Business Objects Differentiators

You will find that many systems cover the basics fairly well but there are differences between them that can be crucial. Our analysis was conducted a few years ago for a seminar presented at the Financial Technology Show. We will endavour to provide an update to our analysis in the near future.

Target Market

Small, medium and large companies.

Data Integration

Business Objects has pre-built mapping tables for the leading ERP and CRM systems.

Incremental extraction

Performance is enhanced by extracting only what has changed.

Data Warehouse

Business Objects will pull data from multiple sources, apply conflict resolution rules and build the data warehouse.

Real Time Alerts

Business Objects can generate real times alerts based on changes in the source systems.

OLAP independence

Business supports OLAP cubes from Microsoft, Hyperion, IBM, Oracle, and SAP.

SDK Kit

SDK allows customers or 3rd parties to build applications based on Business Objects code. 40% of Business Objects revenue is attributed to 3rd party developers.

Analytic Applications

Business Objects has pre-built analytical applications that include customer analysis, supply chain and human resources.

Performance Management

Business Objects includes goal setting, metric management, dashboard.

On Report Analysis

Non technical users can make changes to reports over the web including adding new columns.

Impact Analysis

For example, when changing a data transformation rule, you can see all the objects and reports that could be impacted.

System Monitoring

You can monitor the use of the system to see which parts of the system are being used.

Crystal

Business Objects has announced its plans to acquire Crystal Decisions, which is expected to close in 4Q03. The combined organization will be the revenue leader of the business intelligence market, with $736 million in revenue for the twelve months ended March 31, 2003. Crystal also opens new channels of opportunity for Business Objects. Crystal is the leading reporting tool and is bundled with many systems.