Business Intelligence vendor consolidation (the cost)

Following on from my post of Business Intelligence Vendor consolidation, the price paid for these acquisitions and mergers has come under scrutiny. During Spring 2007, three takeovers of performance management competitors occurred almost simultaneously. The SAP takeover of Business Objects was announced on October 7, and IBM’s takeover of Cognos on November 12.

Only Hyperion, Applix, Business Objects and Cognos were publicly traded companies, whose price could be regarded as set by the market, with Hyperion and Business Objects being category leaders and Applix one of the fastest growing BI vendors. Cognos’s market value was artificially boosted by the growing takeover frenzy that developed during 2007.

Cartesis was less dominant, except in France, and slower growing, while OutlookSoft was not dominant in any market, and was most threatened by Microsoft PerformancePoint. On this basis, Oracle, Business Objects and Cognos probably paid something close to the ‘right’ price for their respective acquisitions, while SAP almost certainly significantly overpaid for OutlookSoft (particularly given its subsequent takeover of Business Objects and hence Cartesis as well).

The table below details the cost of each business intelligence acquisition.

5 reasons to embrace Business Intelligence

Top 5 Reasons Every Business Should Embrace Business Intelligence

How many times has the justification or question for embarking on a BI program been reduced to cost ?

I often recommend the following ...

Escalating business costs and increased completeness are enough reasons alone to
seriously consider implementing a solid Business Intelligence program.

When Veneta Research surveyed over 400 companies on their BI expectations, the five most commonly cited reasons for embracing BI were these:

1. Improved competitiveness

BI provides an organisation with the ability to get the right information to the right people at the right time. This enables the organization to fine-tune its supply chain management and provide tighter integration and better communication between all supply chain members and partners.

2. Improved customer service

Business intelligence allows organizations to monitor and respond to changes and trends in the marketplace. BI tools also allow an organization to respond to changes in the way that customers behave and match that behavior to offerings designed to match customer needs.

3. Improved profitability

Because BI makes data accessible and displays it in meaningful ways, organisations can identify cost-cutting opportunities, gain more leverage during vendor negotiations, better manage its supply chain and identify optimal price points for its goods and services.

4. Improved revenue generation

Accessible data and improved reporting capabilities combine to provide an organization with the ability to identify new market opportunities by analyzing and responding to changing customer demographics and a variety of variable market conditions.

5. Improved capacity

With access to powerful decision-support tools comes the ability to build more accurate predictive models. This provides an organization with the ability to improve capacity planning by enabling them to switch from reactive business strategies to proactive business strategies.

There is no question that BI provides value to competitive organsations that are seeking strategic ways to support growth and profitability. Improved performance is always the # 1 motivator behind implementing and embracing a business intelligence system.

Business Intelligence Tools such as management reporting systems, management dashboards and OLAP are just some of the driving forces behind a new breed of empowered employee who is now capable of making accurate and informed business decisions that are based on known facts rather than making ill informed choices that result from having to guess at what the current state of the organisation is and what the future holds for their marketplace.

The process of implementing an effective BI program has been made much easier thanks to a plethora of next-generation tools from companies like Microsoft BI, Oracle BI and Business Objects BI.