Spotfire to bolster BI usability

New suite makes it easier for users to spot patterns within data

Business intelligence (BI) software specialist Spotfire today unveiled a major update to its Spotfire DXP analytics suite designed to make it easier for business users to analyse corporate information and discover interactions between different datasets.

The new Spotfire DXP 1.1 suite features enhanced guided analytics capability for ensuring users get the right reports at the right stage of a business process and a new Data Relationships Tool that automatically finds correlations within a dataset and highlights the most significant relationships between different data.

Mark Lorion, director of product marketing at Spotfire, said the new functionality would make it easier for users to spot patterns with corporate data. "You can point at a piece of data and ask what is affecting it and why," he explained. "For example, you might spot poor market share in one region and you'd automatically be able to look at the underlying metrics and find out why you are underperforming."

The new suite also features enhanced graphical functionality, including new "box plots", which aim to make it easier for users to gain an overview of a dataset and spot statistical anomalies, and statistical summary tables, which allow users to create their own business metric dashboard that automatically updates as data changes.

"The aim is to allow the business user to pick what data they need to look at and analyse without them having to call a statistician or the IT department to request changes," explained Lorion. "The new suite is very visual and interactive, which makes it easier for users looking at sales reports, for example, to rapidly discover new insights and find those diamonds in the rough that need further action."