IBI last week also touted its Active Reports tool, which began shipping April 10, as a means to extend BI to new internal and external users. The tool allows users to drill down into a report via e-mail as if they were connected directly to a BI report server.

Since December, Air Canada has been using a beta version of Active Reports, which it hopes can be used to provide reports to its international sales force, said Chantal Berthiaume, manager of marketing intelligence and information delivery at the Montreal-based airline.

The airline may also use the tool to provide reports to customers -- something the company had earlier decided not to do, she said. "There is no way we could invest in the infrastructure," Berthiaume said. "[Now] we would just have to send them an e-mail."

Rebecca Price, applications administrator at Dillard's Inc. in Little Rock, Ark., said she hopes the department store chain can roll out Active Reports to help its buyers more easily access current product sales data while on the road.

Price said Dillard's has decided to extend the use of IBI's WebFocus tools beyond the accounting department, the company's only current user.