Business Objects Helps SAP Customers Optimize Performance Using Busine

Business Objects Helps SAP Customers Optimize Performance Using Business Intelligence

    Business Editors/High-Tech Editors
    SAPPHIRE '05 Conference

    COPENHAGEN, Denmark--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 26, 2005--

Business Objects is the De-facto Standard for Accessing, Distributing, and Analyzing Information in SAP R/3, SAP BW, and Other Organizational Data Systems
    To optimize business performance and accelerate the return on SAP investments, companies around the world are selecting industry-leading business intelligence solutions from Business Objects (Nasdaq: BOBJ) (Euronext Paris ISIN code: FR0004026250 - BOB), the world's leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions. These companies use Business Objects solutions for enterprise reporting, query and analysis, performance management, and data integration in conjunction with SAP R/3 and SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW). SAP BW is a core product within SAP Business Intelligence (SAP BI), and a component of the SAP NetWeaver(TM) platform.
    "With the largest number of business intelligence customers running SAP solutions and the only reporting tool embedded within SAP BW, Business Objects has established itself as the de-facto BI standard for SAP customers," said Bernard Liautaud, chairman and CEO of Business Objects. "SAP customers want to standardize on a single platform for their unique business intelligence needs, including accessing, distributing, and analyzing information in SAP R/3 and SAP BW. BusinessObjects(TM) XI, our industry-leading BI platform, delivers an easy to use, low-cost business intelligence solution that enables companies to provide all users with information from their SAP solutions and other corporate data sources through an integrated approach to information access, performance management, analysis, and reporting."
    Business Objects delivers the most complete BI suite for reporting and analytics across SAP R/3, SAP BW, and SAP NetWeaver. More than 1,400 SAP customers worldwide use Business Objects solutions with SAP to track, understand, and manage their business performance, including:

    Airbus

    Airbus, an EADS joint company with BAE Systems, is a leading aircraft manufacturer with the most modern and comprehensive product line on the market. Headquartered in Toulouse, France, Airbus has selected Crystal Reports(R) for use with its SAP deployment.
    "The Financial Reporting department of Airbus aims to use Crystal Reports from Business Objects on top of our SAP-BW corporate financial warehouse," said Olivier Cahuzac, head of business control corporate solutions at Airbus. "This solution will help us to quickly and easily produce monthly in-house formatted reports. In addition, managers will be able to access key company data faster and with more accuracy than before."

    British Standards Institution (BSI)

    BSI was founded in 1901 as a not-for-profit body dedicated to making UK businesses more efficient and competitive. Today, BSI is a world-leading national standards body which operates in 112 countries and has over 40,000 global customers. BSI implemented SAP to replace approximately fifteen legacy systems, but the organization still required a flexible reporting and analysis platform to allow users to easily access and analyze business information. BSI selected Crystal Reports and BusinessObjects Enterprise from Business Objects to create a standardized, web-based BI solution that enables its employees and customers to use information more effectively.
    "Having improved access to information has increased our productivity and our ability to generate revenue," said Stephen Cargill, group applications manager at the British Standards Institution. "Using the Business Objects solution, we can now produce reports in a couple of minutes that used to take programmers a couple of days to do. The flexibility of the SAP solutions from Business Objects has also enhanced BSI's analysis capabilities, as end users are now empowered to do their own complex selections and queries rather than having a developer write programs to perform the same functions. We have improved time-saving and costs by at least a factor of ten, and the amount of time we have saved alone has probably paid for the product several times over."

    Clariant International

    Clariant is a global leader in specialty chemicals, headquartered in Switzerland. Clariant, which uses SAP R/3 as its ERP solution and SAP BW for data warehousing, required a way to get data to employees in a timely and consistent manner. In addition, Clariant wanted to combine their data from SAP with other data stored throughout the organization. Clariant has deployed BusinessObjects Enterprise to offer a company-wide reporting solution. By using Business Objects with SAP, users can query financial reports at the push of a button, saving time and cutting costs.
    "We needed a solution that would streamline access to our data and provide consistency from one report to the next, and BusinessObjects Enterprise provides that for us," said Thomas Daverio, MIS manager at Clariant International. "We have been very pleased using Business Objects with SAP. Administration is less time-consuming and we have significantly improved the performance of our reporting. Finally, data consistency and security are ensured across multiple platforms."

    Cutter & Buck

    Cutter & Buck (Nasdaq: CBUK), a leading designer of upscale sportswear and outerwear, has standardized on Business Objects as its business intelligence platform. When the company recently decided to implement SAP BW and R/3, it wanted an integrated solution for centralized reporting that would enable users to easily create reports and allow for customization based on specific needs. To do this, Cutter & Buck is implementing the BusinessObjects XI Integration Kit for SAP. This solution provides tight integration with SAP, including a set of data drivers, integrated security, report templates, and custom user interfaces that provide SAP customers with presentation-quality reports from SAP BW and SAP R/3 to users across the enterprise.
    "With the BusinessObjects XI Integration Kit for SAP, we get an out-of-the box solution for our reporting and analysis needs for the data stored in our SAP environment," said Kenneth Stringer, CIO of Cutter & Buck. "Our initial deployment will use the solution to report on and analyze sales distribution data, and we expect to leverage this module on future SAP BW data sets. Using BusinessObjects XI provides us with better access to the data and helps us to optimize business performance."

    DVB Bank AG

    DVB Bank is an international advisory and finance organization specializing in providing funds to the transportation market including shipping, rail and aviation. As a financial services provider acting internationally, DVB Bank has to manage a diverse data structure as well as complex analytical problems. DVB Bank turned to Business Objects to build and configure a data warehouse that provided connectivity to SAP applications using BusinessObjects Data Integrator. DVB Bank then implemented a centralized analysis and reporting platform on top of the data warehouse using Business Objects BI software. With Business Objects, DVB Bank has optimized data management and corporate reporting, while streamlining and automating a variety of manual processes.
    "Using Business Objects BI software, we were able to establish a powerful and flexible system for extracting, consolidating, and evaluating business data and key figures," said Frank Hafner, data warehouse project manager at DVB Bank. "Business Objects enabled DVB Bank to implement corporate-wide reporting platform that allows for interactive analysis with drill-down functionality. The easy-to-use system enables employees to independently generate extensive reports and analyses, thus helping to free up the IT department and make business processes considerably more efficient."

    Ferrovie dello Stato

    Ferrovie dello Stato, Italy's national rail transport operator, is made up of 30 companies and is the country's largest state-owned enterprise. Each of the companies in the group has a different information system based on their specific needs, which creates a problem when there is a need to analyze data across the entire enterprise. Ferrovie needed a solution that would consolidate information from a variety of sources, including SAP, and allow for real-time reporting and analysis. Ferrovie implemented BusinessObjects Enterprise and BusinessObjects Web Intelligence to gain a real-time view of data and gain a centralized information management solution that provides each of the group's companies with the freedom to analyze the data.
    "The Business Objects solutions have made a vast and complex amount of information transparent and accessible in real-time," said Riccardo Santoro, application architect at Ferrovie dello Stato Holding Company. "We are now able to coordinate our companies efficiently, while allowing each an appropriate level of freedom to make the technological choices that aid their strategic decision-making. The rapid improvement in the group's processes has accelerated return on investment and enabled Ferrovie to quickly derive benefits from the solution."

    Gefco

    Gefco, a global transport and logistics management company, decided in 2000 to overhaul its existing IT environment to improve the company's management tools. At the time, data was supplied by various systems including SAP and HR Access running under Oracle, text files, and specialized business packages. Gefco decided to implement a global data warehouse and standardized all its technologies around Business Objects, Oracle 9i, and Hummingbird/Genio. Today, hundreds of users receive real-time access to standard information, while more specialized users can issue their own data queries. In addition, for Gefco's network business, Business Objects provides dashboards for each agency on the quality and performance of the business. The Business Objects solution has optimized corporate performance through improved efficiency and responsiveness.
    "Our aim was to supply the entire organization with very detailed metrics and a range of perspectives to enable better management and customer service," said Oliver Joly, BI platform manager at Gefco. "We standardized our architecture based on Business Objects to give us a single application with different levels of analysis for various managerial profiles. With our infrastructure, two critical goals were met: confidential data is now absolutely secure, and we are able to move information fast to a very large user population."

    Italtel

    Italtel is a global leader in the integration of multi-service networks including voice, data, and video. The ability to effectively manage the company's expertise and skill sets is of strategic importance, and in the past few years, the Human Resources department has undergone a re-organization to redefine processes and resource management support systems using SAP R/3 and Oracle data marts. Business Objects serves as the front end of the solution, allowing each department manager to quickly access and verify information on their employees, such as compensation, vacation time, and career paths. In addition, Business Objects enables Italtel to gain a much broader view of the organization with management and reporting dashboards.
    "We chose Business Objects because we needed a solution that would effectively integrate information from all other our corporate systems, not just SAP," said Silvano Pozzi, CIO at Italtel. "Today we can rely on a multi-channel system enabling real-time assess to the information required across the entire company, which has improved the level of information provided to the HR department. With Business Objects, our users are now able to create their own reporting dashboards, thus gaining a better view of critical information and reducing the reliance on our IT department."

    NVIDIA

    NVIDIA, a worldwide leader in graphics and digital media processors, uses BusinessObjects Enterprise to access and share corporate information managed within its SAP Business Information Warehouse. NVIDIA uses Business Objects for web-based reporting on SAP and non-SAP corporate data sources. Business Objects allows NVIDIA to streamline report creation and provides a single sign-on for access to the company's multiple data sources.
    "With BusinessObjects Enterprise, our employees can make better decisions across a range of critical data, including sales, financial, operating, and manufacturing information," commented Rajendra Gade, senior manager of IS application development at NVIDIA. "The tight integration between Business Objects and SAP enables rapid deployment of the solution and provides us with an enterprise-wide business intelligence platform to meet our reporting needs. Using Business Objects, we can get critical business information into the hands of our employees to help them make informed decisions that enable us to optimize our performance."

    PolyOne

    PolyOne, a leading global polymer compounding and North American distribution company, has deployed SAP BW and R/3 to capture its critical business data. PolyOne realized it needed a way to engage the infrequent system user and turned to Business Objects to streamline access to information with a focus on ease of distribution throughout the company. Using BusinessObjects Enterprise and Crystal Reports, PolyOne is able to provide their infrequent SAP users with a consistent view of key performance data at regular intervals.
    "We wanted a business intelligence platform that complemented our existing SAP BW reporting capabilities," said Bill Peeler, project manager at PolyOne. "The tight integration between BusinessObjects Enterprise and Crystal Reports with SAP BW was a key differentiator for us in our selection of the solution. We are now able to empower our users to create their own reports and enable them to schedule distributions of those reports via the web and email. By making critical information more accessible, our sales and management teams are better positioned to manage the needs of our very diverse customer base."
    For more information regarding Business Objects solutions for SAP customers, please visit http://www.businessobjects.com/SAP/.

    About Business Objects

    Business Objects is the world's leading business intelligence (BI) software company. With more than 30,000 customers worldwide, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 500, Business Objects helps organizations gain better insight into their business, improve decision making, and optimize enterprise performance. The company's business intelligence platform, BusinessObjects(TM) XI, offers the BI industry's most advanced and complete platform for reporting, query and analysis, performance management, and data integration. BusinessObjects XI includes Crystal Reports(R), the industry standard for enterprise reporting. Business Objects has built the industry's strongest and most diverse partner community, and also offers consulting and education services to help customers effectively deploy their business intelligence projects.
    Business Objects has dual headquarters in San Jose, Calif., and Paris, France. The company's stock is traded on both the Nasdaq (BOBJ) and Euronext Paris (ISIN: FR0004026250 - BOB) stock exchanges. More information about Business Objects can be found at www.businessobjects.com.

    Business Objects, the Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, WebIntelligence, Crystal Reports, Crystal Enterprise, Crystal Analysis, RapidMarts, and BusinessQuery are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects S.A. or its affiliated companies in the United States and/or other countries. SAP, SAPPHIRE, SAP BW, SAP R/3, SAP NetWeaver and all other SAP product and service names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and several other countries around the world. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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CONTACT: Business Objects Peter Olson, 408-953-6320 peter.olson@businessobjects.com or Eastwick Communications Katie Zack, 650-480-4041 katie@eastwick.com

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