Business Objects Ushers in New Era of Business Intelligence with Launch of BusinessObjects Intelligent Question; Innovative Question-Based Environment Delivers Breakthrough Ease-of-Use to Significantly Broaden Business Intelligence Adoption

With Intelligent Question, Business Objects is the first vendor to solve this problem by delivering breakthrough ease of use. Just like the introduction of the easy-to-use Apple iPod has led to an explosion in demand for MP3 players, Intelligent Question has the potential to introduce millions of people to the benefits of business intelligence.

"The majority of people consuming reports are not technical enough to create an ad hoc query," said Philip Russom, senior manager of research and services at The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI). "This is a problem when end-users need to discover information quickly and standard reports do not contain the answer. These people need an information discovery mechanism that's as fast, easy, and intuitive as a search engine, while applying structure to the answer the way parameterized reports do. BusinessObjects Intelligent Question addresses this problem by enabling people to ask an English-language question. Under the hood, Intelligent Question converts the question to an ad hoc or parameterized query, then returns information in an easy-to-digest format. With this kind of technology, BI users can find information in their reporting systems based on their immediate needs, in a quick, self-service fashion."

Providing the Easiest Way to Ask and Answer Structured Business Questions

When critical business questions arise, people want fast, precise answers. Unfortunately, people often do not know how to best structure their questions to ensure they receive the right information. Intelligent Question's structured questioning environment allows people to select from a series of options to create anything from simple to very complex business questions. For example, an executive at a retail organization could ask: What are my top 15 customers, based on average weekly spend for my stores over the past 12 months? Or, a supplier for a computer hardware company could easily craft a question via an extranet to ask: Which of my parts have experienced a 10 percent increase in demand this month over last month?

With Intelligent Question, as people select from the preset options, the remaining choices are automatically filtered to guarantee that the user can only create an "intelligent question." A correct, relevant, and trusted answer is provided every time, with just one click.

"Intelligent Question gives our users the ability to ask the right question every time and I believe it will expand the use of business intelligence within our organization because it's so easy and intuitive to use," said Erik Brokaw, senior systems analyst at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City. "As the leading health insurer in our community, we have a responsibility to our customers to get critical information to them as quickly as possible. By providing a guided question interface to our employees, answers are obtained in a more timely manner, and ultimately the people we serve see the difference through our improved performance. Intelligent Question offers a powerful BI tool that adapts to our users, instead of forcing our users to adapt to the tool."

Delivering a Tailored Experience for Personalized Insight

BusinessObjects Intelligent Question lets users easily tailor their questions to meet personalized requirements -- without impacting IT resources. For example, a product manager can define "My Products" to only include only those products he is responsible for. Users can easily store their favorite questions for easy access in the future, and new questions can also be built based on existing questions.

"BusinessObjects Intelligent Question is a really simple to use solution, that is what makes it so powerful and one of the most impressive innovations in business intelligence I have seen in a while," said Paul Zanis, director of corporate data architecture at Simon & Schuster, a global leader in general interest publishing. "Intelligent Question will be a great starting point for executives and other employees to leverage the benefits of business intelligence and get answers to the questions that will help them improve the way they do their job. In addition, the ability to move the answers to Web Intelligence allows an executive to easily share results with a business analyst who may want to do deeper, more complex analysis."