ShowCase Corp Offering Reasonable Analytics Insight

ShowCase Corporation, a leading provider of Enterprise Intelligence solutions, announced the general availability of its new Analytics Insight software application as a proven and fully integrated, end-to-end data warehouse and business intelligence (BI) solution for IBM AS/400 users. For less than $40,000, Analytics Insight gives companies the flexibility to perform business analytics without having to invest in new database technology. Powered by the ShowCase STRATEGY data warehousing and BI suite, Analytics Insight enables companies to perform business analytics and turn information into a competitive advantage - all without the assistance of IT.

"We are pleased to offer organizations an extremely comprehensive, cost-effective solution that allows them to use their current skills and knowledge of the AS/400 to gain new insight into their businesses," said Theresa O'Neil, vice president of Marketing, ShowCase Corporation. "Analytics Insight is designed to grow with a company's evolving business intelligence needs as users increase and require more sophisticated reporting and analysis."

Analytics Insight includes ETL, Query/Reporting and basic analytics capabilities. The new solution fully leverages the reliability, power and scalability of the AS/400 and enables users to work from a single central repository of data, maintaining "one version of the truth" throughout the enterprise.

Using Analytics Insight, sales, marketing and finance users will be able to make better business decisions based on easy access to clear, concise and consistent data - when and how they want it - through a user-friendly graphical interface. They can quickly interact with this information and perform business analytics based on key performance indicators. For example, sales and marketing managers can more closely monitor performance of items at specific customers over time periods, identify product contributions and profitability trends, and easily recognize customer buying patterns to develop more focused service programs. Finance users now will be able to implement more effective forecast and budgeting processes, as well as perform more detailed, time-dependent variance analyses of customer and product margins. Key Features To facilitate better decision-making, key features of Analytics Insight include:

• Multi-Source Integration - Allows users to perform drill-down analysis of detailed relational data within one BI solution that is familiar to all.
• Graphical Visualization - Helps decision-makers customize views of information based on specific business or departmental needs. Readily highlights trends and opportunities with traffic lighting and allows interactive data swapping between multiple formats (e.g., spreadsheets and charts).
• Work Group Intelligence - Provides the ability to share the same views with other colleagues and to maintain views that are in sync with dynamic database changes.
• Dynamic Data Integration - Creates calculations "on the fly" through simple and easy-to-use wizards without the need for heavy technical support.
• Relational Analysis - Facilitates analysis of relational data in increasing levels of detail through drill-down, filtering, sorting and highlighting capabilities; instant viewing of data in multiple formats (spreadsheets, graphs, pins); the ability to perform additional calculations within the report; "what if" analysis through data mart changes; dynamic formatting of spreadsheet data; and enhanced browser functionality.
• Enterprise Data Consolidation - Enables users to easily build data warehouses or data marts using full SQL support.
• Data History Tracking - Helps manage metadata by pre-joining multiple tables, renaming files and fields and maintaining information about how the warehouse was created.
• Powerful Report Creation - Performs multi-level sorts, generates summary reports, produces SQL statements, customizes data selection from existing reports and saves query results in a number of formats (PDF, HTML, Excel, Lotus 123), among other features.
• Pre-Built Style Sheets - Saves times by pre-defining preferred formats, thereby eliminating the need to reformat for each new report.

Additional Analytics Insight features include the ability to "refresh" query data per user, simplify query creation and data views, and closely integrate with other ShowCase products to optimize query analysis and overall performance.

Pricing and Availability

ShowCase Analytics Insight is available immediately in the United States and in Europe. Pricing starts at $35,000.

About ShowCase STRATEGY

ShowCase STRATEGY provides business users and IT professionals with a complete solution for data warehousing and business intelligence. From extraction and transformation of data from AS/400 operational systems, such as e-commerce applications and ERP systems - through loading data into the warehouse and keeping it refreshed through automated scheduling -STRATEGY provides IT professionals with an integrated suite of data warehousing tools. For business users, STRATEGY provides an integrated suite of ad-hoc query and reporting tools, Web-based enterprise reporting, and OLAP-based analytic application solutions.

About ShowCase Corporation

ShowCase Corporation provides Enterprise Intelligence solutions to help companies discover and seize business opportunities in an evolving global marketplace. ShowCase offers the first integrated Web content management and business intelligence solution to help companies solve their strategic business information needs. Through a worldwide team, ShowCase offers reporting and analytic solutions in areas such as financial management and customer relationship management (CRM). The ShowCase Website can be found at www.showcasecorp.com.