When it comes to EPM, business-intelligence software vendors must be careful they don't promise more than they can deliver, says Andy Handford, products VP at Crystal Decisions Inc., which makes business reporting applications. Effective performance management requires an understanding of specific business processes and expertise in vertical markets, not just generic business-intelligence technology. Early this year, Crystal Decisions will ship a performance-management scorecard template for building EPM apps, but it will rely heavily on business partners to provide the domain expertise, Handford says.

Probably the biggest rap against business-intelligence software is that it's just too difficult for the average person to use. Medac Inc., which manages billing for anesthesia services, began using Cognos reporting software three years ago to give customers access to billing information over the Web. But it eventually dropped the product and developed its own. "The Cognos system was a little too complicated for our clients," Medac president John Memar says.

But some companies would like to deploy business-intelligence software to a wider range of users, so vendors are putting increased emphasis on ease of use. That's the thinking behind many of the enhancements Cognos is making this year to its flagship Series 7 business-intelligence software. A new release of the suite, which includes the Impromptu query and reporting tool and PowerPlay online analytical processing application, is due this quarter.

Improvements to PowerPlay are supposed to make it easier for employees to find and analyze information stored in voluminous databases. Cognos is building in predictive-analysis and statistical data-mining capabilities that, for example, will predict a customer's likelihood of responding to a sales offer. Cognos already offers predictive analysis in its Scenario data-mining tool, but that software is generally used only by analysts with expertise in statistics. Hiding predictive analytics' complexity behind PowerPlay's more manageable user interface will give those capabilities to a wider audience, says Don Campbell, Cognos' product innovation and technology VP. Cognos also will add HTML interfaces to Impromptu and Visualizer, making it easier for users to present information and analytical results to colleagues, customers, and business partners on the Web.

	Schneider National uses tools from Cognos to monitor the performance of its operations, Hasenzahl says.

Schneider National Inc. uses Impromptu, PowerPlay, and Visualizer to monitor the performance of its trucking and logistics-management operations. Scrutinizing key metrics such as shipping volumes and on-time performance is largely done at the departmental level, says John Hasenzahl, Schneider's knowledge-services and data-management director. This year, Schneider plans to start measuring and monitoring business performance across the company and to involve more people in the process. The number of Cognos users will expand from about 2,000 to 5,000, including many Schneider customers.

Large-scale deployments are also on the minds of developers working on version 6 of Business Objects' business-intelligence platform. Due out by midyear, it will offer an enhanced portal, improved customization and categorization capabilities, and tools for easier deployment and administration. "There are going to be more large-scale deployments in 2003--in the thousands, if not tens of thousands of users," Business Objects' CEO Liautaud predicts.

Penske Logistics is testing the new release, and Nather says the improved user interface and navigation capabilities let users do more complicated reporting using the Web. "We're always hearing from our managers that they don't like the navigation of the current product," he says.

Actuate Corp. plans to ship three releases of its business-intelligence server this year. The first, due this quarter, can be programmed to pull together information for people with specific roles, such as a manager who performs sales-compensation analysis. That means the data will be better formatted for the target user's needs. Actuate is also expanding the software's capabilities for building dashboards and custom reports.

Likewise, SAS Institute Inc. is building what it calls "personas"--a series of interfaces and data models with key performance indicators built in for specific classes of users, such as executives, technologists, and information consumers. All SAS software shipped this year will support the new interfaces.