Business Objects Announces Planning and Budgeting Solutions for Retail; New Solutions Help Retailers Optimize Financial and Operational Performance, Create Accountability, and Foster Collaboration

Business Wire, Nov 7, 2005

ORLANDO, Fla. -- In the fiercely competitive and dynamic retail industry, successful retailers must be able to accurately forecast financial performance and improve collaboration across the company. To address the unique challenges of retailers, Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ) (Euronext Paris ISIN code: FR0004026250 - BOB), the world's leading provider of business intelligence solutions, today announced new budgeting and planning solutions for the retail industry. With Business Objects Planning for Retail, retailers can model and optimize performance, create accountability to corporate goals, and promote intra-departmental collaboration. Building on existing analytic solutions for the retail industry, Business Objects now offers customers a comprehensive set of capabilities that enable retailers in any functional role -- including finance, merchandising, supply chain, and store operations -- to improve operational and financial performance.

"As a rapidly growing, multi-channel cosmetic retailer and manufacturer, we're adding new stores and continually refining our sales channels to ensure we maximize our resources and meet the evolving needs of our customers," said Charles Bracher, vice president of finance at MD Beauty, manufacturer of Bare Escentuals. "By implementing Business Objects Planning for Retail, we now are able to receive valuable input from our retail sales channels, collaborate effectively with our stores, and adjust our modeling and key performance indicators as necessary, ensuring that our budget is accurate and insightful."

"Business Objects understands the specific challenges retailers face, which is why our retail strategy has been so successful -- right now 160 of the top global retailers rely on Business Objects to improve performance," said Tom Malone, group vice president of the planning business unit at Business Objects. "Today we're adding planning and budgeting solutions that allow retailers to model 'what if' scenarios to help them exceed their financial goals. In combination with our existing retail analytics, Business Objects now provides a complete solution that enables better management and performance across the retail organization -- from the CEO to finance executives down to store managers."

Business Objects Planning for Retail consists of four new applications for more precise budgeting, forecasting, plan reporting, and payroll planning. This solution enables retailers to conduct comparable store forecasting, sales calendarization, operational expense management, and multi-channel sales management. Unlike other performance management solutions available, Business Objects Planning for Retail allows individual business units to develop and refine financial models based on their unique drivers and processes.

Breaking Down Barriers and Increasing Collaboration

Collaboration between the finance department and other parts of the company is critically important to retailers' ability to quickly respond to changing conditions. But in a typical retail organization, finance executives and managers from different departments make decisions in isolation and without a holistic view of all financial metrics. With Business Objects Planning for Retail, information from multiple layers of the retail organization -- such as regional management, various sales channels, operations, and finance -- can be shared across locations and lines of business. With the ability to collaborate across the organization, the finance department can incorporate operational and qualitative data into the budget, and move the planning focus from data auditing and consolidation to predictive analytics.

Business Objects Servers Retailers

Business Objects has a long history as the leading provider of innovative solutions, applications, and services that address the particular needs of retailers. For instance, Business Objects provides pre-configured analytic solutions that enable retailers to identify the optimal store assortment, accurately profile their customers, and better manage vendor performance. Currently, Business Objects helps optimize and improve performance for eight of the top ten largest retailers worldwide including Wal-Mart.com, Tesco, Carrefour, and Auchan.

Pricing and Availability

Business Objects Planning for Retail is generally available now. For more information please visit the Business Objects website: www.businessobjects.com/planning.> About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world's leading business intelligence (BI) software company. With more than 30,000, customers worldwide, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 500, Business Objects helps organizations gain better insight into their business, improve decision making, and optimize enterprise performance. The company's business intelligence platform, BusinessObjects(TM) XI, offers the BI industry's most advanced and complete platform for performance management, planning, reporting, query and analysis, and data integration. BusinessObjects XI includes Crystal Reports(R), the industry standard for enterprise reporting. Business Objects has also built the industry's strongest and most diverse partner community, and the company offers consulting and education services to help customers effectively deploy their business intelligence projects.