Information Builders, an independent software vendor that provides operational business intelligence solutions, has announced a partnership with OnApproach, an independent systems integrator, to provide business intelligence and reporting capabilities to companies with less than $100 million in annual revenues. Through this partnership, OnApproach will provide the Information Builders WebFOCUS BI platform as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering to these smaller companies.
OnApproach specializes in helping companies obtain essential financial and operational information out of their accounting/ERP systems, and will now be able to offer these services to smaller, growing businesses via a low-cost subscription to key WebFOCUS reporting capabilities. OnApproach will host all of the necessary software applications on its own infrastructure, and provide customers with browser-based access to the reporting functionalities they need. OnApproach will also work collaboratively with its customers to do the initial report and dashboard design and development.
"Even though WebFOCUS is easy to use, smaller organizations don't need to pay for and use the entire product set. They mainly need the reporting capabilities which OnApproach will sell and service under the WebFOCUS brand," Adam Cohen, manager of channels marketing for Information Builders, tells 5 Minute Briefing. The reporting functionalities of WebFOCUS will be packaged and sold by OnApproach as two different subscription offerings. The Basic Reporting offering includes structured ad hoc reports, dashboards, and Active Reports. The Advanced Reporting offering includes all of the Basic Reporting capabilities plus the ability to create ad hoc reports through Information Builders' intuitive reporting solution, InfoAssist. "The ad hoc reporting capabilities through InfoAssist are less structured and allow more user-defined parameters," Cohen explains. He also indicates that "Active Reports don't require a persistent connection to a data source to get reports, and are alert-based reporting."
Smaller organizations will benefit from these two offerings because they only need to provide OnApproach with access to their databases and applications in order to receive their customized BI reports, and do not need to assume the traditional implementation and licensing costs of WebFOCUS.
To learn more about Information Builders and the WebFOCUS platform, go here.
To learn more about OnApproach and the systems integration services it provides, go here.