BusinessObjects’ new Trade Promotion Effectiveness Analytics application provides promotional spending analytics for CPG firms It joins Business Objects’ expanding suite of applications in the retail, which the company is now aggressively focusing on.
Last November the company released an XI-based planning and budgeting analytic application retailers for brand assortment optimization and sales and marketing effectiveness.
All these applications have now been updated to take advantage of new capabilities included in the XI Release 2 platform, which include tightened integration between Crystal Reports environments and BusinessObjects universe metadata layer, new WebIntelligence features, and sophisticated visualization tools bought in though the acquisition of Infommersion Inc late last year.
All our analytic applications can now take advantage of the innovations we’re bringing to market in our XI Release 2 platform, said Darren Cunningham, director of product marketing at San Jose, California-based Business Objects.
While Business Objects also develops horizontally-focused analytic applications for finance, sales and marketing, and human resource management, the company is increasingly starting to re-tailor them with a vertical spin.
We’re redoubling our efforts to be more industry-focused, Cunningham said.
He also pointed out that all of Business Objects’ analytic applications are backed by a professional services offering called Solution Accelerators to speed-up deployments.
We have vertically-focused vision workshops to find out what the requirements are and map them to the analytics that are needed.
Retail has been a strong sector for Business Objects in 2005. The company counts companies like Tesco, Wal-Mart.com and Carrefour on its books. Many of our largest transactions last year were in the retail space, Cuningham said.
But while Business Objects has initially focused on retail, the company expects to roll more XI-based out analytic applications for a broader set of verticals this year – including financial services, government and healthcare.
Expect to see more analytic applications from us. We’re committed to moving the conversation from a tools discussion with IT and going to a business audience, Cunningham said.
