Business intelligence (BI) specialist QlikTech is aiming to fill a hole in Sage’s portfolio with an updated version of its BI snap-in for SalesLogix customers.

The company has signed an agreement for Chase International to distribute its I-Reports 2.0 product that provides real-time reporting for Sage CRM SalesLogix. QlikTech sees I-Reports as a way to add functionality for the 750 or so companies running SalesLogix in the UK.

“It’s a snap-in to SalesLogix that lets you have a full-blown analytical function either connected or offline,” said Jason Bissell, QlikTech UK channel manager. “It’s an area where Sage doesn’t have a [directly comparable] offering.”

However, Sage plans to close the window of opportunity with a new business intelligence product scheduled to be commercially available in the spring and based on code acquired with the purchase of IntelligentApps two years ago.

The product will give a debut to a new dashboard front-end and can be used to mine data from other Sage and non-Sage sources.

“IntelligentApps gave us a very strong platform, primarily using Excel as the front-end but in the CRM world you need to have an integrated dashboard,” said Simon Black, general manager of Sage’s business intelligence division.

Sage plans to later make the dashboard its BI front-end to other lines.