Results Name Information Builders’ WebFOCUS as the Top-Ranked Business Intelligence Offering for Users Based on TCO, Scalability, ROI, Usability, and Overall Satisfaction
New York, NY – June 20, 2005 – Frank N. Magid Associates, Inc., a leading research-based strategic consulting firm, today announced the findings of a survey entitled “Business Intelligence and Reporting Software.” Polling nearly 600 users of the top four business intelligence providers � Business Objects, Cognos, Information Builders, and MicroStrategy � respondents were asked a series of 40 questions regarding their business intelligence deployments and experiences within three categories, implementation, support, and usage. Information Builders fared the best of all business intelligence (BI) software vendors based on the ability to provide customers with operational business intelligence tools critical to their organization, enabling unmatched scalability and reducing both costs and compulsory resources.
Vicki Cohen, senior vice president of Frank N. Magid Associates said, “Our survey found Information Builders’ WebFOCUS best addresses such requirements as Information Builders’ customers create more reports and access more real-time data allowing them to maximize their business intelligence investment and corporate resources.”
According to the survey results, WebFOCUS customers had more users on average, used fewer development resources for their initial implementation, and required less end-user and systems support personnel overall. Vendors competed heavily in the usage category, specifically around training. The research specified that WebFOCUS is virtually effortless for nontechnical users to learn, requiring little, if any, training. Other vendors’ customers needed more time to effectively train users. The survey also found that, across the board, customers of all four vendors installed their business intelligence systems on the same amount of existing hardware.
Other key survey findings that define WebFOCUS as the leading solution include:
-
WebFOCUS customers have more than two times the number of users than customers of other business intelligence vendors, validating the product’s scalability capabilities
-
WebFOCUS users were 50 percent more likely to access existing data for their applications than to create a fresh data source
-
WebFOCUS customers create more new applications after their initial deployments than users of other tools, maximizing their initial investment and enhancing TCO
-
WebFOCUS users run more reports on a monthly basis and spend less time doing it than users of the other products
-
70 percent of WebFOCUS customers consider their applications critical to their business compared to 56 percent of competitors
“As organizations continue to streamline operations, the pressure to cut costs, generate revenue, and maximize productivity becomes overwhelming,” said Gerald Cohen, president and CEO of Information Builders. “We are committed to enhancing our customers experience with our software in order to help them achieve their most challenging business objectives, which is why we offer a free program to help customers quantify ROI for their operational BI deployments. By successfully addressing such metrics, our customers are no longer burdened with cost comparison, but instead are able to focus on evaluating and executing their business. We are thrilled to be recognized for such efforts by the very people we serve.”
The Frank N. Magid Associates, Inc. survey was conducted in April of 2005, surveying IT directors, managers, and analysts. To read a white paper based on the survey’s results, visit http://www.informationbuilders.com/magid.
About Frank N. Magid Associates
Frank N. Magid Associates is a leading research-based strategic consulting firm that has been in business for 48 years. They have over 300 employees and serve customers around the world. For more information, visit MA .
www.magid.com
