Business Intelligence Journal

Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ) introduced a new initiative that enables its industry-leading partner community to extend the recently introduced Business Objects Crystal Decisions® mid-market portfolio. The program is designed to encourage and support partner development of “QuickStart Packs” – certified, add-on solutions that address specific vertical, application, or operational needs of small to mid-size companies.

QuickStart Packs are integrated solutions that essentially package the extensive experience Business Objects partners have in key vertical industries, including Retail Banking, Insurance, Healthcare and Manufacturing; or with specific line-of-business applications such as JD Edwards. Each QuickStart Pack will include report and dashboard templates, as well as pre-built data connectors to help speed and simplify the deployment of relevant and results-driven business intelligence. With QuickStart Packs, mid-size organizations can quickly get up and running with a business intelligence solution that is already tailored to their specific business needs. Read the rest »

Yesim Tekstil has selected Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition as its business intelligence platform. Based in Turkey since 1983, Yesim Tekstil is one of that country’s largest apparel and home textile manufacturers. Yesim Tekstil stays abreast of the latest advances in technology and its state-of-the-art knitting, printing dyeing, plain dyeing and fabric treatment processes are part of a highly automated, fully vertically integrated manufacturing complex.

With 3,500 employees and $260 million in annual revenues, Yesim Tekstil relies on a foundation of Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle Application Server 10g and Oracle Business Intelligence Suite EE to support its Information Technology needs. Using Oracle Business Intelligence Suite EE, Yesim Tekstil can analyze sales, finance and production opportunities in real time. Utilizing Oracle’s open, standards-based BI solution has also enabled Yesim Tekstil to merge and analyze information from different platforms. Read the rest »

MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) will host a Symposium in Madrid at the NH Eurobuilding, on March 7, 2007. The event will provide attendees with the opportunity to interact with business intelligence experts and hear how successful organizations use business intelligence software to improve decision making and enhance business performance.

The MicroStrategy Symposium will offer a content-rich agenda with informative technical sessions and customer best practices. The technology track will feature presentations on reporting, analysis, and monitoring solutions, with an emphasis on MicroStrategy’s Dynamic Enterprise Dashboards. The customer track will highlight case studies from successful MicroStrategy customers, sharing lessons learned in deploying business intelligence applications in their organization. Some of the companies scheduled to present at the Madrid Symposium include Travel Club, the leading multi-brand loyalty program in the Spanish market; Gobierno de Canarias, serving the citizens of the Canary Islands; Red Electrica de Espana, responsible for the transmission network and operation of the Spanish electricity system; and Mapfre Re, the largest Spanish professional reinsurer. Read the rest »

Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the provider of business intelligence and performance management solutions, has announced that the University of Sheffield has selected Cognos 8 Business Intelligence to reduce administration time for all student and staff reporting.

Information on over 24,000 students and 6,000 staff from the University’s student, finance, HR and payroll, research management and admissions systems needed to be combined in fewer reports for staff to analyse more easily. Whether admissions handling, student fee payments, funding or students’ progression year on year, university staff can now see a single version of all this information at a glance. They are able to draw out trends to help with better decision-making for improved performance. Read the rest »

Lawson Software today announced that Kansai Paint Singapore, a manufacturer, marketer and technical service center for paint customers in South East Asia, recently added Lawson Business Intelligence to its existing suite of Lawson applications.

This announcement marks Lawson’s entry into the business intelligence (BI) market in Asia. The company will add the BI functionality into Kansai Paint’s existing Lawson M3 ERP infrastructure to support the management of customer portfolios, inventory and transaction systems.

“Kansai Paint chose Lawson Business Intelligence as part of an overall strategy to streamline business processes and improve efficiency,” said James Lim, Executive Chairman, Kansai Paint Singapore. “Lawson has a strong understanding of the challenges we face in meeting our customers’ needs. By centralizing and automating our systems across all departments, we can now make faster decisions and concentrate on keeping pace with changing market demands and staying competitive.”

This strategic project will integrate reporting systems and help Kansai Paint reduce costs and increase revenue by supporting marketing and sales opportunities. It will also help the company manage large scale stock supply for projects involving newly-built and established buildings.

The Lawson Business Intelligence solution will allow Kansai to be more effective in managing orders across its spectrum of products, including decorative paints, auto-refinishes, industrial coatings, marine and protective coatings. The application will also help the company improve visibility into the management of contractual terms and conditions, handling invoicing and settlement, and generating comprehensive reports for all areas of its business activities.

“It is critical for a company like Kansai to make timely business decisions to sustain long-term profitability,” said David Hope, Regional Managing Director, Lawson Software Asia & Japan. “Our applications help provide a better view across their entire business operations, allowing for a more transparent and secure network, which helps Kansai Paint respond faster and more effectively to their customers in the region.”

Kansai Paint has a network of 22 factories and offices across the Asia Pacific region. Its upgraded portfolio of Lawson applications will cover Kansai Paint’s entire business operation, from financials, sales processing, warehousing, purchasing and procurement, manufacturing and shop floor, as well as the management and review of control reports.

Syndera announced the release of Syndera Operational Business Intelligence Suite 3.0. This new version of Syndera Operational BI includes time-series and trend analysis capabilities to improve real-time decisions and historical analysis, and enhanced performance to tackle the most demanding transaction environments. This release also contains features that accelerate Syndera deployment across multiple business units.

“We are continuing our market and innovation leadership by further enhancing the proven capabilities in Syndera Operational Business Intelligence Suite 3.0,” said Janet Heppner-Jones, CEO, Syndera. “With the additional analytical tools and enhanced performance in Syndera Operational BI Suite 3.0, we can help organizations gain control of mission-critical business processes by providing intuitive ways to monitor, analyze, and act on business events.”

With Syndera Operational Business Intelligence Suite 3.0, Syndera customers gain the advantage of employing-time series and trend analysis to their business events to make better decisions from the real-time information they presently capture. Trend analysis functions can be applied to the historical data from key performance indicators (KPIs). Available functions include: moving average, difference, rate of change, and lag. Trend charts display the performance metrics over time periods such as daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, past 100-day, and past 200-days. In addition, real-time metrics can be visually compared against historical performance, including comparison against statistical averages using Bollinger bands. Read the rest »

The Open-Source companies Jedox GmbH and Tensegrity GmbH, the Chemnitz University of Technology and the Australian company De Bortoli Wines started a cooperation for the development of a Business Intelligence Add-In for OpenOffice.org. They now seek additional sponsors to start the project.

A combination of Spreadsheet-Software plus a capable server for Business Intelligence and OLAP becomes more and more popular. While Microsoft offers the combination of MS Office and Office PerformancePoint Server as a comprehensive BI solution, there is a sophisticated and free alternative: the Open Source based Palo Server. For Palo version 1.5 there already is a free Add-In available which helps convert Excel 200, XP, 2003 and 2007 into a server based solution for analysis and planning.

More and more companies are realizing the value of using Open Source software in the enterprise. Since Palo was launched around a year ago, this Open Source product has not only been embraced by a large number of individual users, but also various larger organizations, such as the German Chamber of Commerce (Deutscher Industrie- und Handelskammertag), ALTANA Pharma Germany and now also De Bortoli Wines, one of Australia’s larger privately owned companies. Read the rest »

Organizations looking to harness the value of their databases and applications and transform the data into usable, business-critical information can do so quickly and affordably with Logi 8, a new interactive, Web-based business intelligence platform from LogiXML (www.logixml.com). Logi 8 is a pure Web-based, unified and XML-based solution that offers robust BI functionality, including managed and ad hoc reporting, OLAP analysis and BI data services, accessible by technical and non-technical users in organizations of all sizes.

Logi 8’s open, standards-based architecture makes it easy to implement and easy to use. Organizations can have sophisticated, enterprise-class reporting applications up and running on Logi 8 in hours, as opposed to the weeks or months it can take to deploy legacy BI products. Logi 8 empowers users at all technical levels and across all functional groups in an organization by allowing them to access, analyze and share business information through BI capabilities optimized for specific user groups.

Logi 8 offers organizations a compelling value proposition that combines depth and breadth of product and pure Web-based design with an aggressive pricing and licensing model that supports scaling BI implementations to serve many users in an organization. Companies license Logi 8 on a per server basis, instead of per seat, at an affordable price point, which makes it far more cost-effective than competitive offerings — in some cases, up to 80 percent less expensive. The pure Web-based design of the Logi 8 platform means that it is optimized for interactive reporting and that reports are accessible by the full range of Web-access devices, including innovative products like the new Apple iPhone. Read the rest »

MicroStrategy today announced that MicroStrategy will support Paramount Pictures’ enterprise business intelligence program, which will provide reporting and analytics for multiple areas across the company. Paramount Pictures is a unit of Viacom.

Paramount, which currently uses tools from Cognos, plans to use MicroStrategy throughout the organization for reporting and analysis of key business areas, including sales and operations. With MicroStrategy, Paramount users will gain enhanced insights into category management, providing valuable sales information by product, category, and geography, to better understand which products and categories are selling well, and in which locations. Paramount also plans to use MicroStrategy for operational reporting to reduce costs, improve efficiencies, and make data-driven business decisions.

“We were impressed with MicroStrategy’s intuitive web interface, scalable 64-bit architecture, and robust analytical capabilities for mission-critical applications,” said Joe Churchill of Paramount Pictures. “Following a thorough analysis of MicroStrategy’s advanced features and functionality, we determined that MicroStrategy was a better fit for our enterprise business intelligence than our current provider.”

“We are delighted that Paramount has selected MicroStrategy to enhance its reporting and analysis capabilities,” said MicroStrategy’s COO Sanju Bansal. “MicroStrategy provides an excellent solution for companies seeking to extend the benefits of business intelligence across the enterprise. Leading companies around the globe are choosing MicroStrategy’s industrial-strength platform to gain visibility into their operations and to help make important revenue-generating decisions.”

Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ), the world’s leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced that readers of Intelligent Enterprise have again recognized Business Objects for providing the “Best Business Intelligence Suite.” The company received an Intelligent Enterprise 2006 Readers’ Choice Award based on the quality and performance of BusinessObjectsâ„¢ XI Release 2, which provides a complete solution for performance management, reporting, query and analysis, and enterprise information management. Intelligent Enterprise readers also recognized Business Objects for providing leading products in the “Best Data Quality and Profiling Software” category. This is the sixth straight year Business Objects was honored with an Intelligent Enterprise Readers’ Choice Award. Read the rest »