Trends

IS S UE Quarterly

24
Newsletter of
Business
4th Quarter Events Intelligence
4th Quarter
2008
• IFS Customer Summit 2008 October 5th—8th Chicago, IL
The first ever Customer Summit coming this fall. The theme of this summit is "Closer to the Customer."

This marquee event combines IFS, partner, and InFocuS breakout sessions, with industry roundtables, training,

and networking activities. Clickbase will be highlighted at the conference and be presenting our IFS Business

Intelligence Solution.
Professional
Development this issue
• Quest Southeast Conference November 12th– 14th Atlanta, GA
Feel free to attend any of our New Strategies in a turbulent economy P.1
This is a conference designed around Oracle user groups and helps them find best of breed technologies and
prerecorded online training
discuss different topics with other users. Clickbase will be doing a presentation at the conference called Clickbase What You Need to Know P.2
sessions by visiting our web-

site at www.clickbase.com.
“Leveraging Business Intelligence to Empower Your End Users” and will be highlighting our solutions for many Releases New Clickbase’s New Release P.3

You can also attend our live

Oracle applications including JD Edwards Enterprise One, JD Edwards World and Peoplesoft. Technology in Upcoming Events/Training Sessions P.4
training classes which are
Recent Update
• Sage Summit Customer Conference 2008 November 17—20th Denver, Colorado
Clickbase has made many
held for end users at 1pm ET

on Tuesdays and for

The annual Sage Summit conference is where Sage Software customers connect. It's the place to be if you want
upgrades and advances in our New Strategies in a Turbulent Economy.
to discover new ideas, concepts, skills, strategies, and technologies that make life around the office just plain There is no doubt that most companies in this current to determine how to best proceed? This is when
solution this year. With our
developers/designers at 1pm
better. Clickbase will be exhibiting for the 4th year and will be showcasing our preconfigured solutions for all of Business Intelligence can come to the rescue. With a
Version 4 release we made economy are reassessing their strategic initiatives.
ET on Thursdays. Contact
the Sage product line. robust Business Intelligence solution, you will be able
changes not only to the Some companies decide that they need to reduce staff
Joe Hess to sign up.
appearance but also to the to discover root causes and to define winning
JHess@clickbase.com in order to maintain their companies financial health,
way Clickbase manages and strategies. The information you need is there. The
Clickbase Trends Issue 24 4th Quarter 2008 while other may eliminate projects or initiatives that do
accesses data. There will be challenge is getting that information in a form that
not immediately impact the bottom line. In talking to
much more in our Fall release allows you to discover real root causes, and then, to
Managers and C-Level’s at different companies, most
which will be coming soon. implement the right and best practice to address the

You can read more about the believe that they would have been in a better position problem. Root causes can readily be found with

exciting features we will be to weather the current financial downturn if their Clickbase’s BI solution which allows you to drill down

adding on Page 3. operation and processes were more efficient. But, with by asking the question, “Why” and, once you have a

clear understanding you can take effective action.

the growth of the economy in the past 10 years, few
Clickbase had the time and foresight to implement new programs
Clickbase’s BI solution gives you the ability to develop

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Website focused performance indicators and to set specific
to enhance efficiency and best practices. That is why
Suite 250 Please feel free to visit our goals that address the critical issues in your
Jacksonville, FL 32259 forward thinking companies realize they must take the
website for more information companies performance objectives. Wouldn’t it be
888.841.2377 ph
888.841.2377 fax time and effort to become more efficient. You don't
regarding Clickbase. We have helpful for you and all of your employees to have a
www.Clickbase.com
posted information such as prepare for a football game on Sunday. You do it desktop dashboard which enables everyone to monitor

our documentation, system during the week when you can analyze what is performance against these indicators and objectives?

requirements, and an happening, and you can asses your strengths and Clickbase BI enables you and your employees to make

overview of the solutions we strategic and tactical decisions based on real-time

weaknesses as well as those of your competition. The
provide. You can also see an data. The end result is a significant increase in
same logic applies to companies, Now, it is particularly
online demo or request a live productivity and efficiency in a time when both are
urgent to eliminate inefficiencies and to focus
demo as well as view pre urgently needed. Clickbase BI has helped many com-
everyone’s efforts where they will make the most
recorded training sessions. panies monitor their performance through predictive
beneficial impact. But with all the data and the
This is a very helpful resource analytics and focused KPI’s and has set them on the

when finding out more about different processes that go on within your company, path to a more effective and efficient enterprise.

our Clickbase BI solution. who has the time to sift through all of that information?
IFS 2008 a Great
Success
Clickbase would like to thank
everyone we met at the first ever
IFS customer summit in North
America. There were over 450
attendees and, although we
weren't able to show everyone
our preconfigured Business
Intelligence solution for IFS, we
left with some very positive
feedback. Most of the
companies we showed Clickbase
to saw how we could help them
gain insight and do analysis into
their IFS data and reduce the
burden put on IT to deliver
reports and information to end
users by giving the end users the
ability to do their own ad hoc
analysis and reporting. For those
of you who were not able to
make it by our exhibit, please
feel free to contact us for a
demonstration. Thanks and we
will see you next year!
Clickbase will
exhibit at Sage
Summit for 4th
straight year.
We are looking forward to seeing
some familiar faces at Sage
Summit 2008 in Denver.
Clickbase has as always
continued to improve our
functionality and have added
many new features in our latest
release based upon the great
feedback we receive from our
customers and resellers that
work with Sage. We look forward
to showcasing them at the
conference. See you there!
Most companies don't know
where to start. There is an
initiative for a Business
Intelligence solution and, with
all the different vendors, it is
hard to determine which one is
right for your company. The
nice thing to know is that they
all basically are looking to
accomplish the same goals.
The real difference is how they
do it. Below, we have outlined
the four key issues to consider
when looking for a BI solution
to help you along your journey.
1. Determine your budget: This is
usually the first step in any new
initiative, but it is especially important
when looking for a BI solution
because the variation from least
expensive to most expensive is often
$100,000’s. There are a variety of
reasons why there is such
variation: some solutions require you
to buy and support more hardware;
some require relicensing every year
for every user; some require you to
buy multiple licenses for all of the
different modules that you need; and
some are just plain expensive.
President’s
What you need to Message
know when looking
for a BI Solution
4 Key Issues to Consider when
Determining which solution is
right for your company
Clickbase’s New Release
We appreciate the confidence that
For most BI needs you should be 3.Functionality: Do not settle for less Clickbase has made significant with cubes. This will immediately never been easier, and it continues
our customers have shown in us
able to start with an effective than what you expect. When looking at advances to our software in the past remedy any response time problems to be one of the easiest ways to
by selecting our product and also
solution for $20,000-$30,000. As BI solutions, most people really like year with much more to come. In that you are experiencing, especially deploy Clickbase to a wide and large
appreciate potential customers
you gain experience and extend the drill down functionality and March we released Version 4 which those of you with extremely high number of users. Also, it now has the
who have taken a closer look at
the BI solution to additional needs, dashboards. But, there are many other had many new features to enable volumes of transactions. With this same look as our Clickbase Item
what Clickbase can provide. We
you can add users and additional functions that you should demand, end users to custom ize their new feature, you will be able to Manager for a more consistent look
continuously strive to improve the
functionality. Be alert to BI such as real-time data, ad hoc complete BI experience. These choose between real-time or batch for those who use both the client and
functionality so please make use
companies that raise the per user reporting and analysis, chart wizards, en h a n c em e n t al s o p r ov i d e d for your information needs. You can the web portal. We are constantly
of our on line training at least once
charge higher than that which you and the ability to schedule report developers and administrators with now c reat e a "vi rt ual " dat a looking for ways to make Clickbase
a year to catch up on the latest
paid per user for the initial delivery. Make sure you get everything more a lot more control over the warehouse without the immense better and to provide our customers
features.
implementation. you need and want from the solution views and who has access to what effort of implementing an actual with the functionality that they expect
Some of you may be operating
that you select at a fair price. data. In our Fall release we will add warehouse and having to support it. in a complete BI solution. If you have
2. End User Acceptance: multiple ERP systems and may
the ability to pre-build and cache all We have also upgraded our web any suggestions or questions please
You have to decide who will “Leverage Data not be aware of all the ERP
4 . E a s e o f datasets irrespective of the output portal to give it more flexibility in the contact a Clickbase rep.
benefit from using BI in your from Yesterday and Deployment and systems for which we have an
company. There are usually
format (cube, graph, spreadsheet, design and presentation of data.
out-of-the box solution. We
Today to Make Development: This etc.), similarly to what we now do Posting information to the web has
two types of users: currently have solutions for
is always something
Better Decisions
This Month’s Q&A Technology Tips
those that do ad hoc critical to consider. several of the products from Sage
Tomorrow”
reporting and analysis to S om e sol ut i on s and Microsoft as well for several of
Q: What is the easiest way to consolidate
And, the data is only as up to date as the last time you
identify trends and root require a lengthy the smaller vendors in today's
data from multiple applications in order to
update your data warehouse. Add to these disadvan-
c au s es ( u s u al l y Op er at i on al and arduous setup and deployment. marketplace.
effectively produce reports and do
tages the cost and effort to maintain one more data-
Managers and C-levels); and, data Some solutions may require a data In addition to these mid market
analysis?
base. With Clickbase’s IMAP technology, you are able
consumers who need continued warehouse. Some may have a pro- ERP systems, we also have
A: It really depends on who you talk to, how much
to retrieve data from multiple sources in real-time by
access to specific inform ation prietary query language which makes complete solutions for several
a money is in your budget, and what resources
connecting directly to the data sources to consolidate
necessary to do their jobs. Making those solutions extremely hard for higher end systems like
you have available within your company. Some
and present that data seamlessly. End users will have
everyone’s job easier and giving the users and IT staff. The ideal JD Edwards and IFS.
will say that you must create a data warehouse
access to all of their pertinent data as if it were coming
them ready access to data are critical BI solution should take no longer Please let us know if you are
in order to effectively report from multiple
from a single integrated database. Those users can
to end user acceptance. These are than a week or two to deploy, and the interested in learning more about
applications. Data warehouses essentially create
now do ad hoc reporting and analysis without the
core benefits that a good BI solution users shoul d be im m edi at el y what we can provide for any of
redundant database to map all of your existing data
assistance of a programmer. Clickbase is also
will provide. productive. those.
for reporting purposes. While this accomplishes your goal,
deployable in one to two weeks instead of months.
Thank you for your time.
it is very expensive and time consuming to implement.
Arne Ingebrigtsen,
President