Visual BI Tool Unveiled by InetSoft

InetSoft Technology this week introduced iScope, a business intelligence  real-time visual reporting tool for analyzing business and operational data from multiple disparate sources in real-time.

iScope combines InetSoft’s data block technology with a graphical interface that lets non-technical users build their own reports from any data source. The interface has an Excel-like row-and-column table, where the user drags and drops data sources onto the cells. All the data retrieval and formatting for display is done in the background.

“As performance management becomes more closely intertwined with operations, business intelligence itself is moving ever closer to operations,” said Luke Liang, CEO of InetSoft, in a statement. “By visually exploring dynamic data, feedback and input to operations and business managers can be immediate and impactful.”

The data can be presented in a variety of ways, such as charts and graphs, and it can be manipulated based on projections from current growth. Because data sources can be pulled in from different sources at any time without having to rebuild a report from scratch, research can be done on the fly.

IT has been increasingly expected to be a profit center for businesses, and Business Intelligence plays a major part in that. However, BI can be very difficult to implement and use.

BI is also becoming more important for building customer relations. “A lot of companies are looking to get input on improving business processes to be closer to the customer and getting customer feedback,” said Liang.

The interface in iScope allows anyone reading the data to drill down into data blocks to get subsets of data, to determine what constitutes one segment of data. The IT managers can determine who can access which data sources, so some people don’t get at valuable business data.