LAS VEGAS, Oct. 26 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Pronto Software, a leading developer of enterprise software solutions, today announced it has integrated IBM's latest business intelligence (BI) suite, IBM Cognos 10, into the upcoming release of its flagship solution, PRONTO-Xi, to enable quicker, smarter decision-making for mid-market customers.
IBM Cognos 10 was launched today at IBM Information On Demand 2010 Forum in Las Vegas. Pronto Software is the first ERP vendor worldwide to embed and optimise IBM Cognos 10 functionality into its software, delivering instant value to Pronto Software's 1,500 customers globally when they upgrade.
The seamless integration of two industry-leading solutions, PRONTO-Xi's strong transactional ERP system and the powerful IBM Cognos 10, provides enhanced reporting capabilities and instant business insight, thereby empowering users to access meaningful data anytime, anywhere.
According to Pronto Software Managing Director David Jackman, the strategic partnership with IBM is a defining step in its vision to increase the functionality and breadth of Pronto's product portfolio and offer its customers a competitive advantage by delivering them the next generation ERP system that includes an intuitive BI capability out of the box.
"Over the past five years, Pronto Software has had a heavy development focus on simplifying IT for our customers. This is becoming increasingly important from a business analysis and reporting perspective as volumes of data increase, making fast and effective business decisions all the more challenging," said Jackman.
"We've done all the integration work so that IBM Cognos 10 is tightly embedded into PRONTO-Xi and our customers can start reaping the benefits immediately. They will be able to create ad hoc reports, slice and dice the data, and create dashboards in a new intuitive interface," added Jackman.
Jackman explained one of the biggest obstacles to gaining insight from data is demystifying the complexities in the underlying database. "IBM Cognos 10 offers a simple mechanism for providing at-a-glance insight into key business drivers in an easy to understand way."
"Pronto has been a valuable member of our IBM Cognos 10 beta program and instrumental in validating the value and benefits Cognos 10 will bring to midsize companies," said Mychelle Mollot, vice president worldwide marketing, business analytics at IBM.
In late 2009, Pronto Software researched the market for BI solutions that were user-friendly, scalable and had the ability to cope with the complexities of large underlying data structures and present the data in an intuitive and simplified format for easy reporting.
"We undertook an assessment of the best BI products in the world," explained Jackman. "We selected IBM Cognos BI as our platform as it was the only one that met and exceeded our requirements in terms of both our business and the needs of our customers going forward."
"Up until now, the mid-market has been under-served as BI has been perceived by many of our clients as a little out of reach and the deployment for end users challenging. Through this innovative integration with IBM Cognos 10, we will be able to differentiate our solution in the mid-market and deliver out of the box BI to our customers worldwide in one hit," added Jackman.
"We can see a major sea change, particularly for Pronto customers. They'll be moving from having to talk to the IT department about writing a technical report based on a specification to easily using BI tools to make informed decisions centred on the needs of the business," said Jackman.
PRONTO-Xi's newest release will be launched in March 2011. A beta version will be available for Pronto Software customers from November 2010.
About Pronto Software
Pronto Software is Australia's award winning developer of easy to use and fast to implement ERP technology for the mid-market. Pronto's flexible and highly scalable ERP solution, PRONTO-Xi delivers unparalleled visibility and control of the entire supply chain from manufacturing, distribution, services right through to the retail point of sale. For more information about Pronto Software, visit http://www.pronto.com.au
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