24 business finance january 2008 THE BUSINESS PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT (BPM) market underwent some of its most dramatic changes in history in 2007. Many vendors expanded their offerings to address the needs of users looking to take advantage of BPM 2.0, which we helped to define just over a year and a half ago. Whether by acquisition, partnership, or in-house development, more vendors than ever before now offer profitability analysis, operational analytics, data visualiza- tion, and compliance and risk solutions, as well as predictive capabilities — all integral components of BPM 2.0. In addition to addressing functionality needs, some vendors focused on their overall competitiveness, BPM footprint, and scale. This helps to explain some of the larger acquisitions that took place during this past year. In the end, all of these activities will benefit customers. In spite of all the consolidation, there are actually more viable vendor alter- natives, with more comprehensive and richer product sets, than existed in prior years. In the short term, the vendors have to deal with sort- ing out their product road maps, especially where there are BPM’s New World Order redundancies, and beginning the difficult task of integrating the disparate components of their BPM suites. Purchasers need to perform more due diligence than ever before. In addition to potentially evaluating more vendors than they have in the past, they need to do a deeper dive to understand all of the elements of each vendor’s expanded product set and how they will work together. VENDOR ACTIVITY From that perspective, let’s look at the major vendor activities of the past year, primarily focusing on the big mergers and acquisitions. Cognos made two major acquisitions during this past year before being targeted for acquisition itself by IBM (expected to close in Q1 2008). Earlier in the year, they picked up Celequest for its BPM 2.0 operational analytics focus and ease of distribution model. Later, Cognos added Applix to the mix to help them address the needs of the middle market. IBM’s pending acquisition of Cognos will turn them into a major BPM player overnight. Business Objects acquired Cartesis to add statutory consolidation, external bench- marking and governance, risk, and compliance (all part of BPM 2.0) to their suite of offerings. SAP later announced its intention to acquire Business Objects (expected to close in Q1 2008), to make them a leading business intelligence ven- dor. Earlier in the year, SAP had acquired Pilot Software for strategy management and OutlookSoft for budgeting, plan- ning, and consolidation. In the first half of 2007, Hyperion acquired Decision- eering for BPM 2.0 predictive analytics capabilities and then itself was later acquired by Oracle. Microsoft, long a provider of business intelligence tools for BPM, acquired ProClarity for ease of data access and visualization and Stratature for master data management. In addition, they rolled FRx into bpm software buyer’s guide 2008 After a year of mergers and acquisitions, our guide charts the newly formed peaks and valleys of the BPM software market. BY CRAIG SCHIFF ABOUT THIS GUIDE Inclusion in this buyer’s guide is based solely on research con- ducted by BPM Partners, a vendor-neutral consulting firm. This research includes reviews of published information and in-depth interviews with management at the major vendors, client organiza- tions, and consulting firms. Unlike most buyer’s guides, this listing is not vendor-sponsored, nor is it compiled from surveys com- pleted by vendors. An online, searchable database version of this guide is available at www.bpmpartners.com/vendor_search.shtml CRAIG SCHIFF is CEO of BPM Partners. As a founding member of IMRS/Hyperion Software (now part of Oracle), he helped to create and define the BPM space.
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24 business finance january 2008
The business performance managemenT (BPM) market underwent some of its most dramatic changes in history in 2007. Many vendors expanded their offerings to address the needs of users looking to take advantage of BPM 2.0, which we helped to define just over a year and a half ago. Whether by acquisition, partnership, or in-house development, more vendors than ever before now offer profitability analysis, operational analytics, data visualiza-tion, and compliance and risk solutions, as well as predictive capabilities — all integral components of BPM 2.0.
In addition to addressing functionality needs, some vendors focused on their overall competitiveness, BPM footprint, and scale. This helps to explain some of the larger acquisitions that took place during this past year. In the end, all of these activities will benefit customers. In spite of all the consolidation, there are actually more viable vendor alter-natives, with more comprehensive and richer product sets, than existed in prior years.
In the short term, the vendors have to deal with sort-ing out their product road maps, especially where there are
BPM’s New World Order
redundancies, and beginning the difficult task of integrating the disparate components of their BPM suites. Purchasers need to perform more due diligence than ever before. In addition to potentially evaluating more vendors than they have in the past, they need to do a deeper dive to understand all of the elements of each vendor’s expanded product set and how they will work together.
Vendor ActiVityFrom that perspective, let’s look at the major vendor
activities of the past year, primarily focusing on the big mergers and acquisitions.
Cognos made two major acquisitions during this past year before being targeted for acquisition itself by IBM (expected to close in Q1 2008). Earlier in the year, they picked up Celequest for its BPM 2.0 operational analytics focus and ease of distribution model. Later, Cognos added Applix to the mix to help them address the needs of the middle market.
IBM’s pending acquisition of Cognos will turn them into a major BPM player overnight. Business Objects acquired Cartesis to add statutory consolidation, external bench-marking and governance, risk, and compliance (all part of BPM 2.0) to their suite of offerings. SAP later announced its intention to acquire Business Objects (expected to close in Q1 2008), to make them a leading business intelligence ven-dor. Earlier in the year, SAP had acquired Pilot Software for strategy management and OutlookSoft for budgeting, plan-ning, and consolidation.
In the first half of 2007, Hyperion acquired Decision-eering for BPM 2.0 predictive analytics capabilities and then itself was later acquired by Oracle. Microsoft, long a provider of business intelligence tools for BPM, acquired ProClarity for ease of data access and visualization and Stratature for master data management. In addition, they rolled FRx into
bpm software buyer’s guide 2008
After a year of mergers and acquisitions, our guide charts the newly formed peaks and valleys of the BPM software market. By crAig schiff
ABout this guideinclusion in this buyer’s guide is based solely on research con-ducted by BPM Partners, a vendor-neutral consulting firm. this research includes reviews of published information and in-depth interviews with management at the major vendors, client organiza-tions, and consulting firms. unlike most buyer’s guides, this listing is not vendor-sponsored, nor is it compiled from surveys com-pleted by vendors. An online, searchable database version of this guide is available at www.bpmpartners.com/vendor_search.shtml
crAig schiff is ceo of BPM Partners. As a founding member of iMrs/hyperionsoftware (now part of oracle), he helped to create and define the BPM space.
25 january 2008 business finance
BPM’s New World Order
Key to Buyer’s Guide taBleCAPABILITIES (CORE)
Budgeting: The product offers top-down and bottom-up budgeting, as well as planning and forecasting.
Dashboards: The vendor provides a graphical interface that can display a col-lection of key performance indicators (a scorecard) with gauges, stoplights, and charts. Dashboards may be graphical display tools or prebuilt applications.
Consolidation: The software sums data from multiple ledgers, incorporating currency conversion and intercompany eliminations as needed.
BI for BPM: The vendor develops and sells stand-alone tools that aid in the development of BPM applications. The tools may include extract, transform, and load (ETL); reporting tools; metadata management; and other BI.
CAPABILITIES (BPM 2.0)BPM 2.0 Technology: The product utilizes any of the technologies that facil-itate the wider distribution or deeper analysis that BPM 2.0 delivers. These tech-nologies may include data visualization, hosting, open source, 64-bit support, mobile access, hardware appliances, and service-oriented architecture (SOA).
BPM 2.0 Applications: The vendor provides any of the following: predic-tive analytics, external benchmarking, activity-based costing and/or profitability analysis, governance, compliance, and risk management.
Operational Analytics: The vendor offers a platform for operational analytics and/or delivers packaged applications focused on selected operational areas.
PROFILEVertical Solutions: The vendor offers industry-specific capabilities or content integrated in a software application. This functionality can be the vendor’s sole focus, or it can be an addition to more generic offerings.
Global Support: The vendor has a presence, direct or indirect, in most major business centers around the world..
Large Reference Base: More than 100 clients are successfully using this vendor’s BPM products.
their business performance group of Office applications and launched their flagship BPM product: PerformancePoint. Longview Solutions was acquired by Exact Software of the Netherlands to add BPM to its suite of transactional offer-ings. Longview will continue to run as a stand-alone unit in North America for the foreseeable future.
Buyer’s guide cAtegoriesIn recognition of the changing vendor landscape, we have
created a new way of organizing the vendors on our BPM Software Buyer’s Guide grid. The structure is based on the range of their offerings.
Vendors in the “comprehensive” category offer a com-plete BPM suite coupled with business intelligence offerings, and in several instances transactional systems as well.
The “financial performance management” category con-tains the vendors that are applications-focused and offer a BPM suite including budgeting, planning, reporting, and some consolidation and scorecard capabilities.
The “specialized” vendors provide the building blocks of a full BPM suite. They can be tools or applications vendors that focus almost exclusively on some aspects of perfor-mance management.
BPM 2.0 capabilities may be part of a vendor’s offerings in any of the three categories and are denoted by the bullets in each vendor’s listing.
26 business finance january 2008
Business Objects
CDC Software
Coda
Cognos
Exact Software
Hyperion Solutions
IBM
Infor
Lawson Software
Targeted for acquisition by SAP in Q1 2008. See SAP comments.
This Beijing- and Atlanta-based roll-up of numerous software firms offers a comprehensive BPM suite with powerful modeling built atop Microsoft Analysis Services and the Microsoft .Net platform. The firm also offers ERP, SCM, and HRM capabilities in related applications. Another part of CDC Software, Ross Systems, focuses on process manufacturing. They offer performance management solutions designed for specific departments, including Sales, Manufacturing, Inventory, and Finance. www.cdcsoftware.com
Coda, a UK company, offers transaction accounting linked to a suite of applications for regulatory compliance, period-end financial closing, and corporate governance. Recent product additions include an expense claims man-agement system that can work stand-alone or in conjunction with other CODA products. www.coda.com
With planned acquisition by IBM, Cognos offers comprehensive performance management and business intelligence solutions that include sophisticated planning, budgeting, and consolidation applications along with extensive report-ing and analysis functions. Cognos offers an increasing number of performance management and analytic application "blueprints" designed to leverage application- or industry-specific application design best practices. Industry-specific blueprints exist for the financial services, life sciences, manufacturing, public-sector, and retail industries. Expect fur-ther development in this area as IBM Global Services plays a larger role. Cognos continues expansion of performance management solutions to support operational reporting and analytics through real-time operational reporting solu-tions and the recently completed acqusition of the Applix TM1 OLAP engine that supports real-time, calc on the fly, response times for optimal performance with highly scalable operational data volumes. www.cognos.com
Recently acquired Longview. See joint company summary provided in the Longview listing. www.exactsoftware.com
Acquired by Oracle. See Oracle comments.
With announced Q1 2008 plans to acquire Cognos, IBM enters the BPM market with a comprehensive platform of performance management and business intelligence applications. See Cognos listing for comments. www.ibm.com
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Longview Solutions
Infor is a leading provider of performance management, business intelligence, ERP, and accounting solutions. The company recently completed integration of the former Extensity BPM solution with the BI solution acquired from UK-based Systems Union Group with the release of Infor PM 10. This solution includes comprehensive planning, financial consolidation, reporting, and analytics that make extensive use of the Microsoft Business Intelligence plat-form — specifically, Microsoft SQL Server, Analysis Services, and Excel. www.infor.com
Lawson focuses on the services, health care, manufacturing, and distribution sectors. They offer business intelligence and performance solutions to augment their transational systems. Their role-based dashboards and drill-around capabilities are two key elements of their solution. www.lawson.com
Longview offers a fully integrated, “all in one” solution for strategic planning, budgeting/forecasting, performance management reporting and analysis, and comprehensive financial consolidation and reporting. Longview also offers a comprehensive tax provision planning and compliance reporting application that is fully integrated with the BPM solution. Longview was acquired by Exact Software in 2007 but operates as a stand-alone division. Longview remains as one of the few unified BPM solutions that effectively competes with the larger BPM vendors. We can expect improved integration with the Exact Software ERP platform in the future, which historically has offered hosted and on-premise software targeted at smaller subsidiaries of large multi-nationals and other small to midsize businesses. www.longview.com
Microsoft further established itself among the leaders in the performance management and business intelligence market with the long awaited release of their PerformancePoint Server 2007. PerformancePoint Server is a single, integrated performance management application that provides comprehensive functionality including planning, bud-geting, consolidation, analytic reporting, and scorecard/dashboard monitoring. Naturally, PerformancePoint Server leverages the Microsoft platform through the use of SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence platform for data integra-tion and analytical query and reporting tools, an Excel user interface, and integration with the Microsoft SharePoint portal platform. Microsoft’s enhanced presence adds additional credibility to the performance management category and is expected to bolster enterprise adoption of performance management initiatives. www.microsoft.com
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This hosted-solution provider aims at small to midsize businesses with ERP, CRM, and eCommerce. SuiteAnalytics integrates prebuilt dashboards and preconfigured key performance indicators. New customizable analytics capabili-ties include the ability to embed Excel-like formulas in any SuiteAnalytics Performance Scorecard or saved-search report. SuiteAnalytics integrates with business intelligence solution tools, including Business Objects, Cognos, Crys-tal, FRx, or any software that supports ODBC. www.netsuite.com
Oracle is one of the leading providers of comprehensive performance management and business intelligence solu-tions. Oracle provides an enterprise performance management system that includes purpose-built performance management applications (e.g., strategy management & planning, budgeting/forecasting, financial consolidation, and profitability management), prebuilt business intelligence applications (e.g., sales, marketing, HR, financial, supply chain, call center analytics), and comprehensive business intelligence foundation, reporting, and analysis tools. With the acquisition of Hyperion in 2007, Oracle has expanded its performance management offering with market-lead-ing financial performance management applications and OLAP technology (Essbase), and from supporting mainly Oracle-only environments to solutions that can be deployed in enterprises that have multiple Oracle and non-Oracle information sources and systems, including those from SAP. www.oracle.com
SAP significantly expanded its planning, consolidation, reporting and analysis applications and tools offering earlier this year with the acquisitions of Pilot Software and OutlookSoft in addition to an OEM agreement with Acorn Systems for Profitability Management. SAP's strategy is to capture a larger share of the performance management market and at press time they are completing their proposed acquisition of Business Objects. The performance management and business intelligence applications acquired from Pilot Software and OutlookSoft will be offered stand-alone or integrated with the SAP NetWeaver application platform. SAP offers the SAP Business Intelligence Integrated Planning application development toolkit which allows organizations to develop customized planning applications that leverage the SAP platform. SAP offers extensive vertical market solutions and will continue to expand the governance, risk, and compliance capabilities of the BPM applications they are acquiring with Business Objects. SAP will also leverage these acquisitions to expand BPM 2.0 capabilities of profitability analysis, activity-based costing, and predictive driver-based planning. www.sap.com
SAS offers comprehensive BPM and BI solutions that allow companies to formulate, communicate, measure, and monitor strategies and plans with integrated planning, budgeting, financial consolidation, and reporting. The SAS for Performance Management solution includes robust scorecard and dashboard reporting solutions that leverage predictive modeling and analytic capabilities. SAS also offers profitability analysis and activity-based management solutions along with purpose-built vertical industry and functional or departmental specific solutions for perfor-mance and operational analytic applications in IT, Sales, Marketing, Human Resources, and other departments. SAS’s performance management offerings are all built on the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform, which provides data integration, storage, and business intelligence reporting and analysis capabilities. www.sas.com
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Satori's Business Intelligence and Performance Management offering, i-Performance, provides: budgeting and rolling forecasts, financial reporting and analytics, profitability analysis, and dashboards for the Legal, Architecture Engi-neering, and Construction (AEC), Professional Service, and Consumer Packaged Goods verticals. In addition, appli-cations can be delivered as a virtual software appliance, deployable on-premise or as a hosted solution. i-Performance provides a flexible architecture delivered on the Microsoft technology platform for an easy-to-use, user-oriented solution. www.satorigroupinc.com
This global data warehousing leader recently announced Teradata Warehouse 12, extending its range of enterprise data warehousing products now optimized for support of strategic planning and operational frontline activities. Recently spun off of NCR, Teradata offers strong ETL capabilities with a large variety of source systems and specialized tools for detailed analytics. Recent improvements highlight benefits for enhanced BPM 2.0 analytics. www.teradata.com
The company's A3 Modeling Web platform automates budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and analysis. A3 uses its spreadsheet automation server technology and popular OLAP databases to develop budgeting, consolidation, reporting, and dashboard applications that leverage an organization's existing spreadsheet models. This architecture allows compa-nies to leverage existing spreadsheet models to exploit Excel expertise within the organization. www.a3si.com
Adaptive Planning offers a budgeting, forecasting, and reporting solution intended for both small and midmarket companies as well as divisions of larger corporations seeking an alternative to existing spreadsheet-based planning and budgeting applications. Key functional capabilities include driver-based and workforce planning; project-based capital expenditure planning; and user-friendly report creation and plan performance analysis capabilities. Adaptive Planning offers both on-demand (hosted) and traditional on-site deployments using a multi-user annual subscrip-tion license fee. www.adaptiveplanning.com
Calumo
Cartesis
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Acquired by Cognos, which has plans to be acquired by IBM in Q1 2008. See Cognos comments.
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Australia-based Calumo offers a unified BPM application on Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services. Calumo includes integrated Web or Microsoft Excel-based budgeting, forecasting, reporting, analysis, scorecards, and dash-boards — including allocations, workflow, and alerting capabilities. Additional focus on the retail and telecom sector provides prepackaged applications for those markets. www.calumo.com
Acquired by Business Objects, which has been targeted for acquisition by SAP in Q1 2008. See SAP comments.
Centage's Budget Maestro solution includes integrated budgeting, forecasting, financial consolidation, and perfor-mance reporting capabilities specifically designed to meet the needs of small to midsize businesses. Centage recently expanded the solution to include Microsoft Excel-based dashboard reporting capabilites that allow users to create customized dashboards or leverage Budget Maestro KPI templates that can be configured. Centage offers a per-formance management application that is scalable from a single user to small workgroups or deployment within a department of a larger organization. www.centage.com
Clarity Systems provides comprehensive Web-based budgeting, consolidation, and reporting applications that can be deployed upon industry-leading multi-dimensional (Analysis Services/Essbase) and relational (Oracle/SQL) database platforms with a Microsoft Excel-like user interface. Clarity's Financial Statement Reporting capabilities support multi-user collaboration and facilitate creation of reports to meet external statutory or regulatory report-ing requirements. Clarity has developed prebuilt data models and reports, and provides implementation service specialists who can expedite application configuration and deployment for common applications within a range of industries including Banking, Insurance, Retail, and Legal. www.claritysystems.com
Acquired by Microsoft. See Microsoft comments.
Host Analytics' Business Performance Management Suite includes integrated budgeting, consolidation, and score-card, and dashboard reporting solutions built on the Microsoft platform – SQL Server relational database, Analysis Services OLAP database, Excel, and application development tools. Host Analytics provides on-demand or Software- as-a-Service solutions with performance management applications that can be deployed either as a subscription- based hosted solution or as a Web-based, on-site, enterprise software application. www.hostanalytics.com
This business unit of Fiserv Inc. provides technology tools for companies in the banking and financial services industry. Solutions from this vendor cover asset liability management, profitability measurement, mortgage analyt-ics, and financial management and planning. IPS-Sendero solutions provides an integrated suite of interest-rate risk, forecasting, planning, organizational profitability, reporting/analysis, and scenario modeling tools, and traditional performance management applications (budgeting and consolidation). www.ips-sendero.com
KCI Computing's CONTROL provides one unified solution for the BPM continuum — planning, budgeting, mod-eling, forecasting, consolidations, reporting, analysis — for medium to large enterprises at an attractive price point. CONTROL provides built-in ETL capabilities and a relational (Oracle, MS SQL Server, or DB2/400) backend for optimal scalability, integration, and performance. The familiar Microsoft Excel interface, real-time calculations and consolidations, optional 64-bit technology, predictive and offline/disconnected capabilities, graphical point-and-click administration, and ease of use enables KCI to compete with leaders in the BPM market. www.kcicorp.com
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Tagetik
Australia-based Mondelio provides a full suite of BPM capabilities delivered on the Microsoft Platform. Its current release, v 5.2, incorporates powerful financial modeling to provide completely flexible operational planning through to projected cash flows, automatically balances balance sheets, and then integrates outcomes to BI. The system integrates functionality such as activity-based management, the Balanced Scorecard, ETL, and consolidation in one comprehensive solution. www.mondelio.com
Acquired by SAP. See SAP comments.
Prophix offers performance management solutions that are targeted primarily at small to midsize companies and divisions of larger corporations seeking functionally rich budgeting, forecasting, financial consolidation, reporting, and dashboard applications. Prophix has continued to enhance the core planning and reporting capabilities of their solution, including enhancements to headcount and labor planning and scorecard/dashboard performance report-ing and variance alerting capabilities. Prophix offers three versions of their solution with an Express edition for smaller user groups, an Enterprise edition for larger user communities, and their new SQL Server edition for larger applications leveraging Microsoft's SQL Server and Analysis Services technical platform. www.prophix.com
Zap Technology
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Tagetik’s unified corporate performance solution, with successful implementations across Europe, is coming to the U.S. in 2008. The open architecture solution is database and application-server independent and is embedded with built-in functionality that unifies multiple BPM applications including planning, budgeting & forecasting, profit-ability modeling, financial consolidation, and statutory/management reporting including dashboards and scorecards. The product also includes extended BPM process support for credit analysis, IT performance management, and gov-ernance risk and compliance. Tagetik’s international customer base extends across several vertical markets including banks, utilities, telecommunication firms, manufacturing, and construction companies. www.tagetik.com
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Zap is an Australian Microsoft Gold Partner that recently announced its Business Intelligence release 5.3, which includes enhancements in reporting, installing, and auditing BI applications. Zap has a strong focus on integra-tion with Microsoft Dynamics and leverages Microsoft's Analysis Services and Reporting Services Platform. www.zaptechnology.com
Acorn is a leading provider of profitability management solutions focused on activity-based cost management, product and customer profitability analysis, and performance dashboard reporting and analysis solutions. Acorn has developed industry-specific solutions and partnered with several leading BPM vendors — including SAP, Business Objects/Cartesis, Cognos, and Microsoft — to integrate Acorn's Enterprise Performance Suite and activity-based costing and profitability analysis capabilities with market-leading BPM solutions. www.acornsys.com
The Acteon BudgetGuide family of products is designed as a simple, cost-effective solution to build, maintain, and analyze budgets and forecasts for small and midmarket companies. The BudgetGuide GPS version of this software includes dashboard and OLAP reporting and analysis capabilities. www.acteontechnologies.com
ActiveStrategy specializes in providing software solutions and mangement consulting services focused on strategy development, strategic goal and objective maps, and performance execution measurement reporting and analysis. Solution includes prebuilt capabilities to support a variety of strategic management frameworks, including Balanced Scorecard, Six Sigma, the Malcolm Baldrige criteria, and customized strategic planning and quality management frameworks. Its strategic-execution dashboard and scorecard solutions can be deployed with a Web-based hosted model or with an enterprise license model. ActiveStrategy has established a Healthcare Practice Group that is focused on providing strategic performance reporting and management consulting services to hospitals and healthcare pro-vider networks. www.activestrategy.com
Actuate offers a portfolio of business intelligence reporting and query tools along with a comprehensive Web-based performance metrics management solution that enable organizations to improve alignment and monitoring of strate-gic objectives and key performance indicators. Actuate’s Enterprise Reporting and Performance Management solutions facilitate the production, distribution, and management of executive scorecards and dashboards, standardized financial and operational reports, and ad hoc reporting and analyses. Actuate leverages an open source –based model to expedite reporting application development while reducing implementation and integration costs. www.actuate.com
Aderant focuses on providing performance planning and analytic solutions designed for the professional services vertical market (particularly legal firms). Aderant recently enhanced the performance management solution to allow multiple account and organizational rollups to support financial and statutory reporting compliance requirements. Built on the Microsoft technology platform to utilize SQL Server Analysis and Reporting Services, the Office suite, and a new Microsoft Windows Vista-compatible user interface, Aderant's Expert Executive Office provides budget-ing, reporting, and performance dashboard capabilities that can be integrated with Microsoft SharePoint Portal applications. www.aderant.com
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Advanced Visual Systems, as the name implies, provides powerful data visualization tools to application devel-opers as well as end users. Their offerings are designed to help with the analysis of high-volume, complex data. www.avs.com
This Netherlands-based global ERP vendor provides tight coupling of data management, process modeling, and infor-mation delivery (reporting and analytics) in a unified platform. This means that one change made to an organization’s data or business processes can be reflected throughout the solution. The company continues to roll up new applications (most recently CRM) and is positioning itself as an alternative to Microsoft in midmarket ERP. www.agresso.com
Alight Planning offers a complete set of collaborative budgeting, forecasting, and financial reporting capabilities for midsize businesses through Fortune 1,000 divisions. Alight Planning’s driver-based financial planning and analysis software features include units, rates, and amounts architecture, automated sensitivity analysis, goal-seek operations and intuitive modeling with object-based linking. www.alightplanning.com
AppFusion
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AppFusion's actionable dahsboards enable dynamic, interactive, what-if simulations utilizing drag-and-drop capa-bilites and in-memory calculations. Also bundled in is a Web-based communication tool to facilitate collaboration. www.appfusion.com
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arcplan, a BI vendor based in Germany, recently announced arcplan CFO Cockpit Premier, an out-of-the-box finan-cial reporting and dashboard solution for the SMB space as well as business units in larger organizations. This new offering provides prepackaged reports for a jump start in budgeting and planning, sales forecasting, and cash flow analysis. The arcplan platform builds upon a service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach, and further supplements analysis capabiltities with arcplan Analytic Services. arcplan has been particularly successful as an analytic supple-ment to Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft implementations. www.arcplan.com
BizNet's BizExcelerator provides Excel-based interactive reporting and dashboard applications embedded within general ledgers, such as Sungard‘s iWorks EAS, Sage MAS 500, and Clarus. The platform provides prebuilt data integration and preformatted reports. www.biznetsoftware.com
BizNet Software
Board M.I.T. The new Board 6 toolkit provides an integrated platform for custom BPM and BI solutions. The toolkit includes a multi-dimensional database, ETL tools, and an application interface. It can be used to build custom budgeting, plan-ning, consolidation, and reporting applications, as well as scorecard and operational analytic applications levaraging an improved spreadsheet environment. www.board.com
The company's Cashe product is designed for start-ups and small businesses. Cashe provides basic budgeting and forecasting functionality and requires minimal customization. www.bmatters.com
Callidus provides enterprise sales performance management delivered as either on-premise software or an on-demand application. The products allow organizations to develop and manage incentive compensation linked to the achievement of strategic business objectives. The current 5.2 release is designed to scale for the largest enterprises while maintaining end-user flexiblity through its rules-based interface. An enhanced analytics capability assists users with dashboard development, new visualization capabilities, statistical analysis, and stronger self-service management reporting. Key partnerships include Accenture and IBM, and Callidus promotes integration for users of SAP, Oracle, and salesforce.com. www.callidussoftware.com
Acquired by Cognos, which has plans to be acquired by IBM in Q1 2008. See Cognos comments.
This SaaS solution is sold on a subscription basis and was initially targeted to capital managers and analysts of portfolio companies. Focus is strategy management through models, plans, and performance analysis. www.clearmomentum.com
This Washington, D.C.-based vendor's data visualization tool, WebCEO, offers intuitive, interactive dashboards with metrics management and scorecarding capabilities, including geographic mapping and trend analysis. Conquest Systems supports Data-Planet, a subscription service that allows exploration of government statistics. The firm also offers implementation and consulting services for government-related projects. www.conquestsystems.com
Cornus's data visualization product gathers data from multiple sources: legacy systems, spreadsheets, data warehouses, and the Internet and brings it all together to enable users to answer their key business questions. www.cornus.com
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C-Secure Systems
This Microsoft Partner provides a wide range of solutions for financial planning and analysis, integration, data auto-mation, and HR Management. The products are built to work with or enhance Microsoft Dynamics, SAP Business One, and QuickBooks. Stand-alone products include Cost Allocator and emPerform. CRG offers a suite of solutions to help companies leverage their ERP investment, business data, and resources using a collection of Data Automation, Financial Planning and Analysis, and Employee Performance Management tools. www.crgroup.com
Norway-based Corporater has a Balanced Scorecard–certified offering that provides all the tools needed to collect and display an organization's key information. In 2007, they opened a U.S. office in Boston. www.corporater.com
A subsidiary of Abrige Corporation that allows remote management and analysis of machines and mobile assets to optimize business performance. Capabilities include an executive dashboard and reporting and analysis from Abrige. www.csecure.com
This unique solution provides budgeting, forecasting, and consolidation within a project management framework. Costs can be tracked and allocated by program, project, and phase. The product offers integration with Primavera's Portfolio Project Management solution. www.ecosysmgtm.com
EcoSys
Emagia
SOURCE: BPM PARTNERS
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Emagia is focused on working capital management and more accurate cash flow forecasting. The Emagia Perfor-mance Management Suite 6.0 now includes predictive analytics and process automation. www.emagia.com
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Enovation Enovation is a privately held Australian company that offers its real-time, on-demand, Internet-based, m-cubed performance management 2.0 solution featuring rapid integration, rich reporting, dashboarding, and trend analysis capabilities. Customers use this prototyping tool to quickly introduce performance measures into their organization as a first step toward building a full-fledged, enterprise-wide BPM solution. The easy-to-use application offers data collection and highly visual reporting, providing high-quality BI experiences. www.enovation-bi.com
This New Zealand–based company has been around since 1995 and sells a basic dashboard solution. The company offers a 48-hour dashboard configuration using the customer's metrics and has Balanced Scorecard support capabili-ties, with gauges and tables, distributed via the Internet, using the customer's metrics. www.ergometrics.com
Ergometrics
The company resulting from the recent combination of GERS Retail Systems and Ecometry Corp., funded by Gold-en Gate Capital, will target retailer profitability solutions. It will provide inventory management; marketing analytics; and supply-chain, financial, and e-commerce solutions for the retail industry. www.escalateretail.com
Escalate Retail
Exie This Norwegian company provides a role-based performance solution focused on people and processes. Individual employees can view data relevant to them and be alerted to critical issues. A rule-based calculation engine produces automated budgets and forecasts. www.exie.com
FAST This vendor offers a wide range of high-performance, search-oriented tools for information, market, and risk man-agement that can be used stand-alone or embedded in other applications. Users can create customized personal views of relevant corporate data through an intuitive dashboard. Fast Radar also provides prebuilt applications for a variety of vertical markets, including financial services, government, and retail. www.fastsearch.com
Fractal Edge This software company delivers a unique data-visualization tool based on fractals that makes it easier to spot key trends, patterns, and anomalies in large volumes of data. It is packaged as an Excel add-in, a stand-alone desktop or Web solution, or as a developer's kit to embed in other applications. www.fractaledge.com
Global's spreadsheet automation software enables financial reporting, analysis, and budgeting, as well as event-based notification, application integration, and process automation through its Workwise and Timeline divisions. The product supports multiple ERP platforms such as Infor, JD Edwards, and Oracle. www.glbsoft.com
This vendor produces a stand-alone Flash-based dashboard application that integrates with Oracle E-business, Actu-ate, and Sybase applications as well as the major relational databases, including IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server. The 5.0 release of iDashboards includes improved connectivity to Excel, mapping, data visualization, customization, and embedded portlets in standard Web portals. www.idashboards.com
The feature-rich ExecDash dashboard tool and the ProjectDash project management dashboard are this provider‘s con-tributions to the BPM market. Subscription-based pricing is geared to small to midsize businesses. www.idashes.net
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Informatica
This Microsoft Certified Gold Partner based in South Africa has released idu-Concept 4.0, a Web-based offering for financial and sales budgeting and planning. With tools addressing asset and expense planning, this vendor offers a range of planning features based on Microsoft technologies. idu has expanded its presence internationally to the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. www.idusoft.com
This vendor provides analysis and reporting through their own OLAP server designed for nontechnical end users. Their product also offers threshold-based alerts. www.infomanagerinc.com
With its recent release 8.5, Informatica extends its leadership in enterprise data-integration software, providing ties between disparate data sources within the enterprise. This updated release drives new standards for data timeliness, data trust, and business/IT alignment. Its handling of volumes of unstructured, semi-structured, and structured data becomes more important for companies that have an interest in BPM 2.0 capabilities. The company maintains active technology relationships with Cognos, Microsoft, HP, SAP, salesforce.com, and others, providing a platform that has become the data-integration standard. www.informatica.com
This vendor's Performance Management Framework is a complete metrics cube and scorecarding system designed for business end users. It enables users to create cascading dashboards with strategy maps, ties to projects/initiatives, and collaboration capabilities. The solution utilizes WebFocus and iWay technologies. Recently introduced vertical packages provide support for Manufacturing and Healthcare. www.informationbuilders.com
Information Builders
InforSense
SOURCE: BPM PARTNERS
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The InforSense platform is designed to provide embedded intelligence, analysis, and predictive capabilities through-out the enterprise, utilizing SOA.Their solution is utilized primarily by pharmaceutical, biotech, research institutes, financial services, and consumer goods firms. Vertical solutions are available for life sciences. www.inforsense.com
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Inphase Software
Inphase is based in the UK and offers performance management functionality utilizing Microsoft technology Web-based applications for all elements of business performance management. Its software contains best-practice meth-odologies, including Balanced Scorecard and EVA analyses. The company specializes in vertical-market template solutions for public-sector entities such as local authorities, healthcare, police, and education. www.inphase.com
Insight-formation
InsightVision is a Web-based, enterprise-wide Balanced Scorecard application. InsightVision is developed on Micro-soft technologies and has a modular design that can be deployed in a variety of configurations, providing different levels of personalization. www.insightformation.com
Interlace Systems
IRM Corporation
Acquired by Oracle. See Oracle comments.
ISIS Solutions
IRM provides performance management solutions specifically for the food and beverage industry. While not a SaaS solution, it is sold on a monthly subscription basis. Also available is a library of best practice add-ons including one that looks at customer line item profitability. www.irmcorporation.com
Kearen Corporation
Management & Executive Software
ISIS stands out as a pure-play predictive analytics leader adding powerful, user-friendly analytics capabilities to tradi-tional reporting. Common language queries can be configured within the application to empower users to leverage the "12 essential analytics" for improving performance. www.isis-solution.com
The KearenDashboard is a web-based product that is offered in both on-demand and on-premise versions. The dashboards themselves are presented as Flash files. This solution is priced to appeal to small companues as well as large enterprises. www.kearen.com
Management & Executive Software (MES), an Australia-focused business, has a suite of three products (Business Intelligence, Business Planner, and Performance Manager) that provide budgeting, planning, and reporting capabili-ties in an integrated package. It is available as both a proprietary client server and a Web-based application. Charts and reports can be created for distribution in Microsoft Office applications. www.mesware.com
MicroStrategy Microstrategy continues as a leading pure-play business intelligence provider. Dynamic Enterprise Dashboards are a next-generation dashboard product that combine data visualization, animation, and interactivity enhancements in one package. Performance management starter kits built off the established MicroStrategy 8 platform help accelerate the deployment of operational analytics. In addition to expected financial reporting capabilities, customer analysis, HR, salesforce, and sales/distribution analysis modules are now available. BPM 2.0 projects can be supported with these strong reporting and predictive analytics capabilities. The firm continues to support partnerships with IBM, Oracle, and Teradata. www.microstrategy.com
NewEnergy Associates markets IMPACT, a budgeting, planning, forecasting, and consolidation system developed and implemented by energy-industry specialists. It integrates directly with operational planning systems, and has func-tionality that supports strategic planning, capital project planning, and rate case design and analysis. Recently acquired by Ventyx, NewEnergy Associates provides a diverse portfolio of integrated planning, forecasting, operations, and trading software, as well as a broad range of consulting services. www.newenergyassoc.com/products/impact/
Oco provides advanced analytics, delivered in a hosted application, for retail, CPG, manufacturing, and distribu-tion companies. The company also offers functional applications for merger and acquisition analysis and business improvement processes. Data management tools and established deployment processes are included to assist in a rapid implementation of Oco solutions. www.oco-inc.com
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Pilot Software
Panorama recently announced NovaView Spotlight, which demonstrates strong integration with Microsoft Office products. Spotlight embeds key metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) into Microsoft Outlook or Office task panes that act as a smart personal dashboard for end users. NovaView's Virtual Appliance is a preconfigured, software-based appliance with an operating system and a preconfigured suite of BI applications inside a virtual machine that clients can download and start to use in less than 1 hour. This is a BI tool that should be on the short list of Microsoft or SAP shops. www.panoramasoftware.com
The PowerAnalytics performance management application is built upon its own PowerOLAP engine. The engine is also private-labeled by some application vendors in the Asia-Pacific region. Recent developments include a focused effort to provide improved integration with SAP for penetration into larger enterprise accounts. Recently announced is BIXL, which delivers Microsoft Analysis Services data directly and dynamically into Excel. With BIXL, the Excel spreadsheet can read, write, chart, and slice data kept in MS Analysis Services and other industry-standard OLAP cubes while retaining Excel functionality. www.olap.com
Acquired by SAP. See SAP comments.
PowerPlan is a fully integrated business performance management solution and provides an affordable budgeting and reporting solution designed to meet the planning needs of smaller companies. PowerPlan is designed for simplicity of system configuration, maintenance, and usage that enhance the ability to be deployed within a short implementation time-frame. PowerPlan partners with Blackbaud to provide solutions to nonprofit organizations. www.powerplancorp.com
PowerPlan
ProClarity
SOURCE: BPM PARTNERS
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Acquired by Microsoft. See Microsoft comments.
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ProfitBase This Norwegian BPM provider with a U.S. presence provides a rapid configuration data warehouse technology that includes ready-to-use OLAP cubes for Finance and Sales. They have connectors for MS Great Plains, Oracle Finan-cials, and others. They offer a special version for Retail. www.profitbase.net
Protia Protia provides a Web-based dashboard capable of facilitating identification of strategic performance targets, col-laboration in development of strategic and tactical initiatives, and alignment of individual objectives. This software leverages the Microsoft Business Intelligence platform to provide an open and scalable solution that can be deployed as either a hosted or perpetual on-site licensed solution. www.protia-inc.com
PureShare With a zero-footprint Web interface, this vendor's ActiveMetrics product aggregates data from multiple structured and unstructured sources and displays the results in the form of key performance indicators. The interface also allows for data entry and annotation. They offer specific solutions for IT service management and insurance claims management. www.pureshare.com
pVelocity
QlikTech
QPR Software
pVelocity is based in Toronto, Canada, and focuses on the manufacturing industry. It gathers information from production and financial systems to provide profit visibility across the enterprise — including, sales and marketing, customers, products, and manufacturing. pVelocity’s multiple modules provide analysis via dashboards, what-if scenarios, quote profitability, and other reporting and analysis tools. www.pvelocity.com
QlikView 8.0 was recently released with a focus on more advanced analytics, improved collaboration, user volume, and reporting. This in-memory application is available on pay-as-you-go commercial terms as companies expand usage through the enterprise. QlikTech‘s service-oriented architecture (SOA) can be a powerful data visualization platform to develop BPM 2.0 applications. The company also has predefined data connectivity with Oracle, SAP, and SalesLogix implementations. www.qliktech.com
QPR Software is a Finnish company that leverages the Balanced Scorecard methodology with a specialized emphasis on government. QPR offers an end-to-end performance management solution that spans planning, communication, measuring & consolidation, operational analytics, business intelligence, reporting, alerting, initiatives management, and data integration. www.qpr.com
Reveleus
River Logic
Reveleus, a unit of i-flex solutions, specifically targets the financial services industry with sophisticated data man-agement, reporting and analysis solutions that meet Basel II and SarBox requirements. It offers risk management, customer profitability, and enterprise financial performance solutions. www.reveleus.com
Enterprise Optimizer (EO) allows a client to quickly view the company-wide financial impact (profit, cash flow, NPV, EVA) of related business decisions. Three new key features in EO include detailed unit cost capability; sequencing; and pooling. EO furthers this integration by allowing the end users to exchange data and interoperate between EO and MS Office applications. www.riverlogic.com
Rosetta Stone offers a Hyperion Performance Suite development kit (utilities) that is designed to minimize risk, reduces total project effort, and improves the quality of implementation. Their Documentor product integrates reporting from multiple systems into a single interface. Add-on tools are available for administration of third-party applications. www.rosetta-stone.co.uk
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Solver Brazil
Offers a suite of performance modules for retail, CPG, municipal government, and field service organizations. Their solutions incorporate situational intelligence and address areas such as sales performance and capital performance. Recent additions add geospatial intelligence and climate data into the mix. www.salient.com
This vendor offers a SaaS solution that provides Web-based analytics, drillable reports, and dashboards targeted at business users. Their software is sold directly to end users as well as embedded in other vendors' products. www.seatab.com
This Australia-based vendor joins together data from multiple sources in real time across databases and across plat-forms. Easy dashboard creation and graphical or pivot table analysis are included. www.seemoredata.com
This Brazil-based company produces a process management-oriented scorecard tool that can be configured to sup-port Balanced Scorecard, Six Sigma, or EVA projects and others focused on tying top-level objectives to underlying business initatives. The software possesses a good range of functionality, including alerts, workflow, and progress reporting to support intitiatives under way in alignment with company strategies. Although used by companies large and small, focus for Solver seems to be in the SME market. www.solver.com.br
Strand Associates
Stratature
SOURCE: BPM PARTNERS
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This Belgian vendor's Pharos consolidation product is targeted at small to midsize businesses. It addresses legal statutory reporting requirements as well as management reporting and is integrated with Excel for data entry and reporting. www.strandassociates.com
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Strategix Performance
This vendor provides sales performance management capabilities tied to incentive/compensation management. The product provides analysis of metrics, objectives, goals, and quotas from the enterprise level down to the individual employee. www.strategixperformance.com
Acquired by Microsoft. See Microsoft comments.
Strategy Engine
Their solution is designed to help collect and analyze data that will enable a company to align its strategy with cus-tomers and markets. Its operational focus area is product planning and marketing. www.strategyengine.com
Sungard AvantGard
Acquired by SunGard, the AvantGard Receivables solution provides credit and collections software that drives auto-mation, workflow, and collaboration across the Order-to-Cash cycle, helping organizations improve liquidity man-agement. Solutions include managing strategic and major accounts as well as order life-cycle, credit risk, collections, dispute resolution, cash application, dashboards, and reporting for all accounts. www.sungard.com/AvantGard/
Symphony Metreo
Symphony's enterprise application development platform is sold primarily through OEM agreements with software companies and system integrators developing performance management and business analytic applications. The current version 5.2 supports enhanced predictive analytics capabilities that assist new pricing support and partners' product lifecycle management applications. www.symphony-metreo.com
Tableau Software
Thinking Networks
Varicent
The recently released Tableau Version 3.0 continues to demonstrate expertise in exceptional data-visualization capa-bilities that integrate with a variety of data sources. The current release focuses on dynamic dashboards, enhanced filtering, and prepackaged support of even more databases. This solution is targeted at the operational analytics area of BPM with access to Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services, Hyperion, Oracle, MySQL, DB2, and Firebird data sources. www.tableausoftware.com
Thinking Networks is a Germany-based company providing full-function planning, reporting, and workflow con-trol. Their core product is TN Planning, which is designed as a multi-dimensional Business Information Suite and based upon a their proprietary OLAP engine. The suite is designed for optimizing corporate planning and controlling that will also process extremely large quantities of data in the terabyte range. TN Planning now can also extract data for the entire planning process directly from Business Objects reports. This makes it possible to immediately integrate TN Planning into existing IT architectures. www.thinking-networks.com
Varicent is a leading vendor specilaizing in the Sales Performance Management area, which includes enterprise-wide incentive compensation modeling and management, sales territory and quota management, and compensation plan performance analytic reporting. Varicent has continued to develop vertical market specific applications targeting the financial services, high tech, retail, and services industries (among others) and leverages an open application architec-ture that can be deployed with a variety of ERP, CRM, payroll, and order entry systems. The Varicent SPM solution is available either as an on-demand hosted version or on a traditional on-site enterprise license basis. www.varicent.com
Xactly offers an on-demand sales compensation solution designed to improve performance by allowing for greater vis-ibility and the ability to rapidly model and modify plans . Compensation plans and payments are fully auditable to meet SarBox requirements. Seamless integration with Oracle/Siebel CRM On Demand is an option. www.xactlycorp.com
This new vendor provides a wizard-driven front end designed to assist line managers in creating valid cost center budgets. This simplifies the budgeting process while improving timeliness and accuracy. The tool works with most major enterprise budgeting software as well as Microsoft Excel. www.xlerant.com
