BIRST 7 BRINGS CENTRALISED AND DECENTRALISED ANALYTICS TO THE ENTERPRISE

New software release provides freedom and control with a modern consumer grade user interface for the connected enterprise.

Birst, an Infor company and a leader in Cloud Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics for the Enterprise, recently announced Birst 7, a major new software release that brings centralised and decentralised analytics to the enterprise, in a single platform. The new release empowers enterprises to deliver trusted, governed insights, across the organisation, balancing freedom and control, through a modern, consumer-grade user interface designed for scalability and speed.  

“Birst 7 provides an entirely new data modeling experience that extends Birst’s patented data warehouse automation technology and a completely re-imagined administration module for managing centralised and decentralised deployments, including new auditing features and more granular user management capabilities,” confirms Mark Bannerman, Managing Director at EOH Infor Services, Infor’s Master Partner in Africa, operating as a Gold Partner.

“This enables enterprise organisations to democratise data modeling while still maintaining centralised compliance and governance. Key capabilities include enterprise data modeling and self-service data preparation in a unified, easy-to-use interface, enterprise administration with advanced data orchestration, and Birst Smart Analytics.”  

Birst Smart Analytics is a new set of AI-enabled capabilities that elevate organisations above traditional reports and dashboards, using machine learning algorithms to power intelligent insights not previously available to business users.

The Birst 7 software release is generally available (GA) now, as both a cloud-based offering and as an on-premise virtual appliance. The virtual appliance offers the exact same rich capabilities, upgrade path and level of support as the enterprise cloud version, so enterprises can move from one deployment model to another to meet their strategic and operational goals.

“With fourteen different ERP and reporting instances distributed globally, one consistent definition of revenue was challenging to calculate, especially when using different currency rates,” said Marcus Williams, Business Intelligence Developer at Carlisle Fluid Technologies, a global company that manufactures equipment for the supply and application of paints, coatings and sprayed materials. “We have been successfully using Birst over the last three years to move users to a central BI system across regions, while also giving our business units the freedom and agility to do their own analysis to better track information across finance, sales, and supply chain.”

“We can now maintain a single version of revenue and continually build out trusted KPIs, based on Birst’s unique Value Based Design methodology,” Williams said. “We are excited about Birst 7 because our growing deployment will greatly benefit from productivity gains using a new, modern interface to onboard new developers and manage more complex workflows for data integration and loading, as well as granular user/role management and auditing.”

Organisations are currently challenged to manage governed enterprise analytics from a centralised administration team, while still empowering local, self-service customisation from a globally distributed, decentralised analytics team.

Birst 7 enables organisations to create enterprise-wide, trusted Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and complex enterprise data models, and, at the same time, it allows decentralised teams to extend analytics with their own data, in a way that is easy to use, scalable and repeatable. In addition, control of centrally managed data assets can be shared with decentralised teams, without the need to replicate or duplicate data, ensuring continuity and trust.

“We’re focused on making everyone from enterprise administrators, to data modelers, to business users, more productive and on driving actionable analytics out to the edge of the enterprise,” said Bhargav Addala, Birst Vice President of Product Management. “We’re empowering global organisations to deliver trusted, governed metrics to decentralised analytics teams, which can extend and enrich the ‘shared version of the truth’ semantic layer, using self-service data preparation built specifically for the needs of the business. All of this is delivered through a unified, easy-to-use, modern interface providing every analytics consumer and creator the tools they need to tackle any analytics use case.”

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About EOH Infor Services

EOH Infor Services was founded in 1995 as Baan South Africa, becoming Softworx after a management buy-out in 1999. It became a member of the EOH Group in December 2000 and in 2011 was appointed as the only Infor Gold Channel Partner in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2014, it was appointed as Infor Master Partner, one of only a few worldwide. Most recently, as the result of a rebranding, it became EOH Infor Services in 2018.

The company focuses on providing the right solutions to its customers. It delivers enterprise applications, enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions, and drives extended best of breed solutions including; supply chain planning, extended warehouse management, asset maintenance, hospitality management, product life cycle management, information management (BI, data warehousing and analytics), and enterprise performance management (financial planning, forecasting, budgeting, consolidation and governance). For more information, please visit www.eohinforservices.com.

About EOH

EOH is a proudly South African business and the largest technology services organisation in Africa. The JSE-listed group has strong empowerment credentials and with its 11 000-strong workforce in South Africa, is characterised by excellent delivery capability, great people and a strong culture.

EOH provides a broad range of technology solutions and innovation to clients in South Africa and internationally, covering many aspects of society and the economy, and geared towards supporting the developmental agenda of our country.

In keeping with its purpose, EOH launched the “EOH Youth Job Creation Initiative” five years ago, which to date, has resulted in the creation of over 35 000 jobs for our youth.

For media queries please email: media@eoh.com or 011 607 8100.

About Birst, an Infor Company

Birst is an advanced networked business analytics platform. Organisations can achieve a new level of trusted insight and decision making by connecting their data and people via a network of analytics services. Birst scales from individuals to the enterprise in a manner that is smart, connected, and scalable. Learn more at www.birst.com.

About Infor

Infor is a global leader in business cloud software specialised by industry. With 17,300 employees and over 68,000 customers in more than 170 countries, Infor software is designed for progress. To learn more, please visit www.infor.com.

Infor customers include:

•              19 of the top 20 aerospace companies

•              9 of the top 10 high tech companies

•              18 of the 25 largest U.S. healthcare delivery networks

•              18 of the 20 largest U.S. cities

•              19 of the top 20 automotive suppliers

•              17 of the top 20 industrial distributors

•              15 of the top 20 global retailers

•              4 of the top 5 brewers

•              17 of the top 20 global banks

•              9 of the 10 largest global hotel brands

•              8 of the top 10 global luxury brands

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