The Marriage of ESRI's Intuitive Mapping and Geospatial Technology With Information Builders' Operational BI Solutions Empowers Users With Superior Decision-Making Capabilities

New York, NY   May 31, 2006   Information Builders, the enterprise business intelligence (BI) standard of choice for organizations around the world, today announced continued progress in delivering powerful location intelligence solutions to meet the growing needs of operational BI users. As organizations continue to empower individuals across the enterprise with real-time BI capabilities, intuitive reporting solutions that display data as geospatial information add a critical dimension to a company's decision-making capabilities.

(Please contact me for included graphic)
Multi-state capabilities and multi-zoom levels show stores in the Houston area that may have had food stamp electronic benefit transfer (EBT) transactions from Louisiana clients. Louisiana can track out of state food stamp EBT transactions and slice and dice the information at both the retailer-store and client level.

For more than three years, Information Builders and geographic information systems (GIS) partner ESRI have successfully provided organizations with strategic BI and GIS implementations to improve strategic decision-making capabilities. Government agencies such as Maryland Port Administration, State of Mississippi, and the City of Houston, as well as corporations like The Hillman Group are discovering new data trends from enhanced information presentation and delivery. As a result these organizations and others can plan geographic expansion, determine more effective hiring strategies, and maximize regional resources.

"In order to more effectively and efficiently grow our business, we plan to implement three new GBIS applications using ESRI tools combined with Information Builders' WebFOCUS reporting application later this year," said Jim Honerkamp, CIO of The Hillman Group Inc. "The first application will allow us to map how our products are shipped from distribution centers nationwide to ensure shipping is cost-effective. Additional projects include using GBIS to map sales territories and to match new housing starts with sales volume by store, leading to a more efficient sales model."

"Information Builders helps us modernize our most critical operations while lowering program costs and increasing service levels," said Raymond Pease, director of the Fraud and Recovery Section of the Louisiana Department of Social Services.  "We rely on WebFOCUS to access transactional data and display results in a variety of formats, including geographic map-based displays, which gives a more accurate view of trends and patterns in food-stamp benefit transactions to make illegal activity easier to detect, simplify IT structure, and minimize efforts by data processing personnel."

Geographic information systems and BI technology have been in use at organizations for years, yet only recently have enterprises recognized the power of their combined capabilities for more commanding decision-making. Today's mapping technology supports protocols that allow better integration with enterprise systems so organizations can leverage location-based information to more efficiently expose geographic relationships to a broader group of business process managers and executives. GBIS eliminates silos of information within the organization and enables users in multiple departments to intuitively analyze real-time information in the context of physical location. As a result, organizations can make better decisions and empower nontraditional BI users as key decision-makers through intuitive and user-friendly technology.
 
According to Tara S. Pottebaumm, a research analyst from the Yankee Group, leveraging spatial information, or the location of assets, vehicles, houses, events, and people, increases the opportunities for an enterprise to identify cost reduction, quality improvements, and revenue generation opportunities throughout the value chain.  "As companies become more connected to their suppliers, customers and partners, the use of location intelligence in operational BI environments will become more and more of a necessity versus a nicety of pretty maps and pictures," Tara said.

The USDA uses GBIS technology from Information Builders as part of a land development program. Previously, the organization used BI reporting technology to gather insight for a land development program specifically designed to assist rural farmers. However, when GIS was incorporated into the analysis, the agency was able to determine that grants were often allocated to more suburban areas. With GBIS technology, the agency can now operate a more pointed initiative, visually depicting data and turning it into valuable information.

"Today's BI users are frontline workers who don't care about the technological details, but are focused on being able to access the right information, at the right time to get the job done," said Gerald Cohen, CEO of Information Builders. "By merging sophisticated reporting technology with geographic data in a simple format, these nontraditional users can take ownership of their departments' responsiveness for better organizational decisions."

About Information Builders
Information Builders is the leader in enterprise business intelligence and real-time operational reporting. The company's WebFOCUS product   the industry's most scalable, secure, and flexible   is able to meet all the reporting needs of the extended enterprise, ranging from analysts to power users to the widest deployments for hundreds of thousands of users. Additionally, WebFOCUS' empowerment of organizations seeking to leverage all their data   by accessing it all from legacy to data warehouse   is unmatched.

Information Builders' award-winning technology has successfully provided quality software and superior services for over 31 years to more than 12,000 customers, including most of the Fortune 100 and U.S. federal government agencies. Headquartered in New York City with 90 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,750 people and has over 350 business partners. For more information, visit www.informationbuilders.com.