Accenture Has New 'Data-Hoovering' AppAccenture Has New 'Data-Hoovering' App

Accenture is quietly shopping around a new app that lets people pull data, in real time, from a wide range of back-end sources using Microsoft Excel and Word. The technology relies heavily on Web services and information-integration software from Juice Software Inc.

Packaged business-intelligence tools generally access pre-aggregated data stored in offline data warehouses. Accenture's system, called Live Information Models, pulls structured and unstructured data from databases, ERP apps, legacy systems, and external data sources such as news wires and Web sites. The data streams into Excel or Word, where users manipulate it for their own needs.

Using Excel to access enterprise system data "gives the end users what they really want," says Philip Russom, a Giga Information Group analyst. Microsoft's Active X Data Objects technology also links Excel to back-end data sources, he says, but it's limited to point-to-point connections.

Accenture is showing prototypes of Live Information Models to potential customers, particularly in pharmaceutical and financial-services markets, but no companies are using the technology yet.