Generative AI has made it easier than ever to glean insights from proprietary information stored in emails, pdf files, and other documents. Still, volumes of critical knowledge lie just beyond its reach: numerical data stored tables, whether they are integrated into other documents or reside in Excel files, CSVs, and internal database tables.
Worse yet, oftentimes, this is specifically the data you need for sales reports, project tracking, quality control, and financial modeling. Getting answers from it continues to be a widespread point of friction.
The process is painfully manual. First, you have to find the right file, open it in the right application, and then begin the error-prone work of filtering, sorting, or pivoting your way to an insight. What if you need to cross-reference that file with another table from a different system? You're now exporting, importing, and trying to run a VLOOKUP – all for what should be a simple question.
What if you could just ask?
How Squirro Chat Unlocks Your Tables
We've integrated a powerful tabular data capability directly into Squirro Chat to solve this exact problem. It's not just about finding the file; it's about getting answers from the data inside the file.
This is enabled by an advanced agent framework. When you ask a question, Squirro Chat understands your intent. If it determines you need an answer from structured data, it activates a specialized tool called the Structured Data Retriever.
This tool does two things incredibly well:
- On-the-Fly Analysis: You can drag-and-drop a CSV file – or a PDF file containing a table – directly into the chat. The system processes it immediately, no pre-indexing required, and you can start asking questions about its contents.
- Live Enterprise Data: The retriever can also connect securely to your core enterprise data sources, like SQL databases, SharePoint lists, or Salesforce. This gives you a single, conversational interface to query live operational data from across your organization.
The experience is seamless. You ask a question, and Squirro Chat renders an interactive table directly in the chat window. From there, you can continue the conversation to refine your results.
A Practical Example:
User: Uploads "Coffee Sales Report 2025.pdf"
User: "What are the top 10 products by revenue?"
User: "Which of these have a profit margin below 50%?"
Not Just Search but Interaction.
Traditional cognitive search is excellent at retrieval. It’s designed to find the most relevant document or file. It might even show you a snippet.
Squirro Chat is designed for interaction. It doesn't just find the file; it opens it, understands its structure, and lets you query the data inside it. You can hold a multi-turn conversation, asking follow-up questions to drill down to the specific insight you need.
The Unique Value: Conversational, Secure, and Integrated
The true power of this feature comes from its enterprise-ready design.
- Seamless, Conversational Analysis: It removes the technical barrier. Anyone, from an analyst to an executive, can interact with complex data as naturally as chatting with a colleague.
- Enterprise-Grade Security & Governance: All interactions are governed by fine-grained access controls, ensuring users only see the data they are authorized to access. Full audit trails support compliance, and the system can be deployed on-premise or in a private cloud for maximum data control.
- Scalable and Customizable: The system is built to scale to handle large volumes of data and complex queries. It integrates with your existing enterprise systems (like Salesforce, SharePoint, and more) and allows for custom agents to be built for specific, industry-vertical workflows.
Real-World Impact: Where This Solves Problems
When you move from manual extraction to conversational interaction, you unlock immediate value across the business.
In Financial Services, consider a portfolio manager who receives daily trading signal reports in csv or pdf files. Instead of slow, manual collation, they can now upload the files and ask the chat to "extract and summarize all 'Buy' signals for tech stocks." This delivers faster, auditable decisions.
For Manufacturing & Engineering, an engineer troubleshooting a production line can upload a Bill of Materials (BOM) and ask the chat to "cross-reference these component IDs with the QC database and show me any that failed inspection." This accelerates root-cause analysis and reduces downtime.
In Telecom and Utilities, teams can upload infrastructure logs or billing data for instant cross-referencing with live systems. Analysts can pinpoint network outages or billing anomalies in minutes rather than days, speeding up service restoration and ensuring higher infrastructure reliability.
And in the Public Sector, a policy analyst can use the chat to query fragmented legacy systems from a single interface. Asking complex, cross-departmental questions in natural language leads to better-informed policy without a massive IT project.
The Bottom Line: From Friction to Flow
Ultimately, this capability translates directly into measurable business outcomes. You increase efficiency by completing tasks that previously took hours of manual extraction in just minutes. This frees your most skilled employees from low-value data prep to focus on high-value analysis.
This acceleration of insights leads to better, more competitive decisions, helping to accelerate revenue. Perhaps most importantly, you enhance both customer and employee satisfaction by removing a major source of daily frustration and providing a tool that is easy, secure, and genuinely helpful.
Schedule a personalized demo with our team and learn how you can unlock the data inside your spreadsheets and databases in minutes, not hours.
