InetSoft - a Pioneering Dashboard Software Vendor

InetSoft’s Unique Feature among Dashboard Software Vendors

One feature of InetSoft’s business intelligence technology that stands out among dashboard software vendors is end-user defined data mashup. A data mashup is when you combine two sources that weren’t originally intended to be combined. Specifically in the context of dashboards, this means being able to show data from different sources or make a mathematical manipulation of data from different sources and display it.

What is unique among dashboard software vendors, or any business intelligence software vendor for that matter, is InetSoft’s ability for end-users to define their own data mashup. That could mean a business user could import her own data from an Excel spreadsheet and then use it in her dashboard. Or, it could mean, in InetSoft’s drag and drop interface, a non-technical person could combine different data elements from different enterprise databases even if an IT administrator did not anticipate that combination and create the linkage in a data model beforehand. Moreover, any such end-user defined data mashup can now be shared with other users.

In other BI solutions, the business person who wanted to make this mashup (even if they did not know that is what it is called) would have been frustrated. Either he would have had to submit a change request to IT and wait for help, or he would have exported the data from the BI environment and created the mashup in a spreadsheet. Once it has left the BI environment, naturally the analytical or quasi dashboard output becomes susceptible to data errors - especially when updating it manually with new data. And wasted time and effort becomes institutionalized, countering one of the missions of a centralized BI solution, itself.