06.02.2015
Today at its annual Summit User Conference Information Builders, a leader in business intelligence (BI) and analytics, information integrity, and integration solutions, announced the launch of WebFOCUS Auto Linking, an innovation that enables users to easily find related data and analytics. The product, the industry’s first solution connecting all enterprise users with all enterprise content, is the latest Information Builders enhancement to foster the democratization of data access in self-service environments.
Businesses today are immersed in vast amounts of information contained in reports, dashboards, visualizations, and other formats. While these offer opportunities for more informed decision-making, users need the ability to connect the dots between these data elements to realize their full potential. Most data discovery tools only allow individual power users to blend data sources manually, without showing the connections between the ways in which different people use the same data in different situations. As a result, these ungoverned data discovery tools are essentially always siloed. WebFOCUS Auto Linking, however, uses the WebFOCUS platform’s consistent metadata to automatically detect related data and analytical content among InfoApps, reports, and other BI artifacts, which allows even non-technical users to navigate all related content throughout the enterprise. Users can jump from one piece of analytical content to another without requiring the set up of drill paths, common source files, or other parameters.
In addition to enabling ad hoc data exploration for end users, WebFOCUS Auto Linking also fosters cooperation and reuse of analytical assets. It’s not uncommon for organizations to have redundant reports and dashboards, created by multiple users who were unaware that similar data assets already existed. With the launch of WebFOCUS Auto Linking, Information Builders is removing this problem entirely. As developers bring fields into a new report, previously created assets are instantly available, enabling organizations to reuse, extend, and even template existing data elements. The solution also frees up IT resources, as developers can publish content without having to set up linking or drill downs.
“In order to make fully informed decisions, it’s critical that users have the ability to connect the dots between different pieces of information,” said Gerald Cohen, president and CEO of Information Builders. “WebFOCUS Auto Linking is the industry’s first technology to automatically provide this capability for all enterprise data elements, and we’re excited to bring the benefits to our global customer base. The technology underscores the power of having one unified platform, as it allows organizations to maximize data exploration without IT support or prior analytics knowledge.”
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