OutlookSoft Introduces Predictive Analytics to the Business Performance Management Marketplace

Business Wire, Jan 24, 2005

STAMFORD, Conn. -- Immediate Availability of Everest Version 4.2 Delivers Predictive Analytics, Automated Root-Cause Analysis, Enhanced Audit Features, and Performance and Scalability Gains

OutlookSoft Corporation, a leading provider of business performance management (BPM) solutions for Fortune 1000 and Global 2000 companies, today announced that it has released Everest Version 4.2, the latest iteration of its unified, Microsoft-based BPM application. This release includes Everest Insight for predictive analytics and automated root-cause analysis, new audit and compliance capabilities, performance and scalability advances, and numerous customer-driven enhancements.

A majority of today's BPM solutions focus on the issue of collecting and consolidating data more efficiently, with the goal of enabling decision-makers to focus on "value-add" activities like analysis. Working closely with customers and prospects, OutlookSoft discovered that decision-makers are now spending too much time on the analysis function, leaving little time to actually run the business and execute key decisions.

Everest Insight, new functionality offered within the Everest v4.2 application, was designed to solve this problem by automating common analytic tasks such as variance and root-cause analysis. Decision-makers can leverage Insight results to more effectively predict future financial and operational business performance based on historical and real-time activity and data.

"As today's companies look to make more informed and intelligent decisions with regard to the direction of their business, predictive analytics will become a mandatory element when evaluating and selecting a CPM solution," said Lee Geishecker, Gartner Research VP. "CPM solutions augmented with predictive capabilities will greatly benefit decision-makers with a more focused, richer analytic tool that enables users to get access to the mission-critical data they need."

New in Everest 4.2

Everest Insight:

Everest's predictive analytic functionality proactively delivers critical information used to make better, more informed business decisions. Discovery of underlying variances and root-causes is delivered in real-time fashion through automated drill-down, as well as drill-through to transactional detail. Explanations of variances are provided by the system based on the given parameters and business issue at hand. Users can leverage these results to more effectively predict future performance impacts.

Auditability and compliance:

Sarbanes-Oxley and IFRS regulations are driving companies toward transparency and accountability in reporting. New audit and compliance features within Everest v4.2 further empower customers to meet these and other regulatory requirements. Data audit trails can be tracked by application, category, and component. Balance history can be recorded by user, machine, transaction type, and date/time stamp. Audit report information is stored, recalled, and reported on as needed in order to maintain optimal process performance and accountability.

Performance and scalability:

Everest's real-time data consolidation and reporting capabilities provide fast, accurate answers to financial and operational business questions. Everest v4.2 provides answers even faster through improved data management capabilities with regard to data volumes, reports, and schedules. Moreover, the solution delivers faster security processing, providing heightened enterprise-class scalability across large numbers and groups of users.

Customer-driven enhancements:

OutlookSoft strives to build solutions that enable its customers to more effectively run their businesses. Customer-driven customer enhancements new to Everest v4.2 include: "Drag-and-Drop" capabilities for building hierarchies of dimension members; a scheduling wizard for automating administrative data management tasks; a scheduler for the creation and distribution of report books; enhanced process management with regard to approval status reporting and auditing; and "drill-in-place" analysis that makes ad-hoc reporting faster and more intuitive.

"We're excited about the new and enhanced features in Everest version 4.2," said Will Newcomer, Senior Vice President, Management Information Systems at BancorpSouth. "Financial and operational decision-makers alike will appreciate Everest's enhanced audit, journal, and reporting capabilities. The new Everest Insight piece for predictive analytics will help us make faster, more informed decisions based on a better understanding of current and future business performance."

The enhancements in Everest v4.2, the market's only unified and web-based BPM solution, enable businesses to more effectively execute on corporate strategy. Everest makes this possible through the linking of goals and objectives to personalized performance targets. Cascading scorecards and analytic dashboards extend performance tracking, measurement, and analysis to all decision-makers across the extended organization, ensuring the highest degree of organizational alignment. Users can access and leverage Everest v4.2 from both a standard web browser and WebExcel - Everest's enterprise-scale Excel environment - to make better, more informed decisions, plan and budget in collaborative fashion, share and distribute reports, and more adeptly predict future business performance.