It was designed by brainiacs from Harvard and MIT, and it can automatically generate graphs, highlight statistical significance and export charts to PowerPoint presentations to make analyzing and presenting market research data a whole lot easier. It's called MarketSight, and it's the latest market analysis tool from Cambridge, Mass.-based high-end consulting firm The Monitor Group (www.marketsight.com).

One of the software's biggest selling points is its ability to automatically highlight statistical significance - so, the highest and lowest numbers will appear in different colours and fonts. For example, you could generate income data and quickly see which demographic has the highest and lowest income levels.

Client Mythraeyi Narayanan, market research manager at San Jose, Calif.-based Meriwest Credit Union, says the feature is a huge timesaver. "It eliminated the step of doing statistical significance testing - that was the single most attractive function for us," she says. "We could immediately see what was significantly higher and what was significantly lower - it puts a whole new view on the data."

MarketSight also boasts a short learning curve, and comes equipped with training modules that range in length from two to 15 minutes. "It's all point and click. With other software, it's like learning another programming language," says Narayanan. "[MarketSight] helps us churn out the data faster."

The software is Web-based, allowing multiple users real-time access from anywhere and ensuring that clients always have the latest version. "With desktop applications, it's only as current as the edition you've got," says Michael DeNitto, MarketSight's VP business development.

When analyzing data, users can choose what kind of graph to display - from pie to line to bar graphs. They can then export the graphics to PowerPoint, where they can even be edited further.

MarketSight became widely available at the end of September and is sold on a subscription-based model. It's currently priced at US$1,200 per user per year for the hosted solution, which includes customer support, all upgrades and no limits on the number of data sets used.