Companies use Business Intelligence tools to access the data they need to help them make business decisions. Traditional Business Intelligence tools often provide only a small subset of executives and business analysts with access to this data, resulting in more than 80% of employees without a path to insight that could improve their business. Conversely, the goal of Operational Business Intelligence is to provide all employees that need to access the data with easy and timely access to the information that they deem most useful.

EasyAsk for Operational BI is the industry’s first data retrieval solution designed for use by all business users, and not just power users and analysts. The EasyAsk software allows business users to ask questions in natural language (i.e., “show the latest sales figures for our widget product line in the last three months”); the software will immediately generate a report in response to the questions. Moreover, EasyAsk will expose additional BI assets or information that may be relevant.

Nedbank, the fourth largest bank in South Africa, relied on a third party reporting system for extracting information from databases. Before implementing EasyAsk software, business users had to first inform IT of the need for access to information locked away in databases. The IT department would then create a reporting program for that specific need, collect the data and create a report for the business user.

“We needed a data query tool that could create reusable criteria and deliver results faster than our current system could provide,” said Derick Oliver, data warehouse delivery manager, Nedbank. “We chose EasyAsk for Operational BI because of its ease-of-use and proven track record of successfully delivering information in a timely manner. Rather than requesting information from our IT department and waiting upwards of a month for the information, EasyAsk delivers accurate information within a day, without IT involvement. Better yet, reports created today can be used month after month, saving huge amounts of time and energy.”

The single ‘search box’ in EasyAsk also provides marketing employees at Nedbank with an easy-to-use data extraction tool, which they now use for customer segmentation analysis as a basis for marketing campaigns.

EasyAsk has helped other companies in South Africa reach their BI goals as well. Europ Assistance, Matrix Vehicle Tracking, and Integrated Healthcare Distribution all chose Progress EasyAsk as their Operational BI solution to meet their diverse Operational BI needs.

Europ Assistance, which offers customers roadside assistance, extracts data from their operational databases using EasyAsk. By granting all employees access to operational data, everyone in the South African office now makes better informed decisions faster.

EasyAsk is also used by all employees at Matrix Vehicle Tracking, a vehicle location monitoring company. They selected EasyAsk as their BI solution because of its ease of use for the entire organization coupled with its powerful data extraction and reporting functionality.

Integrated Healthcare Distribution had an existing BI tool in place when it switched to EasyAsk. The previous system featured a complicated user interface, making it difficult for all employees to access information and make use of it in their jobs. The switch to EasyAsk has empowered all employees, not just power users, with data access, making them more informed and efficient employees.

“The emergence of Progress EasyAsk software in the South African market demonstrates how our EasyAsk for Operational BI solution helps companies of any size realize their BI goals,” said Larry Harris, vice president and general manager, Progress EasyAsk. “A huge barrier to achieving the ‘promise’ of traditional BI tools is their inherent complexity that prohibits widespread adoption by the individuals that are most able to act on the insight for the benefit of the business. This, combined with costly licensing models, has limited the penetration and value of traditional BI tools, which then causes bottlenecks in the flow of information via the few that had the tools and the skills. With EasyAsk for Operational BI, we’ve solved these problems and the result is that business users now have more opportunities to use information in effective, revenue generating activities.”

About Progress Software Corporation

Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS) provides application infrastructure software for the development, deployment, integration and management of business applications. Our goal is to maximize the benefits of information technology while minimizing its complexity and total cost of ownership