Proactive business intelligence gets Microsoft beta from Panorama

Dubbed NovaView Spotlight, it embeds key metrics and KPIs into Microsoft Outlook or the Microsoft Office task pane, to act as a smart personal dashboard. Panorama says that means information workers are automatically focused on the most relevant business insights, and that they are empowered to take context-sensitive actions based on these, without requiring specialist BI tools or expertise. “NovaView Spotlight is a major milestone for the BI industry, as it is the first application of its kind to take insights and key metrics and proactively push them to information workers, without bombarding them with large reports and an overflow of dated information,” says Eynav Azarya, CEO, Panorama. “The majority of today’s workers use Outlook and Office as their primary productivity applications,” adds Oudi Antebi, vice president marketing and strategy, Panorama. “It makes sense to deliver insights and information in a place where it is bound to be seen and acted upon.” In this first version, NovaView Spotlight works with all Office 2007 applications, as well as Office 2003’s Excel, Outlook and Word applications. Panorama also says that “in the near future”, the software will be available as web parts, as well as Google Gadgets and other desktop widget technologies.