BusinessObjects Edge Premium Features

"Live" Data Access within Microsoft Office for Business Analysts
Incorporating data into presentations, spreadsheets, and documents is often a time-consuming task-especially when you need updates. With BusinessObjects Edge Standard, users can conveniently access and use "live" company data directly in familiar tools like Microsoft Office and SharePoint. Because the data is "live", it can be instantly updated while retaining all formatting and calculations in the Office document. Plus, the information is secured to ensure colleagues can only view and access the data they have the rights to access.

Interactive Dashboard Viewing for Executives and Managers
For executives and managers, BusinessObjects Edge Standard lets you deliver personalized business dashboards and visualizations built using Crystal Xcelsius, an award-winning dashboard design tool. With simple point-and-click, users can interact with visual sliders and gauges to easily identify new opportunities and challenges. Plus, "what if" analysis lets managers proactively understand the impact of their decisions before they are made.

Flexible Deployment that Leverages Your Current Investments
BusinessObjects Edge Standard is designed for flexible deployment on a single Linux or Windows server. Its open architecture lets you leverage the data sources, business applications, and platforms you have already invested in. If your development platform of choice is Java, for example, our solution includes a software development kit (SDK) that allows you to customize your system to meet your specific needs. Or, if your corporate portal is built using SharePoint, you can easily integrate business intelligence (BI) from Business Objects and let business users view interactive BI content within a single environment. Regardless of which applications you use today for customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), financial planning, and other operations, BusinessObjects Edge Series gives you the flexibility to leverage and extend these investments.

Secure, Easy-to-Understand Data for Rapid Decisions
Information is useless unless you can access and understand it. With BusinessObjects Edge Series, business users don't have to spend time trying to understand the complexities of their data environment. They can benefit from the robust data abstraction which presents data in standardized business terms that are easy to understand and trust. End users are empowered with self-service reporting and analysis based on relevant, easy-to-understand information.

Rapid Deployment Options for Faster Time-to-Value
BusinessObjects Edge Standard is designed for rapid deployment so you can quickly start realizing the benefits of business intelligence. Its affordable "all in one" package gives you everything you need to get started with your BI needs-from software licenses to technical support to software updates and maintenance services. Choose from a variety of QuickStart Packs for access to a tailored collection of templates and data connections that help you quickly apply BI to your existing line of business applications or industry needs. Built by Business Objects and our experienced BI partners, our QuickStart Packs will help you get up and running with relevant BI in no time!

Deliver Data Anywhere - Anytime
BusinessObjects Edge Professional gives you access to data integration capabilities, allowing mid-size companies to easily explore, extract, transform, and deliver data anywhere, at any frequency. With the data integration capability of Professional, you can easily move data volumes in real time or at any interval, allowing you to manage and organize disparate data systems to gain a single view of your organization. Impact Analysis

Impact Analysis
An integral part of your BusinessObjects Edge Professional deployment is the unique ability to interchange metadata between the data integration and the BI platform. Metadata integration provides end-to-end impact analysis, allowing you to see the effect of changes in the source systems to the BI reports. As a result, you easily manage change in your BI environment.

Data Lineage
Data lineage is another benefit of BusinessObjects Edge Professional, allowing BI users to view the context of data in their BI reports. Your users can see when data was updated, how it was computed, and where it came from—all the way back to the original transactional source. This visibility is critical to helping your users gain better trust in their information.

Shared View of the Business

Success requires that everyone knows and understands the goals of the business. BusinessObjects Edge Premium provides an intuitive framework to let you track the performance of your business. Dashboard layout and interactive visual analytic capabilities will help your users gain quick insight into their business performance. Easy to build and user friendly, the dashboards allow users to track metrics, gain insight from underlying analysis, and alter business rules as conditions change.

More than just sharing information, you can also dynamically connect teams of people to specific goals and metrics across many roles and functional areas. Goals can be assigned to specific owners and groups in all departments and functional areas allowing everyone to become a stakeholder. Through threaded discussions, your teams will be able to collaborate-sharing insight and making better decisions. By blending management intuition with hard facts, BusinessObjects Edge Premium allows your users to make effective decisions faster.

Tracking Achievement with Advanced Scorecards

Aligning actions with strategy through goal setting and tracking performance in scorecards will improve organizational performance. Scorecards provided in BusinessObjects Edge Premium enhance visibility, allowing users to easily see the areas that are doing well-and the areas that aren't. Scorecards can be created with your organization's metrics and business rules. Users can check goal and performance status allowing them to immediately see a detailed view that shows trends, performance thresholds, and a view of other stakeholders connected to the goal.

When a goal or initiative is not being met, BusinessObjects Edge Premium alerts users with recommended actions based on a defined workflow. An integrated rules engine will proactively monitor large numbers of metrics and send alerts when conditions change. When examining the root cause of a problem, users will be given a series of prompts and predefined steps for analysis guiding them to the right information so they can quickly make confident decisions.