Crossroads 2002 A-List Award Winners

SPSS, Inc.
Chicago, IL

NViZn Visual Intelligence Platform
> Development Platform for Data Visualization

CUSTOMERS AT WORK

In a world full of data, decision makers rely on visualization to streamline the learning and decision-making processes. SPSS and its clients deliver applications and services to knowledge-intensive organizations and professionals. A market research firm, an information service provider, and a software company were among the reference customers. Common strategic objectives included:

§ Leveraging Web-based visualization to expand the market for their offerings

§ Letting business users interactively control their views of analytical data

§ Reducing visualization development costs and project time

WHY SPSS?

SPSS has assembled a Java-based development platform for producing highly interactive visualization applications. The nViZn platform leverages a grammar-based approach to application assembly that allows for the rapid creation of visualizations. It includes an extensive library of statistical techniques that companies can extend to include proprietary algorithms. nViZn is J2SE and J2EE-compliant and operates inside in a small footprint. Users can interact with the underlying data and use true data exploration and drill-down functionality. The high level of integration between the graphics and analytics provided by nViZn delivers greater ease of use for both developers and end users.

BUSINESS IMPACT

Near-term value: Flexibility is critical for companies that are delivering valuable analytical applications and information services to third parties. End customers want to customize visualizations in order to have a clear view of business-critical information. Without those capabilities, SPSS’s clients choose between delivering a less-effective solution or supporting customizations through developer-led services.

Enterprise innovation: Making sense of numbers is a perennial challenge. Visualization allows more business people to comprehend critical information while investing less time in painstaking analysis or interpretation. A market research firm is using nViZn to deliver visualization applications over the Internet. Now, the firm’s customers have access to their critical information in a form factor they can comprehend wherever they are and whenever they need it.

Technology gains: Before partnering with SPSS, companies faced a programming nightmare every time they introduced a new visualization application for their customers. In some instances, custom visualizations had to be coded by hand. In others, end users could not actually explore the source data behind the graphics. nViZn allows companies to introduce new products while providing a higher quality experience to their customers.

SUCCESS FACTORS

Project strategy: Early SPSS customers focused their use of nViZn training developers and unearthing additional customer requirements before building a broader set of visualization applications.

Learning: Organizations should make sure that the developers using the nViZn platform have strong Java skills and receive training from Illumitek on its grammar-based approach to visualization.

Resources: Understanding end-customer requirements and how they vary by industry and function is critical to the success of any nViZn development effort.

Fit: Companies that develop analytical applications or services should consider incorporating nViZn as part of their Web-based offerings.

COMPANY INFO

SPSS, Inc., is a public company (NASDAQ: SPSS)

312-651-3000
www.spss.com
Published: January 2002