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New offerings from Business Objects SA and NetIQ Corp. will give enterprises a more complete picture of business data, both companies said.
Business Objects this week announced Dashboard Manager, a product for developing and administering executive dashboards that allow users to track business performance. Also this week, NetIQ announced WebTrends Reporting Series 6.0, which is designed to give a more detailed analytical view of a companys Web site.
Business Objects has devolved Dashboard Manager as a separate product from its Application Foundation analytic framework in order to make it easier for customers to build and deploy dashboards, said company officials in San Jose, Calif. Dashboard Manager includes metrics and rules analytic engines that track key performance indicators and provide alerts of changing business conditions. Additional analytic engines support segmentation, prediction and forecasting, and quality control analysis.
All of this gives users broader visibility into the current state of the business and enables them to track business performance against strategic goals and corporate strategy. Dashboards can be personalized to match individual users job descriptions and can be revised as business conditions change.
Dashboards and scorecards built from Dashboard Manager can be used to support several different performance methodologies such as balanced scorecard, activity-based costing, integrated strategy measures, economic value add, value based management, Six Sigma, and custom management philosophies, Business Objects officials said.
Through a new reseller agreement with Visual Insights, Business Objects is adding more advanced visualization capabilities within management dashboards and scorecards built using Dashboard Manager, such as 3-D analysis and mapping.
Meanwhile, NetIQ is adding the same level of function to its hosted Web site reporting service as is available in its licensed software offering. The San Jose companys WebTrends Reporting Series 6.0 encompasses WebTrends Reporting Center 6.0, the companys flagship software, and WebTrends Reporting Service 6.0, a hosted service formerly known as WebTrends Live.
Both offerings are built on a client-side data collection technology called SmartSource Data Management, the first time such technology has been available in a WebTrends software application.
WebTrends Reporting Service 6.0 includes all of the benefits of WebTrends Reporting Center, including insight into Web visitor behavior through custom templates and dashboards as well as custom reports on Web site activity.
New insight features available in both the licensed and hosted versions of the software include Segmentation Analysis, which enables customers to compare the effectiveness of their loyalty campaigns with metrics such as Visit Frequency and Lifetime Value. These capabilities help customers segment their most valuable visitors to encourage repeat business and determine the most effective ways to retain visitors and customers, NetIQ officials said.
WebTrends Reporting Series 6.0 is available in two editions: eBusiness and Enterprise. WebTrends Reporting Cen-ter 6.0 is available today. Pricing for the eBusiness Edition starts at $3,500 and the Enterprise Edition starts at $10,500. WebTrends Reporting Service 6.0 is available in February. Pricing for the eBusiness Edition starts at $35 per month and the Enterprise Edition starts at $1000 per month.