Business Engine, a leader in application software solutions for running the business of IT, has announced the availability of the Business Engine Network (BEN) 5.3.
The BEN is the only solution that integrates strategic business-technology alignment with financial governance and enterprise project portfolio management in a single version of the truth. The new solution provides organizations with the necessary context to run the business of IT.
BEN 5.3 provides a seamless user experience, efficient workflow for all parties including business sponsors, CIO’s, and distributed team members, and the industry’s pre-eminent Microsoft Office Project 2003 integration.
Business Engine’s chief operating officer, Mark Strauch, commented, “This new version of the BEN enables CIOs of global enterprises, for the first time, to aggregate multiple Microsoft Project deployments under the umbrella of the BEN, making IT alignment easier than ever, and creating a single ‘federalised’ view of an organization’s operational health. CIOs can now express IT in business value terms, emphasizing to board level executives that it is an investment with real return rather than as a fixed spend for tactical operation of a company,” added Strauch.
“Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is an integrated process requiring an expansive look into current and future requirements that will dictate how a company executes,” wrote Margo Visitacion, analyst at Forrester Research. (Source: Portfolio Management Tools, by Margo Visitacion, March 11, 2004.)
Key area’s of BEN 5.3’s new and enhanced functionality includes the following:
— Workflow Management – Easy-to-use and maintain for management and control of the flow of work across an organization. Document review and approval processes enable the creation of routing libraries, allowing executives, managers and team members to easily monitor and identify bottlenecks that can unnecessarily delay review and approval cycle time. Multiple language and currency features streamline process management, further reinforcing the scalability of the product for multi-national companies.
— Microsoft Office Project 2003 Integration – BEN 5.3 seamlessly embeds Microsoft Office Project 2003 harnessing the strengths of the combined application to deliver an integrated solution bringing value above and beyond the capabilities of each. By enabling the integration and management of multiple Microsoft Office Project server deployments, the BEN 5.3 allows discrete departmental data to be aggregated into one view of all project activity in the enterprise, dramatically improving the level of governance possible within global organizations.
— Resource Management – New project and resource manager dashboard channels ensure that organizations can better leverage resources across the enterprise. The channels provide a streamlined resource management workflow for matrix organizations where project managers do not own their resources, helping to reduce cycle time by highlighting areas needing attention.
— Usability & Infrastructure – As with all major releases, BEN 5.3 incorporated over 40 customer-driven usability improvements. These encompassed such diverse areas as Budget And Financial Management, Project Management Maintenance, Execution, Status, Reporting and Scorecards, and Infrastructure Set-up. In addition, the industry’s first archiving capabilities ensures the integrity and security of critical but older business data by removing it from the real-time platform and storing it in a back-up repository.
“The market this solution addresses is vast. Whether it be augmenting existing disparate Microsoft Project Server implementations, or offering the integrated solution for the first time to global customers, we offer an unparalleled degree of visibility and management at this top level to facilitate full global IT governance,” concluded Strauch.
ITManagementNews keeps you necessarily informed on the latest technolgies and trends including Production, implementation and support of mission critical systems and applications.
