TruServ Relies on Business Objects for
Enterprise Business Intelligence Standard
San Jose, Calif. - April 29, 2002 -- TruServ is hammering home the importance of business intelligence. TruServ, the Fortune 1,000 parent company of retailers such as True Value Hardware, Grand Rental Station, Taylor Rental, and Home & Garden Showplace has selected Business Objects (NASDAQ: BOBJ), the world's leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, as its enterprise-wide BI standard. Also, TruServ is using analytic applications from Business Objects to build an executive dashboard to be used by top managers across the company. The managers will use the digital cockpit to track and analyze business metrics in order to improve customer relationships, cut costs and increase sales. This transaction occurred in Q4 2001.
With the purchase of BusinessObjects™ Application Foundation, an analytic application framework from Business Objects, TruServ will make difficult analysis easy by creating dashboards that show time-series analysis. This will enable managers to pinpoint trends and changes over time, and obtain "alerts" to help monitor, interpret, and act on changing business data. TruServ will use Business Objects to construct its own analytic solution to initially monitor the success of advertising and marketing campaigns across its approximately 7,000 retail stores.
In addition, hundreds of employees will use Business Objects to access, analyze, and share the latest business data on sales, marketing, logistics and inventory.
"In the past several years, business intelligence has emerged as a strategic initiative at TruServ, and we are pleased to partner with Business Objects to help us leverage our information assets," said Neil Hastie, chief information officer of TruServ. "With Business Objects, TruServ will better understand our customers, and we'll be able to improve our service by offering them sales items that best meet their needs. In addition, using the executive dashboard, our managers will be armed with more valuable data on operations, which will assist our sales efforts and our inventory management."
"TruServ shows a clear and powerful vision for using business intelligence and analytic applications as a strategic asset in the company's competitive arsenal," said Bernard Liautaud, chief executive officer of Business Objects. "As a Fortune 1,000 company with thousands of customers, products, and employees, TruServ represents the successful retailer of the future that will use BI to obtain greater visibility, operational efficiency, and customer satisfaction."
About TruServ
TruServ, headquartered in Chicago, is a member-owned cooperative with annual sales in 2000 of $4 billion, supporting retail sales of more than $12 billion. The TruServ cooperative includes approximately 7,000 independent retailers worldwide operating under store identities that include True Value, Grand Rental Station, Taylor Rental, Party Central, Home & Garden Showplace and Induserve Supply. Additional information on TruServ and its retail identities is available at www.truserv.com.
About Business Objects
Business Objects is the world's leading business intelligence (BI) software company. With more than 35,000 customers worldwide, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 500, Business Objects helps organizations gain better insight into their business, improve decision making, and optimize enterprise performance. The company's business intelligence platform, BusinessObjects™ XI, offers the BI industry's most complete and trusted platform for performance management, planning, reporting, query and analysis, and data integration. BusinessObjects XI includes Crystal Reports®, the industry standard for enterprise reporting. Business Objects has built the industry's strongest and most diverse partner community, and also offers consulting and education services to help customers effectively deploy their business intelligence projects.
Business Objects has dual headquarters in San Jose, Calif., and Paris, France. The company's stock is traded on both the Nasdaq (BOBJ) and Euronext Paris (ISIN: FR0004026250 - BOB) stock exchanges. More information about Business Objects can be found at www.businessobjects.com.
