Reasons People Find Data Mashup Interesting

This is the continuation of the transcript of a Webinar hosted by InetSoft on the topic of "What's New in InetSoft's Business Intelligence Software: Mobile BI" The speakers are Mark Flaherty, CMO at InetSoft, and Kelly Takach, Principal Technologist at InetSoft.

Mark Flaherty: Some of the reasons people find data mashup interesting is for when they want to make sure to include all these different data sources that are out there now. It really comes from the imperative to have that unified view of corporate performance in an executive monitoring dashboard or balanced scorecard. There are different ways people want to be able to see data and performance in many different functions.

Another one to point out is that people are finding it useful for those temporary projects. For example, maybe the marketing department is doing a campaign with an outside vendor, and the vendor reports back the results of the interactions of the campaign by different leads and prospects in a spreadsheet, and it's just a one-time project. You still want to integrate that data with your CRM and see what’s happening with the sales that are resulting from those leads, but you don’t necessarily want to import all that campaign data into your CRM or create a data warehouse for it.

With our data mashup platform, you can just create a link to that spreadsheet, and it becomes to another data source that you can just easily mash it up with data that’s already in your BI environment. So these are a few interesting applications. I would ask Byron Igoe, maybe you have seen some other ones you wanted to mention.

Move From a Mess of Excel Spreadsheets

Kelly: Yeah, there were two interesting ones that I saw with customers recently. One was based on in their desire to move from a mess of Excel spreadsheets to a more established system that is going to store all the information in a single database that will have more consistency. As an interim step, they are actually using our data mashup layer to combine all the data from the different spreadsheets.

It's also like a data virtualization layer because once the database is in place then they only have to modify where those atomic sources are pointing to. So just replacing the spreadsheets with some database queries, all of the dashboards and reports built on top of it will continue to work as previously.

And then the second case is more for analytics. So actually this is driving some of our enhancements both in the most recent 11.1 version and in our future roadmap. We are really beefing up some of the analytical and calculation capabilities in the worksheet and even in the new sheet layer.

Flaherty: Okay, great. So now on to some of the specific highlights of current release. The headline has been mobile BI because that’s probably the most readily apparent advance. We have always been able to provided mobile BI to those devices that have a browser and a Flash player. So now this advance is delivering support for the Apple iOS devices. The iPad has become so popular in business place.

Server-side Dashboard Rendering

Now it's no longer a requirement to have a Flash Player. The business intelligence application on the service side detects the situation on devices and renders the interactive dashboard appropriately. So you don’t need to worry about what OS you have on device, and it really broadens that mobile BI capability.

The second one to mention has to do with making additional functions available to you right in your dashboard. So for example, it could be a percent of total calculation where before you had to create the total in the worksheet or even in the database now the function is available on the fly when you are creating a dashboard.

And then the last one is relevant for people who provide multiple levels of support for their Style intelligence deployment. Lot of times, it can be in a Cloud environment where you have got certain employees, certain staff that are handling different functions of support such as just doing updates and fixes to a dashboard. Now you can just give them the Style Studio application and they can post updates to their remote server, and they don’t need to have the full Enterprise Manager Application.

Interesting Scenario of Using Data Mashup Software

Imagine a mid-sized regional hospital that is trying to improve patient care outcomes while also managing costs more effectively. The hospital has separate systems for electronic health records, billing, staff scheduling, and patient satisfaction surveys. Each of these data sources provides valuable insights on its own, but taken in isolation they can only tell part of the story. By using data mashup software, the hospital is able to combine these disparate streams into a single, cohesive view. Suddenly, administrators can correlate patient satisfaction scores with wait times, staff levels, and even billing accuracy, uncovering patterns that would have remained hidden without integration.

One particularly revealing mashup might involve overlaying emergency room staffing schedules with patient inflow data and satisfaction scores. If the analysis shows that patient dissatisfaction spikes during certain shifts, leadership can investigate whether understaffing or slower response times are the cause. In addition, by pulling in financial data, the hospital can see whether extended wait times are leading to increased costs from additional treatments or follow-up visits. This kind of integrated analysis allows decisions to be data-driven rather than anecdotal, leading to both improved care and more efficient use of resources.

Another practical benefit comes in forecasting and planning. With a mashup of public health data, weather patterns, and historical patient intake, the hospital can anticipate spikes in flu cases or heat-related emergencies. This allows management to adjust staff schedules proactively and order supplies in advance. By blending internal and external data sources, the hospital creates a much richer picture of the environment in which it operates. The scenario highlights how data mashup software goes beyond simple reporting—it empowers organizations to see connections that would otherwise be invisible, driving better strategic and operational decisions.