Business Objects Honors Business Intelligence Visionaries; 2006 Insight Europe Customer Excellence Awards Recognize French Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Industry; Generali; Tesco plc; and UBS for Achievements in Business Intelligence

Business Wire, May 4, 2006

CANNES, France -- Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ) (Euronext Paris ISIN code: FR0004026250 - BOB), the world's leading provider of business intelligence solutions, today announced that the French Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Industry; Generali; Tesco plc; and UBS have been named the winners of the 2006 Insight Europe Customer Excellence Awards. The customer excellence awards recognize the outstanding achievements of these companies in using Business Objects solutions to improve their organization's performance. The awards were formally presented at Business Objects Insight Europe, the company's European User Conference, held this week in Cannes, France.

"Our vision is to be a company that solves business problems -- to help our customers become high-performance organizations that transform data into a trusted information asset," said John Schwarz, CEO of Business Objects. "I am delighted to recognize this year's award winners, as they embody this vision. These companies embrace the value and impact that business intelligence can have on their organization, and by insightful application of our solutions they have become leaders in their respective fields."

Following is a brief description of this year's award winners:

French Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Industry

The French Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry is the third largest ministry, with the responsibility to define and implement the economic, budgetary and industrial policies of the country. The ministry has been a Business Objects customer since 1997, when it deployed business intelligence to 9,000 users. This year, new French budget reform went into effect that introduces management by performance for the public sector. In this new context, the French Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Industry has selected the Business Objects BI platform to provide 26,500 central and local decision-makers throughout all 17 French ministries with better visibility on public spending, accounting, and human resources management. The main benefits are optimized efficiency of state intervention and better quality of public services. To help support this huge deployment, the ministry has also used BusinessObjects(TM) Knowledge Accelerator, a customizable web-based learning solution, to enable users to build their own customized reports without the need for additional IT help.

Generali

Generali Group, the leader in the Italian insurance market and third largest European insurer, has chosen Business Objects for its innovative IT project, SAIL. This project involves all the Italian companies in the group and will be gradually extended to all of its agencies in the region. BusinessObjects XI Release 2 provides Generali with a standard integrated infrastructure in an open source environment (Linux) and is used for enterprise reporting, as well as analysis and performance management. This system enables Generali to share information internally, and allows the top and middle management at the corporate level to monitor and optimize key performance indicators related to the principal drivers of the business. In particular, BusinessObjects Dashboard Manager is used for a series of dashboards for some of the most important areas of the insurance business.

Tesco plc

Tesco is one of the leading international retailers worldwide, with more than 2,000 stores and 326,000 staff in 13 countries across Europe and Asia. Tesco has standardized on business intelligence solutions from Business Objects to support its expansion across the globe. Three years ago, Tesco launched an ambitious strategy to bring consistent systems and processes to all countries in the Tesco Group. Called 'Tesco in a Box,' this strategy relies on industry leading packages and bespoke development, to build a combined system and process package, which can be rolled out quickly to existing and new countries. Business Objects solutions provide a centralized management information system that allows the company to measure a single, consistent set of international key performance indicators. As a result, Tesco has rapid insight into global business performance which allows it to optimize operations, customer satisfaction, and competitive edge.

UBS

As one of the largest financial institutions in the world, UBS generates more than one billion transactions per month. In order to manage the company using the most up-to-date information, UBS was looking for an innovative reporting system; one that would be able to track key performance indicators for strategic management and further increase the company's flexibility and efficiency. Another goal of the process, named GEAR (Global Environment for Accounting and Reporting), was to integrate the two main systems used for financial accounting and controlling on a centralized platform. GEAR was a success, thanks to the powerful business intelligence solutions from Business Objects. The main systems for Financial Accounting and Controlling, which were previously separate, have been combined into a single system. Data is stored centrally and is available in all formats required for internal and external reports. The reporting system complies with external regulations, including IAS, US GAAP, Sarbanes-Oxley, and Basel II, as well as the internal reporting requirements at the customer, product, and profit center levels. Using Business Objects, UBS is more cost efficient and ensures more open and targeted teamwork between business areas. Such an extensive integrated reporting system has never before been implemented in the financial services sector.