> Edge BI Feature Tour > Search and Exploration Combine the simplicity and speed of search with the trust and analytical power of business intelligence (BI) to provide immediate answers to business questions, using familiar keyword searches to find information and explore directly on data.
With SAP BusinessObjects Edge BI you can put the power of business intelligence into the hands of all your business users, arming any employee with the clarity and insight to act more quickly and make smarter, more effective business decisions.
Simplicity of search
Edge BI offers users an intuitive path to quickly search and explore data for instant insight into your business.
They can get quick, easy answers to on-the-fly questions without training or IT involvement, by simply entering a few keywords to search for relevant information and then intuitively exploring large volumes of data – without prior knowledge about what data exists or where to find it.
Analytical Power of BI
Edge BI presents the most relevant keyword search results first, and complements it with additional contextually relevant details. In addition, it auto-generates the chart that best represents the information.
For example, when displaying percentage breakdowns of a multi-entry data set, it generates a pie chart; when comparing multiple members like revenue and profit, it displays a bar chart. Information workers benefit from this self-service discovery without needing to understand the data, where it is located, or how it is structured. The experience is as easy as browsing an online store.
Information at the speed of thought
For example, a liquor distributor would like to understand purchasing behavior of wines over various regions. When she types, “wine sales region” into a search box, Edge BI finds and presents a chart that shows revenues of wine across organizational regions.
Recognizing that time is the most relevant attribute associated with regional wine sales, the software automatically displays sales by year. The liquor distributor has a choice of dynamic categories for viewing data to iteratively see new information. For example, to browse by a characteristic like sweetness, she can switch the view from revenue to inventory, and drill to more granular details that describe types of wine and subregions.
As she spontaneously and iteratively navigates through new information, additional information choices are presented to her – all at the speed of thought.
Share and take your results further
Insight derived from Edge BI is easily sharable with others. Search and exploration findings can be shared as web links or be exported to Microsoft Excel for further sharing options.
Search and exploration findings can also be integrated with Edge BI's ad hoc components to create additional calculations and charts, and format tables on the exported data.
