Intelligence is the object at ECG

By Paul Montgomery

Executive Computing Group (ECG) has been doing for years what few vendors or systems integrators have done - integrating business intelligence and document management software into a single interface.

The company has been tying together applications from different vendors: the business intelligence suite from Business Objects, plus archival and reporting tools from Swiss developer Roger Software Distribution, software from US-based Diversified Software Systems for programming IBM mainframes, and ECG's own library analysis system.

ECG systems extend from the mainframe to the desktop and the enterprise information portal.

Howard Parker, MD of Executive Computing Group, said a lot of ECG's customers used Business Objects as a productivity tool, to publish information like customer relationship management reports in many different ways.

"It's like a pencil and paper - if it's not there, you can't work," said Mr Howard. "What we see with BI is with a sales manager going into a meeting, they have to have handy data on their fingertips. It's all pre-set up, the sales manager presses a button and it's there."

The systems which the company builds using these applications can extend from the mainframe to the desktop, and extends to what is now called the enterprise information portal.

"You can call it getting information through business intelligence if you want, or you can call it a portal," said Mr Parker. "Whether it is an intranet or an extranet, or through the Internet, it's how we implement it for how far we take it to being a portal."

While Business Objects does not itself have a portal offering, ECG can integrate it with other sources through its other applications, like the RSD Folders product from Roger Software Distribution. This is a mass archival and retrieval system for electronic documents and images, including financial statements, forms, signatures, audio and video.