Business Intelligence Leader Oco Predicts 2009 Will Usher in New Era of Complementary BI

Oco, Inc., a leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider of business intelligence (BI) and data integration solutions, today released its predictions for the five key technology and BI trends that will impact businesses in 2009. Most notably, Oco sees the emergence of Complementary BI solutions that leverage existing investments companies have already made in BI and data management infrastructure and technology. Businesses will point BI at pressing business issues, including collaboration across functions and throughout the ecosystem to drive business performance.

“One thing that has clearly emerged in 2008 is the use of different business intelligence solutions to address different BI needs,” said Bill Copacino, president and CEO of Oco, Inc. “The number of companies embracing Complementary BI is expected to significantly expand in 2009, particularly among large businesses. Additionally, as the economic climate continues to impact business, successful BI solutions in 2009 will be those that will help an organization rapidly solve specific and immediate business needs without taxing valuable IT resources.”

Following are the trends that Oco predicts for 2009 and beyond:

1. Growth of Complementary BI

Companies have long attempted to standardize using a single application or approach to address all of their technology needs in a specific area. However, BI in particular, cannot be effectively implemented using a single standardized approach. There are too many different capabilities, vertical-specific requirements and deployment models to be restricted to one standard BI tool from a single vendor. Driven by diverse organizational needs, a growing number of companies will recognize that one size does not fit all, and turn to a set of distinctive BI tools with varying capabilities from different vendors to address a range of BI requirements.

2. SaaS Goes Upmarket

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has provided an attractive proposition to small and mid-sized companies, yet large, multinational enterprises are also realizing the benefits of rapidly deployed solutions that require minimal ongoing IT support. These large firms are turning to SaaS BI solutions to complement their existing BI infrastructure. The SaaS-based BI approach will significantly proliferate among large, multi-billion-dollar companies in 2009 and beyond.

3. Information Silos Will Tumble

As the different functions within an organization become more interrelated, the insight needed to make effective business decisions doesn’t come from one single area. Analytical decision-making requires that information be gathered from many different functions across an enterprise, which is a difficult task when data ownership resides in individual systems. As decision-making continues to become more cross-functional, data silos will break down. For example, to gain an understanding of at-risk customer revenue, companies may need to pull actual customer revenue from finance, forecast revenue from sales, customer satisfaction metrics from marketing, and on-time shipment information from supply chain management.

4. Collaborative BI Throughout the Extended Enterprise

As analytic solutions become richer and more powerful, they will reach outside the firewall to a company’s customers, suppliers and service providers. This extended enterprise will both contribute data to the solution, and also use the analytics that it offers. Reaching into the extended enterprise has been a priority for years—now measuring and making business decisions based on the same set of analytics will become pervasive. These solutions will be significantly enriched in 2009, driving value throughout the ecosystem.

5. Corporate Hot Spots Will Drive BI

In the recession, companies will choose IT initiatives that address specific business “hot spots” and offer a quick payback. Initiatives focusing on increasing revenue, reducing costs or improving customer satisfaction will reign. BI will provide organizations with visibility into opportunities to cross-sell into existing customers, ensure at-risk revenue is secured, identify new opportunities, rationalize costs and inventory, and meet goals set out by leadership. Companies are targeting a 3x ROI and payback in 90 days or less.

About Oco, Inc.

Oco’s business intelligence solutions provide essential business visibility, delivering an integrated set of actionable reports and key performance indicators (KPIs) from multiple data sources to any user in just weeks. Oco’s comprehensive solutions dramatically reduce the timeframe, cost and risk of traditional business intelligence implementations with deployment on a fixed-cost, fixed-time basis. For more information about Oco, please visit www.oco-inc.com.