One characteristic of business-intelligence tools that generates frequent complaints is the difficulty in installing and using them--problems that decrease their usefulness and, ultimately, their return on investment. SPSS Inc. on Thursday began shipping a new version of its Clementine data-mining software with CRM-analysis capabilities that help surmount those hurdles.

Clementine 6.5 includes a new CRM template that the vendor says lets users begin analyzing customer data quickly. Clementine's templates are pre-built project outlines for specific data-mining applications. The CRM template is used to implement data-mining projects for attracting and retaining customers and cross-selling them goods and services. So it can be used to help companies reduce customer churn and predict response rates to marketing promotions.

The templates include pre-built data-mining maps, sample data, and user guides for specific apps. There are also templates for analyzing Web-site data to improve site efficiency and for analyzing customer data in the telecommunications industry.

Other new features in Clementine 6.5 include a sequence data-mining algorithm for detecting patterns in time-ordered data such as click-stream data, enhancements to the Web-mining template, operation reordering to push more analysis executions into the database, a mouse-driven expression builder, and the ability to create multiple variables in a single node. Pricing for the software starts at $55,000 and is based on configuration and the number of users and servers.