Enhanced BI tools tailored to industries

SAS and Cognos both boost their reporting tools with enhancements

Business intelligence (BI) giants SAS and Cognos have gone head-to-head with major updates to make their respective reporting tools more accessible to larger numbers of end-users.

SAS used its annual user group conference in San Francisco to unveil three new and seven enhanced BI tools to better address the needs of specific industries, including financial services, manufacturing, retail and telecoms.

The tools include enhanced versions of SAS' anti-money-laundering and credit risk management software, as well as new modules to help manufacturers optimise after-sale support and help telcos to manage revenue streams.

Jason Goodwin of SAS said that such industry-specific functionality could give firms quicker returns on investment than if they deployed generic reporting tools and then customised them.

Cognos, meanwhile, launched an updated version of its Cognos 8 BI suite featuring enhanced search capabilities and tighter integration with leading business applications.

The new Cognos Go search engine is designed to bring internet-style search capabilities to firms' reporting environments and help users better manage the increasing amount of business data that BI tools provide, the company said.

A browser-based interface provides keyword search functionality and ranks results based on users' priorities, while the engine searches the full content of Cognos reports, not just the title and metadata. The vendor also announced tighter integration between Cognos 8 and Microsoft, SAP and Siebel applications.