BusinessObjects Trade Promotion Effectiveness Analytics will be backed up by the release of industry-focused BusinessObjects XI Release 2 analytic applications, which run on the company's BI (business intelligence) platform and deliver performance management dashboards, scorecards and analytics targeted to specific vertical markets.

The packaged-goods applications are designed to help manufacturers understand the impact of trade promotions and to better evaluate their target customers.

They're designed to give insight into how promotional funds are being spent, which customers are participating, which promotions bring in the most profit and how performance through various channels compares.

This is the most recent delivery of a planned string of vertical market-focused analytics packages from Business Objects.

In November, the company rolled out planning and budgeting analytics for retail.

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Darren Cunningham, director of product marketing, said that we can expect more releases focused on government and on the financial services industry.

Feeding into that will be technology Business Objects acquired when it bought SRC Software.

SRC's applications target planning, budgeting, forecasting, reporting and scorecarding, across both departments and vertical industries, including financial planning, retail, health care, hospitality, insurance and manufacturing.

The company is also seeing uptake in health care, Cunningham said, making it an area Business Objects will target for a release later in the year.

The call for vertical industry-focused analytics applications is indicative of a trend in which customers are finding BI to be a competitive advantage, Cunningham said.

"We're now finding … customers say to us, 'Who else has done this in my industry? What are they doing?'" he said. "It's become a competitive differentiator."

The consumer packaged goods release incorporates customer feedback that targeted simplified implementation and customization.

The analytics feature role-based dashboards to provide human resources, marketing, sales or finance executives to access information relevant to their jobs.

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Sales execs, for example, can use dashboards to see and analyze sales in real time.

Business Objects also packs in an encyclopedia with industry-focused business terms used in reports, dashboards or scorecards.

Thus, a customer who checks out a graphic that displays the profitability of a given campaign can then open up the encyclopedia, which can explain to him or her what the analytic is showing and can guide the user to further analysis, such as doing a comparison of other campaigns run in the past, for example.

One customer using the packaged-goods analytical applications is Rent-A-Center.

"We are using analytic applications from Business Objects to drive insight through key business segments within the company, including customers, products and services, supply chain, human resources and finance," said Tony Fuller, CIO of Rent-A-Center, in a statement.

"Currently, we have almost 3,000 stores in North America, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Along with the growth of our business, the amount of data we were gathering grew exponentially, and we needed a more efficient way to work through all the information.

"Business Objects analytic applications allow us to turn all this information into an asset that can help us improve our company performance and continue to grow as an intelligent enterprise."

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