Business Intelligence Journal

DHL Express has expanded its deployment of MicroStrategy to support its Business Process Optimization and Enterprise Business Intelligence programs, which will provide reporting and analytics for key areas across the company. DHL Express is a subsidiary of DHL, the global market leader of the international express and logistics industry.

DHL Express is using MicroStrategy throughout the organization for reporting and analysis of key business areas, including sales, marketing, finance, and operations. With a diverse, vast network and delivery schedules as tight as those operated by DHL Express, having a clear, up-to-date, and actionable view of the business is of immense importance. With MicroStrategy, DHL users will gain enhanced insights into their business, providing valuable sales and customer information by product and geography to better understand both key customers and service level performance, leading to new business opportunities and improved service.

A MicroStrategy customer since 2003, DHL Express has now expanded its enterprise-wide deployment across multiple departments, with additional applications planned for the future. Dashboard applications delivering information based on KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for the many diverse areas of the business will also be deployed. These new implementations are part of an information strategy to improve data management, analysis, and reporting to enhance the decision making processes of senior and operational management. Read the rest »

Cognos announced the availability of the third in a series of three White Papers exploring core principles of effective data visualization. Spanning more than 2,000 years of recorded human history, Data Visualization: Past, Present, and Future examines the birth and evolution of data visualization, from early Egyptian tables used to organize astronomical information through bar charts, treemaps, and geo-spatial visualization tools (such as Google Earth).

Commissioned by Cognos, the paper was written by renowned data visualization expert and educator Stephen Few and published by the Cognos Innovation Center for Performance Managementâ„¢. The paper follows the previous releases of two papers, Visual Communication: Core Principles for Displaying Quantitative Information, and Visual Pattern Recognition: Meaningful Patterns in Quantitative Business Information, both by Few. Read the rest »

To gain insight into the demographics of their workforce and more effectively leverage their human capital around the globe, companies in multiple industries are turning to human resources solutions from Hyperion (Nasdaq Global Select: HYSL), the global leader in Business Performance Management (BPM) software.

Companies are increasingly recognizing the importance of measuring the return on their investment in personnel-related expenses, such as recruiting, direct compensation, training, benefits, and outsourcing. In addition to implementing Hyperion software to streamline financial operations, these organizations are extending their use of Hyperion’s BPM and business intelligence (BI) capabilities into workforce reporting and analysis. Expanding the use of Hyperion System 9 software can help human resources managers, business line managers, and company executives:

* Consolidate and integrate enterprise data sources to create a single system for human resources reporting and analysis, which complements and leverages the workforce data in enterprise resource planning (ERP) and human resource transaction systems
* Gain critical insight into the impact of human capital spending on corporate strategy and objectives
* Synchronize workforce-related expense plans with the financial budgeting and forecasting process to create a consolidated view of the workforce and its productivity
* Decrease manual reporting effort and reliance on IT for custom reports with self-serve analysis of the workforce along any dimension: by function, level, department, geographical location, length of service, etc.
* Integrate consolidated data with existing planning and reporting processes and internal measurement tools for immediate, accurate insight into workforce demographics, diversity, compensation, hiring, attrition, and performance trends Read the rest »

MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) announced that KB Toys, Inc. has selected MicroStrategy as its Business Intelligence Platform. KB Toys, Inc. is the nation’s largest mall-based specialty toy retailer.

Initially, KB Toys plans to use MicroStrategy for reporting on key merchandising and supply chain metrics to improve the management of inventory from its vendors to its stores. MicroStrategy will be used to manage product life cycles, track customer demand, and monitor inventory levels through dashboards and exception reporting, enabling KB Toys to enhance customer service levels while improving return on inventory.

“We are evolving our approach to buying, planning, product allocation, and store operations,” said Frank Andryauskas, Chief Information Officer at KB Toys. “MicroStrategy will enable us to better understand inventory
trends, track product demand, and analyze the efficiency of store operations.”

“We selected MicroStrategy because of its scalability, user-friendly Web interface, and robust reporting features that help us to make fact-based decisions which impact our bottom line,” said Tim Armstrong, Director of Analytical Business Solutions at KB Toys. “MicroStrategy provides the ability for hundreds of concurrent users to quickly retrieve and analyze large volumes of detailed data and efficiently monitor performance of key business metrics.” Read the rest »

Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN) announced its support for IBM’s new Dynamic Warehousing initiative, geared to helping customers use advanced analytics as part of a real-time business process, and unlock knowledge buried in both structured and unstructured information.

Building upon IBM’s enhanced version of the DB2 Warehouse and based on the DB2 9 Viper data server, the initiative includes new IBM Balanced Warehouse packages, which are pre-configured combinations of software, hardware and storage technologies optimized to meet a wide range of dynamic warehousing requirements.

“Cognos has been deeply involved in many major innovations with IBM in recent years. IBM’s latest initiative is a positive step forward to helping organizations transform their static data into competitive assets, enabling customers in all industries to make better, faster decisions by delivering increased business insight to the right people at the right time,” said Rupert Bonham-Carter, associate vice-president of global strategic alliances at Cognos. “IBM’s commitment to driving greater efficiencies on the back-end – including with ever-complex data warehousing models – ultimately translates into significant value on the front-end for our customers, which is deserving of our support and ongoing collaboration.” Read the rest »

IBM (NYSE:IBM) today unveiled a comprehensive strategy to enable dynamic warehousing, a new generation of business intelligence capabilities that enable organizations to gain real-time insight and value from their business information. Today’s announcement marks an important milestone in IBM’s industry-leading pursuit of the global Information on Demand growth opportunity, which is helping customers transform their businesses by using information as a strategic asset.

With today’s announcement, IBM, the world’s second largest software company, is delivering capabilities that extend beyond traditional business intelligence and data warehousing techniques to allow global businesses and organizations of all sizes to streamline business processes, transform customer service, increase employee productivity, reduce business risks and generate new revenue opportunities.

IBM’s new Dynamic Warehousing strategy enables customers to use advanced analytics as part of a real-time business process and to unlock knowledge buried in both structured and unstructured information (free form text, e-mail, audio files, Web pages, etc.). This approach will also provide instant access to reliable and trusted business information in the context of activities being performed, whether it is supporting a customer, processing a claim or handling a transaction. Read the rest »

Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN) announced that the Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX) has standardized on Cognos 8 Business Intelligence (BI) for a more unified and complete view of organizational performance.

The first securities exchange in the U.S., and founded in 1790, the PHLX has a strong tradition of innovation and continues to respond to the ever-changing needs of the investment community. The company was looking for a more comprehensive reporting system to allow it to better manage membership data. Prior to using Cognos software, the PHLX had data stored in separate remote groups. After a competitive review, the PHLX chose Cognos 8 BI as its standard reporting system to gain one unified and interactive view of information from its diverse set of management applications and isolated data silos. Cognos 8 BI will enable prompted and ad-hoc reporting to help centralize diverse and redundant applications, as well as ensure reliable information sharing.

With a central reporting system and a common front end, employees will be able to select from a list of commonly used reports or create ad hoc reports to get answers to questions and find new information. The PHLX will use IBM’s WebSphere portal as the interface and access point for Cognos 8 BI. The software’s ease of use will enable all Exchange employees to use Cognos 8 BI to view membership data, keep track of new and old account information, and gain information about new products, options, equities, real-time trade report data, and clearing and exchange billing. In addition, Cognos 8 BI will automatically deliver daily, monthly and quarterly reports on billing and trading activities. These reporting activities will provide employees with easier access to information they need to make better business decisions. Read the rest »

OutlookSoft Corporation introduced its OutlookSoft BPF Marketplace as the industry’s foremost delivery model and technological approach to leverage BPFs (Business Process Flows). Immediately available, OutlookSoft BPF Marketplace is a community-based repository in which OutlookSoft 5 customers can share, download, use and improve upon BPFs.

By delivering the first pre-packaged process intelligence to the Performance Management industry, OutlookSoft positions itself as the only vendor in the market with the ability to truly align financial and operational activities with business performance objectives. With BPFs, OutlookSoft provides not only the business process, but all the associated tools required to manage and execute the process for optimum performance in one unified application platform.

Historically, software has been sold and implemented according to features, functions or databases. Users still needed to customize the application for every new performance process added. Now organizations can configure new or existing business process flows by leveraging the pre-packaged functionality inherent in OutlookSoft 5. Alternatively, they can utilize the on-demand nature of the BPF Marketplace by downloading a business process flow at the time the process is needed. Read the rest »

Accenture, Andrews Consulting Group, APOS Systems, Decision First Technologies, IBM, Info Providers, Netezza, Realm Business Solutions, Softmart, and The Woodburn Group Honored at Business Objects Americas Partner Summit

Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ) announced its 2007 Americas Partner Excellence Award winners. The Business Objects Partner Excellence Awards recognize Business Objects partners for their tremendous contributions to deploying solutions based on Business Objects technology, as well as for their leadership, innovation, and commitment to helping companies reap the business-transforming benefits of business intelligence. The awards were formally presented at the annual Business Objects Americas Partner Summit, held last week in Charleston, South Carolina.

“Business Objects has an unmatched organization of global partners, which we rely on to bring specific industry expertise, deployment experience, and a rich history of developing innovative solutions for customers looking to leverage the power of intelligent information,” said Janet Wood, senior vice president of global partnerships and sales enablement at Business Objects. “Each year, we recognize a select group of these companies with our Partner Excellence Awards, which are presented to those organizations that stand out among their peers for drive, dedication, and thought-leadership in the business intelligence industry.” Read the rest »

Accenture plans to expand its business intelligence services through increased collaboration with SAS, a leading provider of business intelligence (BI) software and services.

The two companies plan to work together to enhance Accenture’s SAS® capabilities and will also team to enhance SAS software and will also team to enhance SAS-based software and product development by leveraging Accenture’s industry expertise. This relationship will help Accenture deliver proven, repeatable solutions and create additional specialized capabilities to meet the increased demand for business intelligence services currently provided to clients through its Accenture Information Management Services (AIMS) organization. For SAS, the relationship will help accelerate growth of the company’s global BI software revenue by leveraging Accenture’s investment in sales, marketing, training, research and development, and expertise in industry and business processes.

“We are clearly seeing an increased demand for business intelligence services as organizations seek higher performance by collecting and analyzing internal and external data,” said Royce Bell, Chief Executive Officer of Accenture Information Management Services. “By striking a closer relationship with a market-leading enterprise business intelligence software vendor, we will be able to provide our clients with even more skills and scale than previously possible.” Read the rest »