Business Objects Helps SAP Customers Optimize Performance Using Business Intelligence

Business Wire, April 26, 2005

COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- 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."