I recently sat in on a demonstration of the Bitam Artus business intelligence (BI) suite, now at generation 6.

Representing Bitam was Antonio R. Rajan, Bitam’s regional manager.

Antonio wished to emphasize several points concerning the product:

• low maintenance vis-à-vis competitor products (one major retail client devotes a half person per day for maintenance, as contrasted with two people per day for a previous product)

• low resource consumption

• lower cost to acquire and implement (Antonio claimed that acquisition and implementation of Artus was one third the total cost of the nearest competing product)

• Enterprise performance management (EPM) is Bitam’s second product (Bitam has a total of three) and is built with the same engine. All software is developed in Mexico.

• good to excellent for contract management

• areas targeted for adoption: health care, retail, and manufacturing

• Artus has three components: a web server, a cube/application server, and a database server.

• PHP code is used for the Web interface

• Artus is aimed at the SMB market, as big players have already implemented BI.

• The product has excellent financial integration (we had a demo for finance/sales).

• Implementation takes between 4 to 12 weeks, with the average being 10 weeks per module/business area

The demonstration itself went well: A slick “bubble-up” feature gives real-time insight into various KPIs. The product’s “knowledge intelligence” module keeps track of the user company’s approach to problem solving, and will suggest solutions to various challenges based on previous solutions. If a particular proposed solution is accepted by the user, a task can be automatically created, logged, and routed to the appropriate parties. This component is projected to interface with MS Outlook for April 10, 2008. There is a project assignment facility that allows CFOs to assign projects and to expect follow up and closing out of assignment.

General Conclusion: The product is user-oriented. In contrast to other products, where an administrator sets up the graphics and screen displays, this product allows the user to do his or her own screen setups. The system also provides a skeleton set of displays, lists of key performance indicators (KPIs), and dimensions.