WebFOCUS Performance Management Framework 3.1 Introduces New Features Including Predictive Analysis and Forecasting, Alert Management, and Business-Process Management
New York, NY – September 7, 2006 – Information Builders, the enterprise business intelligence (BI) standard of choice for organizations around the world, today announced the release of WebFOCUS Performance Management Framework (PMF) 3.1. This release further extends the company’s vision for operational performance management as the way to connect strategy to operations, making information accessible to a broader set of users for optimal decision-making. Information Builders has helped define operational business intelligence with the WebFOCUS enterprise platform for BI. Combined with the integration platform from iWay Software � an Information Builders’ company � Information Builders delivers the right information to the right people at the lowest TCO.
The optimal performance management system is invisible to business intelligence in terms of information, data access, and availability to those who can act upon it. If an organization wants to understand and manage performance from both a strategic and operational point of view, then users need the ability to access real-time information from the operational systems and deliver it to all operational staff. That strategic system then delivers timely key performance indicators (KPIs) from all business units to executives for a single version of the truth. In this way, all operational systems are provided with the same context when managing performance and overall strategy.
“Organizations are now taking performance management operational, requiring information as part of their weekly and daily activities,” said Mark Smith, CEO and executive vice president of research for Ventana Research. “Information Builders’ performance management framework delivers flexibility and integration into operations to provide an offering that helps link strategic and operational information for managing performance.”
WebFOCUS PMF delivers exceptional value by enabling organizations to truly achieve a holistic view of their performance with native and direct transparency into their operational systems. PMF combines the analytic, graphical, predictive, and discovery aspects of BI with the cause/effect, weighting, balancing, and leading-indicator analysis of performance management.
WebFOCUS Performance Management Framework 3.1 introduces a number of new features including:
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Predictive analysis and forecasting that allows any user to apply predictive analysis to any metric set, designing a view that shows historical metrics and predicts future achievement using standard patterns
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Performance correlation capabilities that gives users the ability to view any two metrics or objectives in a manner that helps determine if there is a relationship between the two; this capability can be used to help determine if there is a real cause-and-effect relationship and, when planning, the results can be used to influence how targets are set
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Boardroom quality strategy map, based on industry standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) technology that allows direct access to the cascade of scorecards in the system via hyperlinks and pop-up menus
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Business-process management support that lets users align objectives or goals to core business processes and link those processes to supporting documentation, such as an operational WebFOCUS report
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Scorecarding cascading that lets users organize scorecards in a hierarchical linkage, allowing them to drill up and down through various scorecards in the organization
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The ability to publish unlimited public views to deliver performance dashboards to all stakeholders in an organization, including executives, managers, and employees, as well as board members, partners, and citizens outside of the organization
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Alert management, which implements WebFOCUS ReportCaster alerts via an intuitive user interface model; users can directly add, change, or delete existing alerts and view any fired alert history on demand, allowing users to track the history for management or compliance reporting
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Enhanced automatic data security that automatically filters data for users by values on any single dimension; this capability can be specified for individual users or groups to set the level of their data access
“WebFOCUS PMF delivers the ability to connect the operational potential of our stores with our overall strategy,” said Rich Pedott, vice president of Planning and Allocation at Eastern Mountain Sports. “WebFOCUS PMF 3.1 sets a new standard for what you should expect from a performance management solution � a real management tool to drive operational performance,”
“There is tremendous disparity in what businesses are striving for in a performance management solution and how the market is defining performance management,” said David Cook, director of Performance Solutions at Information Builders. “Our vision marries operational business intelligence with performance management, providing insight beyond just the financials of a company. Aligning strategy with operations and balancing the lagging indicators of finance for example, with the leading indicators of customer satisfaction, delivers a comprehensive way to drive coordinated performance across the entire business.”
About Information Builders
Information Builders is the leader in enterprise business intelligence and real-time operational reporting. The company’s WebFOCUS product – the industry’s most scalable, secure, and flexible – is able to meet all the reporting needs of the extended enterprise, ranging from analysts to power users to the widest deployments for hundreds of thousands of users. Additionally, WebFOCUS’ empowerment of organizations seeking to leverage all their data � by accessing it all from legacy to data warehouse – is unmatched.
Information Builders’ award-winning technology has successfully provided quality software and superior services for over 31 years to more than 12,000 customers, including most of the Fortune 100 and U.S. federal government agencies. Headquartered in New York City with 90 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,750 people and has over 350 business partners. www.informationbuilders.com