Boehringer Ingelheim, a pharmaceutical company based in Ingelheim, Germany, began using Spotfire's DecisionSite data analysis software at the end of last year, said Wilbert Beumer, the company's sales force effectiveness manager.

While users liked the software -- which can highlight the results of data analysis through visualization -- they wanted a tool that could work more like Excel by showing analysis results numerically, he said.

The company installed a beta version of DXP a month ago and plans to go to production with the new tool next month. It will replace Excel and existing business intelligence reporting tools from Cognos Inc., Beumer said.

About 20 district and national sales managers and 80 sales employees will be using the software, he said.

With DXP, the company found it can give users the flexibility of doing their own analysis and building their own reports without requiring spreadsheets, he said.