BI Vendor QlikTech Fills Up With Holiday Spirit

Baffled about which wine to pick up en route to an important holiday party where you happen to know they’ll be serving elk? Business intelligence (BI) software vendor QlikTech International may be able to help you resolve that thorny little problem with its wine selector application.

Drawing on publicly available information and his own knowledge of more than 3,000 wines, a QlikTech consultant has created The Wine Press. The seasonal online application enables users to match up a wine with particular foods or choose a bottle based on a variety of characteristics including price, color, flavor, vintage and country of origin.

The Wine Press is the second in an upcoming series of consumer-type applications of BI software that QlikTech plans to showcase on its website, according to Anthony Deighton, the company’s vice president of marketing.

The first application, Kick It, Qlik It, Love It—timed to coincide with the World Cup tournament—appeared this summer and enabled soccer fans to analyze game scores and players’ performances. The application drew 30,000 visitors to QlikTech’s website over the course of the six-week championship and also revealed the interesting fact that the majority of professional players’ birthdays occur in the January-to-June time frame.

QlikTech is hoping that presenting fun and intriguing consumer applications of BI software will help drive the widespread adoption of the technology as BI moves out of the domain of experts and into the hands of general IT users, Deighton said. The vendor’s approach to BI focuses on enabling users to click their way around the technology and not require in-depth training to start using the software, he added.

QlikTech intends to spotlight an application each quarter in 2007, according to Deighton. At the same time, Qliktech plans applications of more regional appeal such as football championships specific to the United Kingdom as well as the The Ashes cricket series played between England and Australia.

While he’s not expecting The Wine Press to attract as many visitors as Kick It, Qlik It, Love It, the recommendation site is already proving popular, and Qliktech may well leave it in place beyond the holiday season, Deighton said.

As for what wine goes best with elk? The Wine Press recommends Argentina’s Broquel Malbec Mendoza red wine from 2000 as a very good value offering with flavors of coconut, fruit, mineral and oak. Enjoy!

-China Martens, IDG News Service (Boston Bureau)

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