Strong Growth for Business Intelligence

Tue, 28 Sep 2004

Hyperion Predicts Strong Growth for Business Intelligence in Australasia
Australia and New Zealand experience awakening, seeking management through insight

SYDNEY, Australia, 28 September, 2004 - "Australian and New Zealand businesses will continue to increase their investment in business intelligence solutions over the next three to five years as they strive to gain better insight into the specific drivers of success in their business," predicts Russell Evans, Managing Director Australia and New Zealand, Hyperion Solutions (Nasdaq: HYSL), the global leader in Business Performance Management software.

Evans' comments follow the release of IDC's Asia/Pacific Business Intelligence (BI) Solutions Spending 2004-2008 Forecast which revealed that the Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) BI solutions market is expected to grow from US$529.8 million in 2003 to US$1.2 billion in 2008. In 2003, Australia and New Zealand market accounted 45.1 percent, the largest share, of total Asia/Pacific BI Solutions Market spending1.

According to Evans, growth in the adoption of BI solutions is being fuelled by a combination of executives striving to better understand the key business drivers internally, and the external call for better business governance and accountability demanded by shareholders, boards and regulatory bodies such as the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC).

The Awakening
"Today's business leaders have to work with limited resources in highly competitive markets, so the impact of their decisions is more important than it has ever been. The best decisions are informed decisions. We are experiencing an awakening as executives realise the level of detail they need to know, but do not yet have access to. This is a vital step - we must move from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence, in order to work out what information we need to know.

"Moreover, organisational change is supporting this new approach to business management. With Chief Information Officers increasingly reporting to the Chief Financial Officer, the result is a better understanding of the business drivers and the technology available to track and understand them."

Phase 3: Business Performance Management
Evans believes that while the Australasian BI adoption rate leads the region, the market is already entering a new phase of management through insight.

"While many of the top 200 companies and public sector organisations have made significant investment in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions, these are mainly transactional tools that store information in silos and so simply do not provide the level of insight required to manage today's businesses. Business leaders are seeking a better understanding of the 'how and why' that created current events in order to better predict future outcomes of decisions. If the first phase was developing systems to track transactions, the second phase was using business intelligence solutions collate the transactional information. The new phase is correlating past and future events to predict future outcomes of decisions - this is business performance management," explained Evans.

Vertical Growth Segments

Evans believes that local growth will be seen in the financial services sector, driven by the need to comply with regulatory reporting standards such as Basel II, and in the public sector where government departments are now expected to be more accountable.

"For example, we are currently working with a large Queensland State Government department to enable them to achieve greater accountability by setting and measuring key performance indicators throughout the organisation. By cascading the overall department targets down to the level of individual staff, the functions are aligned to the objectives of the overall organisation. It is human nature - what gets measured, gets done," explained Evans.

1Asia/Pacific BI Solutions Market spending is comprised of software, hardware, networking equipment, services and telecom services component spending.

ENDS

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