Sales, Customer Analysis ExtendedSales, Customer Analysis Extended

Business Objects SA will expand its suite of analytical software this week by unveiling applications for analyzing product sales and call-center performance.

Analytical applications provide pre-packaged data-analysis capabilities in functional areas such as finance, production, and customer-relationship management. Hurwitz Group analyst Jacque Coolidge says they can extend the benefits of a data warehouse to a wide range of users.

The product-analysis piece of Business Objects' Product and Service Intelligence, available at the end of the month, lets managers optimize product portfolios, measuring the profitability and market share of specific products. The tool also can evaluate the effectiveness of product promotions and sales across multiple channels.

The customer-service tool, scheduled to be available next month, analyzes a company's communications with its customers, including telemarketing calls, CRM systems, information services, and customer-service phone operations. The software lets companies evaluate call-center efficiency and performance, plan call-center capacity, and improve customer-service levels.

The analytical applications market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 18.5% to $6.2 billion by 2005, according to International Data Corp. Business-intelligence software vendors, such as Informatica Corp. and MicroStrategy Inc., are bolstering their analytical application product portfolios. Enterprise application vendors such as Siebel Systems Inc. have also jumped into the market. Also, query and reporting software supplier Brio Software Inc. said last week it's developing a line of analytical applications that's expected to be ready early next year.

Business Objects entered the race in July when it unveiled its Application Foundation data-analysis platform and a suite of customer and marketing-campaign analytical software. Product and Service Intelligence applications run on Application Foundation.

Business Objects' new applications are priced at $95,000 for Windows operating systems and $142,000 for Unix.