NGS Kick-Starts BI Projects with Expanded Starter Kit

by Alex Woodie

Just getting started is usually the most difficult part of a new business intelligence project. Last week market researcher Gartner issued a report saying that 50 percent of business intelligence implementations in 2003 will either not reach their potential or be "hopeless failures." OS/400 business intelligence software developer New Generation Software has enhanced its business intelligence starter kit with new features that get companies up and running faster.

Earlier this month New Generation Software started shipping a new version of Decision Assist, its business intelligence starter kit that provides distributors and manufacturers with out-of-the-box business intelligence capabilities. Decision Assist includes a variety of pre-built analytical reports, presentations, and a ready-to-use data warehouse model to get companies started in analyzing their sales, profitability, and inventory management. Decision Assist, like most NGS software, lets users work with data from a Windows desktop machine while pulling information from OS/400-based ERP applications.

Decision Assist has three components: Intelligent Query Server, Qport Access, and Qport SmartView. Intelligent Query Server is an iSeries-based query, reporting, and data warehousing application that forms the basis for all of NGS's software. The two Windows-components are Qport Access, an OS/400-Windows data transfer utility, and Qport SmartView, an online analytical processing system. Companies requiring additional capabilities can choose to augment Decision Assist with Qport Builder, a Web- or Windows-based query builder; Data Warehouse Manager, a native OS/400 extract, transform, and load tool; or IQ SeQure, a database security utility.

Decision Assist ships with about 20 pre-built reports that give quick access to information a manufacturer or distributor would commonly need, such as annual sales by division, overstocked items, out-of-stock items, and a series of reports that compare the highest and the lowest scoring items on a range of issues, including items by invoice amount, salesperson by profit margin, and inventory items by cost dollar volume.

With the new version of Decision Assist, NGS has added a new "manufacturer item" report that indicates sales and cost data based on the manufacturer's item number. This release also includes new "top and bottom" capabilities for a variety of categories, including invoice amount, profit margin, manufacture item turns, manufacture items sales by customer, and manufacture items sales versus inventory dollars.

NGS has built new business analysis and detail of sales analysis reports into this release, along with the capability to show data by weeks and net sales dollars, compared with net order dollars. Lastly, this version of Decision Assist has the capability to support multiple companies from a single installation.

In other NGS news, the Sacramento, California, company announced it has successfully used IBM's WebFacing Tool to Web-enable its software. On January 20, IBM announced that applications that have been Web-enabled using IBM's WebFacing Tool will not require interactive capacity if they're run on new iSeries servers using OS/400 Standard Edition. This was key to NGS's decision to go with the WebFacing Tool instead of a competitive solution.

"When we looked at this tool earlier, and its reliance on WebSphere Application Server, we rejected it as a near-term alternative due to its complexity, price, and technical limitations compared to other available tools," said John O'Sullivan, vice president of IT at NGS. "Now that applications converted with the WebFacing Tool no longer require interactive workload, the pricing model makes this solution much more attractive for iSeries customers moving RPG applications to the e-business model."

NGS partnered with Computer Guidance Corp., a Scottsdale, Arizona, software development company, for its WebFacing Tool project. For more information on Decision Assist and other NGS products, go to www.ngsi.com.

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