Microsoft Selects Comshare for its Universal Business Intelligence Campaign
Comshare's Prominence Accelerates as a Leading Provider of Management Planning and Control Applications
ANN ARBOR, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 22, 1999-- Comshare Inc. announced today that Microsoft has selected Comshare BudgetPLUS for Microsoft's Universal Business Intelligence Campaign (UBIC). Microsoft's UBIC program has a national scope that instructs program partners in ways companies can implement successful business-intelligence solutions that take greater advantage of their digital nervous systems. Comshare BudgetPLUS is a UBIC solution for management planning and control (MPC), which includes planning, budgeting, financial consolidation, management reporting and analysis. Comshare-Microsoft solutions will strategically target specific knowledge-management, line-of-business opportunities combining Comshare with Microsoft's Business Intelligence Platform of Microsoft Office 2000 and Microsoft SQL Server 7.0.
Microsoft's UBIC program is designed to train and work with partners on the opportunities in the business intelligence (BI) market and follow up on those opportunities with actionable and measurable results. Microsoft district personnel will hold sessions with each partner about BI market opportunities, where they exist, and how to approach them. Microsoft will also conduct technical training seminars, including the Microsoft Official Curriculum, to insure UBIC partners have the product knowledge to successfully implement the Microsoft Business Intelligence Platform with their own applications for cohesive BI solutions. After the training sessions, Microsoft district personnel and UBIC partners will work jointly to close sales and insure successful implementation.
''Microsoft has been an excellent partner for us and our customers, providing us with outstanding opportunities to improve our products and grow our business,'' said Dennis Ganster, Comshare president and CEO. ''As part of the UBIC program, Comshare and Microsoft personnel will become even more knowledgeable about and proficient with each other's technology for customers who seek greater competitive advantage through stronger business intelligence technologies and more effective MPC processes.''
Budgeting Bundle a Natural Fit
Comshare and Microsoft have bundled Comshare BudgetPLUS(TM) with Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 database into a package for enterprisewide budgeting, which is a natural fit for the UPBC program. Comshare BudgetPLUS and Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 have capabilities that easily guide system administrators and users in the initial setup, making implementation easy. Key features that make BudgetPLUS an attractive BI application include:
Fully Web-architected solution for planning and budgeting that integrates and simplifies every step of a business's MPC system, resulting in an accurate view of the business from the top, middle or bottom that drives it toward competitive advantage
Links an enterprise's strategic plan directly with budgets, actuals and forecasts so that everyone knows how the company's objective, goals, strategies and tactics are quantified to measure success
Allows for financial accounting cycles of any length, including rolling budgets, and provides users with the most-current data at any time
Leverages Microsoft SQL Server 7 so that everyone has real-time access to and collaborates on ''one version of the truth'' via a Web connection or a client/server network
Integrates with ERP, general ledger and transaction systems to build the most complete view of companies that employ those enterprise applications
Reflects intuitive design and functionality for business professionals, from ''power users'' to novices, anywhere in an enterprise
Provides users with proactive alerting capabilities, including advanced data visualization, to identify out-of-range or problem areas in the business
Enables users to perform in-depth analyses with ''what-if'' scenarios, comparisons to goals, and gap analysis
-- Handles hundreds of concurrent users with ease |
