Analysis Made Easier 2

The ability to give a wide range of workers access to information generated by business-intelligence software is moving forward with the release of applications from MicroStrategy Inc. and SAS Institute Inc.

MicroStrategy this week will debut software that lets employees with little technical expertise use Microsoft Office desktop applications to access MicroStrategy analysis tools. SAS last week began offering SAS 9, an upgrade to its core business-intelligence software with new role-specific interfaces and other capabilities for nontechnical workers.

Business-intelligence software is used mostly by technically savvy users and business analysts or by IT workers who develop static reports. Vendors haven't done a great job of providing easy-to-use tools, says Forrester Research analyst Keith Gile.

SAS 9 provides a series of interfaces that can be tailored to users' roles and needs. One is designed for professionals, such as insurance actuaries, who need to be guided through a data-analysis problem. Another is for information consumers who are not involved with behind-the-scenes data analysis. "Eighty-five percent of all end users don't want to build anything," Gile says. "It's really a [data] consumer issue here, rather than a producer issue."

Quaker Chemical Corp. plans to use SAS 9 to make more production data available to plant workers to set production schedules and to let sales reps analyze orders, says CIO Irving Tyler. "We want to get information out to as many people as possible."