[BI] has made the folks at the DOT much more aware of how ... they directly affect those projects being delivered."

Jonathan Rothman, director of data management at Emergency Medical Associates in Livingston, N.J., said his company -- a group practice of 250 emergency room physicians -- began using BI tools after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The company uses BI to identify potential disease outbreaks based on the symptoms of patients who come in to various emergency departments.

"Without BI, we couldn't have done it -- there would have been no way," he said.

Nicholas Berg, senior manager of global business intelligence at Seagate Technology LLC in Scotts Valley, Calif., said his company has three separate global production versions of Business Objects software in place now -- including a system used at Maxtor, which Seagate acquired in May -- that it plans to integrate next year.

Berg said that using Business Objects XI Release 2 -- the company's newest BI tool set, which ties together its reporting and analysis software -- allows users to more easily access self-service data because the user interface looks the same for the different tools.