Products BOARD 10 Headquarters Lugano, Switzerland Type of business Private | Website www. board.com Founded 1994 | |
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Industry Business Intelligence, Corporate Performance Management, Software Profiles | ||
BOARD International S.A. is a Business Intelligence (BI) and Corporate Performance Management (CPM) software vendor known for its BOARD toolkit. The company is headquartered in Lugano, Switzerland, where it was founded in 1994. While its core markets are still located in Europe, BOARD International has been expanding globally and now operates in 15 countries worldwide. It has a total of over 2,500 customers from a number of different industries, including large international corporations such as ABB, Best Western, GlaxoSmithKline, NEC, and Puma.
Contents
Products
BOARD International offers only one product, the BOARD toolkit. It combines various BI and CPM functionalities within a single graphical software environment. BOARD's BI capabilities include multi-dimensional analysis, ad hoc querying, dashboarding and reporting, while its CPM capabilities include budgeting, planning and forecasting as well as "other finance-related activities". Like Business Intelligence software in general, BOARD is used in an effort to improve productivity and decision making while lowering costs. It does not require any programming skills to build BI and CPM applications.
Technology
As of version 7, the BOARD toolkit features a service-oriented architecture that relies heavily on Microsoft technology, especially the .NET Framework with its Windows Communication Foundation. This allows for a tight integration with other Microsoft products, such as Microsoft Office, but requires Windows in order to run the full client, a limitation which has been identified by Gartner as a possible factor for preventing a deeper market penetration.
In 2012, the company introduced an update of its proprietary multidimensional database that BOARD is based on. This new technology was labelled as HBMP (Hybrid Bitwise Memory Pattern). It introduced a new compression method and combines disk-based and in-memory database approaches. It supports both relational and multidimensional data models.
Usage
According to The BI Survey 12, a worldwide BI and CPM user survey, the most widely used application areas of BOARD are reporting, ad-hoc querying, dashboarding, budgeting & planning, OLAP analysis, visual analysis & data discovery, predictive analysis & data mining and financial consolidation (in descending order of use frequency).
Effectiveness
A 2012 case study by Nucleus Research analyzed the effectiveness of BOARD when used as a company-wide business analytics solution. The research was based on three years' worth of actual data from Marketing General, a BOARD customer. It came to the conclusion that the introduction of BOARD allowed Marketing General to "raise profits, reduce customer churn and increase organizational productivity" while producing an average annual benefit of $119,962. It was calculated that, on average, the system saved 6 working hours a week per manager and IT worker.
Recognition
In recent years, BOARD has been frequently included in major publications on the BI and CPM markets.
In late 2012, it was included in The BI Survey 12, "the world's largest and most detailed annual survey of business intelligence software usage". BOARD also was featured in two of Gartner's 2012 Magic Quadrants: the Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms and the Magic Quadrant for Corporate Performance Management Suites. BOARD International was the only single-product vendor to be included in both quadrants that year.
In terms of technology, the introduction of the .NET-based BOARD 7 earned the company a Microsoft. NET Swiss Innovation Award in 2010.
Offices
Apart from its Swiss headquarters, BOARD International has a total of 17 offices spread across five continents and 15 countries. The company has recently been expanding, opening three new offices in 2011 (China, Japan and Mexico), but still has a higher presence in Europe than it does elsewhere.
BOARD International's worldwide subsidiaries and their exact locations are as follows: