With more than 500 employees in 10 offices throughout the United States, Centerline needed a fully integrated solution in order to keep the company’s various internal teams strategically aligned. Cartesis 10 will alleviate Centerline’s current reliance on spreadsheets for data collection and manipulation. Switching from a manual, labor-intensive spreadsheet process is necessary to meet the company’s increasing budgeting and reporting needs.

“Prior to Cartesis 10, any requests for additional reports or updates to the forecast required spending considerable time on changes in the excel model,” said Thomas Speroni, Vice President of Budgeting and Forecasting at Centerline. “Cartesis 10 allows us to plan and forecast in significantly less time as well as benefit from the strategic advantages offered by the solution, including what-if scenarios and competitor benchmarking. In addition to our enhanced forecasting capabilities, our overall budgeting process has improved, especially with the support for the driver-based budgeting process.”

Centerline now has the ability to integrate planning and management reporting, modeling and analytic reporting into a single application that is easy to use and manage. Users can create plans and forecasts with relevant business drivers and supporting details and drill down through those plans for analysis in real-time. Cartesis 10 also provides Centerline the power to change plans and forecasts by taking into account surrounding business issues that may impact the company. Additionally, the dashboards and key performance indicators in Cartesis 10 will help Centerline visualize and gain information required for better decision making. One of the key requirements for Centerline in selecting a performance management solution was compatibility with its existing Microsoft SQL server investment. Cartesis developed its Analytics product line around Microsoft SQL Server and SQL Service 2005 Analysis Services to ensure seamless integration with the MS platform for Centerline.

“As an industry leader, Centerline recognizes the importance of having trustworthy, accurate data for financial, budgeting and planning activities,” said Trevor Walker, Vice President of Marketing, Cartesis. “Improving upon Centerline’s budgeting process with the Cartesis 10 solution will not only enrich their overall financial profile, but will also decrease cycle time and lower their total cost of ownership. It’s been exciting to work with Centerline to help it address important business needs, and demonstrate our expertise in the budgeting solutions.”

With the addition of the Cartesis solutions, Business Objects can now provide its customers with a complete set of enterprise performance management (EPM) applications, delivering a comprehensive and powerful suite to the marketplace. The portfolio includes planning and budgeting, profitability and analytics, financial reporting and consolidations, and governance, risk, and compliance solutions.

“The close of this acquisition underscores our deep commitment to establishing the broadest, most open and integrated portfolio of performance management solutions in the industry,” said John Schwarz, CEO of Business Objects. “Our customers will benefit from the combination of the Business Objects and Cartesis functionality, enabling wide-ranging business insight and performance management for the CFO and CIO. I am delighted to welcome Cartesis to the Business Objects team.”

The acquisition was an all-cash transaction of approximately €225M (approximately $300M). Cartesis will become a part of the Business Objects Enterprise Performance Management product line organization. Mark Doll, senior vice president and general manager of Global Services and EPM for Business Objects, and Didier Benchimol, CEO of Cartesis, will lead the integration.

This year’s event will highlight a new release of the Cartesis suite and focus on business topics such as enhanced business reporting, compliance, corporate responsibility and strategic innovations in financial reporting. The conference will spotlight the growing customer momentum around the Cartesis BPM suite, and best practices in implementation and deployments.

“We view our customers as key partners to help us to stay ahead of business trends and infuse our product suite with new and innovative functionality,” said Trevor Walker, vice president marketing North America. “Connect is a critical venue to showcase our product suite, but more importantly to share best practices and develop strategies to address emerging trends such as XBRL and Enhanced Business Reporting.”

Connect 2007 will feature a special “Customer Panel” moderated by IDC Research Director, Kathleen Wilhide, providing attendees with insight into the workings of successful real world implementations. Also highlighted will be customer spotlights from leading global companies including Cargill, Delhaize, Gilbane, IXIS AM, PepsiAmericas, Royal Bank of Canada, Sandy Spring Bank, Sysco, Viasys Healthcare and more.

Scott Newquist, co-founder and managing director of Perception Partners, Inc., an advisory firm specializing in identifying and managing reputational risk, corporate governance, and corporate reporting, will give a “Proactively Managing Reputational Risk” keynote address. This presentation will outline how the combination of competition and changing stakeholder expectations creates risk to a company’s brand, share ways to proactively manage this risk and insight on how to avoid a reputational crisis or identify the slow brand erosion as expectations change.

With tracks in Management Reporting, Strategic Planning and Finance and Compliance and Controls, the Connect program will provide customers with demonstrations and training on new products designed to help them streamline their businesses and learn how to leverage BPM tools for enhanced business reporting business value. Steve Player, C.P.A, managing director of The Player Group, a performance management advisory firm, and North American program director of Beyond Budgeting Round Table
will hold a special breakout session on “Best Practices in Planning and Rolling Forecasts.”

Senior representatives from Cartesis and key partners including EDGAR Online, Microsoft, Resources Global Professionals, Parson Consulting, the Player Group, Ernst & Young, LLP and others will also present.

Visit http://www.cartesisconnect.com for Connect 2007 details or register today.

“We are committed to offering our customers the most powerful performance management framework,” said Crispin Read, CMO, Cartesis. “By leveraging Microsoft for infrastructure, HP for hardware and Cartesis for performance management, global customers can meet today’s aggressive reporting demands with a system that supports thousands to hundreds of thousands of concurrent users at uncompromising performance levels.”

HP Integrity servers are optimized for performance management applications by offering high availability, impressive scalability and robust performance to support the increasingly high IT demands from finance and performance management processes and applications. Specifically, HP Integrity servers can provide Cartesis customers:

--  Scalability to support the growing diversity and analytical processing
intensity of BPM solutions
--  Speed and accuracy needed for PM reporting and compliance requirements
--  Processing power and virtualization to lower IT costs without
jeopardizing performance
--  Flexible infrastructure capable of growing with business needs

“We have engineered the HP Integrity server family to meet the most aggressive performance demands of our customers’ mission critical applications,” says Michelle Weiss, vice president of marketing, Business Critical Servers, HP. “Together Cartesis and HP Integrity servers offer an adaptive performance management infrastructure suited to grow with business needs.”

A notable trend in H1 FY07 was Cartesis’ success in the mid-market, or clients with annual revenues of $300 mill to $750 mill. Much of this growth can be linked to the development of the Cartesis 10 Standard Edition product line, which grew license revenue by 81 percent when compared to the previous year’s first six months. The company sees this as very positive as it indicates a broader market acceptance of sophisticated performance management products. Historically, larger companies were more likely to understand the return on investment that performance management solutions provide.

“We had a very busy and fruitful first half of our fiscal year,” said Didier Benchimol, CEO of Cartesis. “We focused our efforts on delivering additional value to our existing clients in the form of exciting new products and services, which made our overall performance management suite more appealing to prospective customers. I am confident we have the right product and distribution mix to continue our rapid growth while maintaining our high customer satisfaction standards.”

Also introduced and delivered in H1 FY07 were new versions of Cartesis Analytics and Cartesis Intercompany. Cartesis Analytics experienced great success in this time period, with license revenue growth of 124% when compared to H1 FY06. With dashboards, key performance indicators (KPIs), scorecards and Web- and Microsoft Office Excel-based analysis capabilities, Cartesis Analytics is an important component of the larger Cartesis 10 suite, enabling organizations to easily and quickly deploy the trusted information from Cartesis applications to large numbers of distributed users. Also newly delivered, Cartesis Intercompany 5.0 is designed to help companies close their financial books faster and more accurately by easily reconciling intercompany transactions.

A major milestone reached in the first half of the company’s fiscal year ‘07 was the launch of a partner channel program aimed at expanding the reach of its highly respected Cartesis 10 performance management suite. This new program enables Cartesis to reach further into the mid-market, beyond that of its direct sales force, to capitalize on the company’s immediately perceived shift in market demand. Partners that join the program are given robust, complete performance management solutions, clearly defined vertical or regional markets, access to best practice implementation methodology and unparalleled competitive discounts of up to 60 percent.

The Cartesis channel partner program is open to all types of value added resellers (VARs) with experience selling to CFOs and financial executives. Customized to meet the needs of each partner based on location and market, the Cartesis partner program is built with flexibility in mind.

Unlike competing VAR programs, the Cartesis channel program offers partners more than a box of technology tools. Partners will enjoy elastic term contracts and the ability to extend existing product sets or offer the full Cartesis performance management suite. The Cartesis 10 suite includes management reporting; financial and statutory consolidation; planning, budgeting and forecasting; OLAP data analysis; dash boarding and intercompany applications.

“Channel partnerships are an important way for software companies to deliver lasting benefits to their clients,” says Robert Kugel, Senior Vice President of Ventana Research. “By adding a partner channel, Cartesis is broadening the range of companies that will be able to take advantage of its solutions for financial and performance management. Cartesis also has taken the right steps to structure a mutually beneficial partnership program which is critical to its customers’ success.”

Cartesis partner benefits include:

--  Total of 60% discount (55% off list prices and 5% in a co-marketing
fund)
--  Discounted training and extranet knowledgebase
--  Co-marketing and publicity opportunities
--  Dedicated support from the Cartesis partner team to ensure success

This new channel program adds to an already successful consulting partner program at Cartesis. Since its inception, Cartesis has worked closely with accounting firms and solution integrators, like Accenture, Bearing Point, Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers, to offer the most appropriate technologies in large consulting projects. Never before has Cartesis offered partners the ability to resell its technology directly.

The IDC report highlights the Cartesis 2005 acquisitions of INEA and AIS, product enhancements as well as the introduction of Cartesis 10, a comprehensive BPM suite, as the main drivers for the company’s leading 2005 growth rate. Citing revenue growth that exceeded the market average, the report also regarded Cartesis as well-positioned to challenge other leading vendors in the region.

“Cartesis has undergone important changes in the past few years. Because of its excellent momentum, its market share and position as the fourth largest BPM and FAA vendor in Europe, we view Cartesis firmly in the leadership corner,” said Christina Steensboe of IDC who authored the report. “Cartesis is getting closer to the top and challenging SAP and Cognos for the number two position in the market.”

Steensboe also projects an 11.6 percent compound annual growth rate for the BPM and FAA market as compliance requirements continue to drive initiatives in finance and information transformation, and accelerate investment in BPM and FAA solutions. While budgeting and planning software are considered the primary growth areas as organizations streamline those processes, the consolidation market also growing, fueled by the ongoing need for solutions to support complex compliance requirements.

Introduced in April 2006, Cartesis 10 represents the world’s most powerful business performance management (BPM) solution and the first solution to integrate internal and external financial data for publication, benchmarking and M&A planning. It enables multinational companies to meet market demands for faster closing cycles, more accurate and integrated forecasting and planning, external benchmarking, and more timely access to information for analysis and decision-making. Cartesis 10 represents a dramatic shift in business performance management solutions by integrating financial consolidation, management reporting, planning, forecasting and budgeting, and analytics to give companies a clear view of their historical, current and future business performance. The suite consists of Cartesis Finance, Cartesis Planning and Cartesis Analytics.

“The sizable growth rate we have maintained in Europe over the last 12 months is substantially larger that of the other vendors in the region,” says Didier Benchimol, CEO of Cartesis. “With Cartesis 10 and the successful and timely integration of last year’s acquisitions, Cartesis is poised to continue to accelerate its growth not only in Europe, but globally, with a full suite of performance management applications that help companies measure, understand and optimize financial and business performance.”

The report is based on IDC’s European Software Group’s evaluation of multiple aspects of the largest BPM and FAA vendors to collectively evaluate their activities, position, and potential in the Western European BPM and FAA market. The result of this exercise is depicted in the IDC Leadership Grid, which is based on an analysis of factors such as market share, product depth, financial strength, European coverage, and market momentum. These factors are consolidated quantitatively, weighted by importance, and ultimately produce a distribution on the two dimensions – present indicators and future parameters. For a description of the IDC Leadership Grid methodology, please see the full report. The report titled, Western European Business Performance Management and Financial Analytic Applications, 2005 Vendor Shares (IDC #LT05N, July 2006) is available at www.idc.com.

Information under J-GAAP and IFRS, including some US-GAAP financial statements for its US subsidiary group, is processed automatically. As a result of implementing Cartesis Finance, Nissan has been able to build a powerful management tool giving visibility on its financial and business performance. By delivering tangible performance improvements to its management processes, the Cartesis solution has helped Nissan to manage the achievement of all the main commitments of the “Nissan 180″ business plan – namely, to increase vehicle sales by one million units compared with fiscal year 2001, achieve an operating profit margin of 8% and to reduce its net automotive debt to zero.

“What Nissan is doing is tremendous,” says Mark Smith, CEO and EVP of Research at Ventana Research. “They set lofty goals for themselves and were able to accomplish them by implementing new processes and supporting technology. This really is a ‘best practice’ in how large organizations can leverage performance management software to improve financial reporting and the speed and accuracy of the close.”

“Cartesis partners with each of its clients to help them build value and establish themselves as industry leaders,” says Didier Benchimol, CEO of Cartesis. “Nissan has an award-winning application for financial consolidation and reporting that stands as an example for other large multi-national organizations. Cartesis is proud to be a part of Nissan’s success.”