NGS Launches Another BI Product for i OS

Published: July 8, 2008

by Alex Woodie

New Generation Software recently introduced Decision Assist--Financial Performance, a new business intelligence (BI) product for IBM i (formerly i5/OS). The new product is geared toward helping i OS shops build dashboard interfaces that give decision makers quick access to actionable intelligence harnessed from their general ledger systems. Like NGS' other Decision Assist offerings, the new Financial Performance variant includes several pre-defined dashboards for frequently accessed reports, including analysis of income, cash flows, and budgets.

Decision Assist is a prepackaged collection of BI components from NGS that includes the flagship i5/OS-based NGS-IQ server, a pre-built data mart, Windows-based development tools, browser-based dashboards, and a series of preconfigured reports designed for customers in specific industries, which are delivered as Flash presentations that play in Web browsers.

NGS rolled out the initial version of Decision Assist more than three years ago as a bundle of reports tailored toward manufacturers and distributors that use VAI's S2K Enterprise suite of ERP applications for i, i5/OS, and OS/400. The Sacramento, California, company followed that with Decision Assist--Healthcare (which integrates with Siemens MedSeries4 application), Decision Assist--Business Performance (which works with any ERP product), and ShipView Plus, a specially built version of Decision Assist that's designed to work with Varsity Logistics' shipping software, and which will ship later this summer.

NGS also sold a version of Decision Assist that works with its own suite of i OS-based financial management products, called the Concert Series. With Decision Assist--Financial Performance, NGS is supporting any i OS-based financial package, including those from the major ERP developers.

Decision Assist--Financial Performance delivers preconfigured dashboards--delivered as nifty Flash presentations that play in a Web browser--that will cover a good range of commonly requested reports.

Users can view critical business metrics in graphical format using New Generation Software's new Decision Assist--Financial Performance software.

These reports include: income statement by revenue; by gross profit; by selling expenses; by general and administrative expenses; by operating income; and by net income. Additional dashboards include year-to-date trial balance by organization, by account, and by month; actual expenses versus budget by organization, by account, and by month; actual expenses versus budgeted expenses by month and by percentage of budget; cash flow from operations, from investments, and from financing; non-cash deductions from income; changes in operating assets and liabilities; and balance sheet ratios, including current view, quick view, debt to asset view, cash view, and debt by month view.

"We know many companies want to reduce the time spent assembling financial reports each period and improve the quality and reliability of their presentations to their board, investors, employees, and auditors," says Bernard Gough, NGS’ CEO and President. "Decision Assist--Financial Performance helps them to achieve those goals."

The new product also includes reports that output to Excel spreadsheets, to the NGS-IQ OLAP module, to PDF, or to HTML. These include a monthly balance sheet, cash flow, income, and trial balances, actual vs. budget by month and by quarter; comparative income statement; and account analysis by period.

Customers can buy licenses to any of the Decision Assist products, and install the software on their i OS servers. In the future, customers will also be able to subscribe to Decision Assist over the Internet, via the software as a service (SaaS) delivery model, as part of NGS' new SaaS partner program, which it launched last month.

Decision Assist--Financial Performance is available now. Pricing was not provided. For more information, visit www.ngsi.com.

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