Editor’s Pick: Find, Reuse Data Hidden in Enterprise Systems

By Anthony J. Lockwood

p>Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

The Prego spaghetti sauce people once had this series of TV commercials with the tag line “it’s in there,” meaning garlic and herbs. Hissed through clenched teeth, is there a better phrase than “it’s in there” to express the frustration of knowing you have the data but you just can’t pinpoint it in your repositories? Overcoming that drag on productivity by enabling you to find, retrieve, reuse, and re-purpose your data is the raison d’  tre underlying VisiQuity, a search-based application from NovaQuest, a provider of product and lifecycle management solutions based out of Charlotte, NC. Joel Lemke, BTW, is the president and CEO of NovaQuest. Joel is an industry good guy. He once headed up ENOVIA and Dassault’s PLM operations in the US.

Announced last October, and just enhanced with knowledge management capabilities, VisiQuity combines Dassault’s Exalead CloudView platform for search-based applications with NovaQuest-developed information management functionalities. So, what does VisiQuity give your organization? In a nutshell, enhanced decision making by making it possible to find and reuse data “lost” in your databases.

For document management, VisiQuity has three complementary capabilities. First, there’s a preview mode that responds to your search with the most relevant “page” of a document. Next, you can attach predefined tags and apply sticky notes to pages and documents, speeding up future searches. The third is the data enricher that provides the ability to copy selected pages in documents or records from a database into a work area called a “Spliceboard.” There, you can select and export your content of interest then splice it into a new, composite document.

The newly incorporated knowledge management functionality extends VisiQuity’s connectivity so that it embraces data formerly confined to your enterprise systems: PLM, ERP, CRM, collaboration applications, and homegrown solutions where content resides in a database or a file-based structure. Just like with content in a database, VisiQuity lets you tag this information, add sticky notes, and repackage it into new documents, and you even can collaborate via public and private discussion threads. What that means is analysts, designers, engineers of all stripes, and managers have the data to work with and make informed decisions efficiently.

Somewhat before the Information Age, Socrates told us to “know thyself,” to which the Romans replied “scientia potentia est”—knowledge is power. That’s what VisiQuity is really all about. The data you need is in there. VisiQuity sounds like a better way to leverage your intellectual content for things like product innovation and research, regulatory compliance, inventory management, customer service, proposal development, and building reports for management. You can read more about it in today’s Pick of the Week write-up.

Thanks, pal.—Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Read today’s Pick of the Week write-up.

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