Business Objects, a SAP company and a provider of business performance optimisation solutions, has announced the availability of BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench, offering data mining and predictive analytics integrated with BusinessObjects XI 3.0, a unified business intelligence (BI) platform. BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench enables people to identify patterns in historical business data and the variables that drive relevant business trends. Decision makers can use this insight to extrapolate future scenarios and work proactively in anticipation of market changes. With Predictive Workbench, Business Objects makes predictive analytics a mainstream feature on one of the most widely deployed information infrastructure.

In the current economic climate, it is critical that organisations better understand what drives their business and can accurately assess trends across all lines of business, using that insight to both optimise future business performance and avert potential risk. BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench empowers organisations to harness existing performance data to identify trends and patterns, and play out 'what-if' scenarios as they develop business strategies moving forward. These forward-looking capabilities can help companies address the problems and challenges faced during an economic recession.

Using powerful data mining technology, BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench enables customers to pore over historical business information and create predictive models that can be utilised to solve both horizontal and industry-specific business problems. The predictive models help organisations achieve specific business goals, such as maximising marketing efforts, designing optimal pricing plans, improving operational efficiencies and, most importantly, gaining agility and competitive differentiation.

For example, BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench can determine the critical success factors in previous marketing campaigns, thus, helping marketing executives to design stronger, more cost-effective future campaigns. In addition, credit companies can more easily identify fraud patterns, and banks can analyse customer behaviour and use that data to offer the right type of financial services to the right customer segments.

Intuitive Predictive Intelligence and Support for Mixed IT Environments

The combination of BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench and BusinessObjects XI 3.0 provides customers with the ability to scale and meet discovery needs of organisations of all sizes. The user-friendly visual workflow interface shows and mines all data; while users have detailed reporting tools, a rich library of algorithms, point-and-click visualisations, intuitive discovery, advanced predictive analytics and tools for query, reporting and analysis at their disposal. BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench also supports customers with mixed IT environments by mining data sources across heterogeneous IT systems.