bundled with the enterprise version of Information Builders’ WebFocus server product. It’s due to be available in January.
The idea of putting business intelligence tools in the hands of any employee, from a home-based worker to an employee on the shop floor, makes sense. Users don’t have to wait for IT to deliver the custom versions they want, they can simply manipulate the data on their own and create near real-time operational reports.
The beauty of this approach is that users don’t wind up creating their own versions of the truth – which can happen when different people create and start manipulating different spreadsheets. The idea of a master data source gets lost, and user error can easily distort operational findings.
In today’s era of transparent financial reporting, thanks to legislation like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, it’s particularly important that senior executives maintain data accuracy. With far-flung users at home and on the road, that can be very tough to accomplish with confidence.
