Enterprise application software provided SAP has released two new business analytics offerings – SAP Crystal Server 2011 software and SAP BusinessObjects Edge Business Intelligence (BI) software – tailored to fit the needs of small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) and lines of business.
The German global software company said these offerings are designed to help enable customers to get up and running quickly to understand all facets of their businesses and make confident, data-driven decisions as events unfold, in real-time.
With these new tools, SMEs and lines of business are expected to get the most out of their IT investments and maximise their available resources by putting analytics tools directly into the hands of the people who need them most.
SAP Crystal Server (formerly, SAP Crystal Reports Server) is an entry-level BI offering for small companies and departments that will include self-serve data search and exploration in addition to the core functionality of report and dashboard viewing.
It will enable sales and marketing departments to use the included SAP BusinessObjects Explorer software to navigate and drill down to granular levels and monitor how those campaigns are affecting return on investment in real time.
With SAP BusinessObjects Edge BI which has new event insight capabilities and 64-bit architecture, companies will be able to address virtually any BI requirement – from reporting, visualisation and ad-hoc analysis to data integration and data quality.
It will enable SMEs and lines of business to have quick insight into structured information as well as unstructured information like data from social networks using new text analysis functionality.
The Edge BI software will help customers to monitor business scenarios as they happen in real time, formulate action plans accordingly and even compare and contrast historical trends to help predict future outcomes.
The company claims that the analytics software will help empower all types of users to make more effective business decisions, enabling faster response times to impact the business and ultimately help drive greater profitability.
The company plans to make both SAP Crystal Server 2011 and the 4.0 release of SAP BusinessObjects Edge BI available in the third quarter this year.
