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2006 Insight Americas Customer Excellence Awards Recognize Graniterock and Others

SAN FRANCISCO—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Business Objects, the world’s leading provider of business intelligence solutions, today announced that Graniterock, Iron Mountain, Michigan Department of Human Services, U.S. Navy, Volkswagen of America, and Zions Bancorporation have been named the winners of the 2006 Insight Americas Customer Excellence Awards. The Customer Excellence Awards recognize the outstanding achievements of these companies in using Business Objects solutions to improve their organization’s performance. The awards were formally presented at Business Objects Insight Americas 2006, the company’s user conference taking place this week in San Francisco, California.

“While this year’s winners represent a cross section of different industries, and span from small to very large organizations, they have one point in common—they are all applying business intelligence to become information centric organizations, and transform the way they operate and compete on a daily basis,” said John Schwarz, CEO of Business Objects. “I am pleased to recognize these organizations, and congratulate them on their innovative use of business intelligence to improve their organization’s performance.”

Following is a brief description of this year’s award categories and the winners:

Innovation—Graniterock

Graniterock, a 106 year-old materials supply and construction company, has been awarded this year’s Customer Excellence Award for Innovation. Graniterock was one of the first companies in any industry to access and analyze RFID (radio frequency identification) data. The company has deployed RFID at all its plants to track arrivals and departures of trucks through its asphalt and quarry operations. With Business Objects, Graniterock has been able to develop reports and analyze its RFID information to improve operational performance and boost customer satisfaction and customer savings. The company estimates that as a result of the system, they have been able to reduce by half the amount of time it takes to load customer trucks, increasing efficiencies, improving productivity, and getting trucks in and out of its quarries much faster than ever before. With trucks costing more than $1.25 per minute to operate, this is a huge savings and creates more satisfied customers.

Information Management—Iron Mountain

Iron Mountain, the global leader in information protection and storage services, has been awarded this year’s Customer Excellence Award for Information Management. Iron Mountain has recently gone through a period of rapid growth and numerous acquisitions. In the midst of this, the company applied Business Objects solutions to gain insight into customer buying habits and to identify cross selling opportunities. Each month, Iron Mountain uses Business Objects enterprise information management software to extract one million rows of invoice line item detail from 11 different billing systems, and combine it with seven million rows of Dun and Bradstreet data about its customers and prospects. It used to take Iron Mountain as long as two months to capture a global snapshot of its customers. Now, using business intelligence software from Business Objects, it takes only two minutes to get a worldwide view, plus, it includes three years of customer buying trends.

Impact—Michigan Department of Human Services

Michigan Department of Human Services (DHS), a state agency responsible for providing services to 1.4 million residents, has been awarded this year’s Customer Excellence Award for Impact. Michigan DHS manages $4 billion in funds for many of Michigan’s critical programs, including foster care, child support services, and food and cash assistance. More than 5,000 front-line staff members at the agency use Business Objects solutions to access hundreds of pre-defined reports ranging from foster care out-of-home placement information to child protective service reports that are used to assist workers in dealing with abused or neglected children. Business Objects also provides Michigan DHS employees with access to integrated data and the appropriate analytic tools to identify day care and food stamp fraud issues. To date, Business Objects has helped the agency identify more than $17 million dollars in fraud savings for the state’s taxpayers.

Transformation—U.S. Navy

The U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) has been awarded this year’s Customer Excellence Award for Transformation. As part of a mandate from the Navy to reduce administration costs and move to web-based systems, NAVAIR has transformed its reporting process using BusinessObjects XI Release 2. A customer for more than 11 years, NAVAIR recently migrated to BusinessObjects XI Release 2 with the help of Business Objects Global Services. The simplicity of the new platform has led to increased popularity and demand for BI across the agency, and NAVAIR is currently adding new users at a rate of about 100 per month. Before Business Objects, NAVAIR was faced with the challenge of accessing and analyzing data from disparate databases, files, and spreadsheets. Business Objects has helped the agency transform their use of BI by consolidating its data and providing users with an accurate, simple way to view all operational information via the web. NAVAIR executives and managers rely on enterprise performance management solutions, including dashboards, from Business Objects on a daily basis for valuable metrics, goals, and other analytics.

Performance Management—Volkswagen of America

Volkswagen of America, the U.S. division of Europe’s largest automaker, has been awarded this year’s Customer Excellence Award for Performance Management. Volkswagen of America needed a way to deliver consistency in analysis and manage overall performance. Last year, business areas within Volkswagen started efforts to define their key performance metrics and used Business Objects dashboards, scorecards, and reporting software to track those metrics. Business Objects has allowed the Volkswagen executive team to gain a consistent, nation-wide view of how each dealer is performing and the drivers behind that performance. In addition, employees across a variety of the business functions at Volkswagen now rely on Business Objects performance management solutions in their day-to-day activities. Business Objects has already enabled Volkswagen of America to significantly lower warranty claims costs, increase customer satisfaction, and improve the management of employee and dealer performance.

Visions—Zions Bancorporation

Zions Bancorporation, a premier financial services company operating more than 450 full-service banking offices in 10 western states, has been awarded this year’s Customer Excellence Award for Vision. Using Business Objects EPM solutions, Zions has streamlined the budgeting and forecasting process for both the company’s corporate office and its affiliate banks. Business Objects has enabled Zions to develop long-term strategic financial plans for the first time and also enabled the company to save an estimated $30 million in acquisition funding costs over the next ten years. Zions is now in the process of extending its BI solution to include incentive compensation management, enterprise information management, and performance reporting for the entire organization. As a result of standardizing on Business Objects, Zions will gain simplified access to trusted data, and the ability to better analyze and understand performance to drive positive changes throughout the organization.

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world’s leading business intelligence (BI) software company, with more than 39,000 customers worldwide, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 500. Business Objects helps organizations of all sizes create a trusted foundation for decision making, gain better insight into their business, and optimize performance. The company’s innovative business intelligence suite, BusinessObjects™ XI, offers the BI industry’s most advanced and complete solution for performance management, planning, reporting, query and analysis, and enterprise information management. BusinessObjects XI includes the award-winning Crystal line of reporting and data visualization software. Business Objects has also built the industry’s strongest and most diverse partner community, and offers consulting and education services to help customers effectively deploy their business intelligence projects.

Business Objects has dual headquarters in San Jose, Calif., and Paris, France. The company’s stock is traded on both the Nasdaq and Euronext Paris stock exchanges. More information about Business Objects.

The Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, Crystal Reports, Intelligent Question, and Xcelsius are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects in the United States and/or other countries. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

For more information, contact:
Peter Olson, Business Objects, 408.953.6320,[email protected]
Erin McCabe, Eastwick Communications, 650.480.4016,[email protected]