By Maria Trombly | Securities Industry News | June 20, 2005

Enterprise integrator Tibco Software of Palo Alto, Calif. is known for embedding its software into the very fabric of securities firms' networks. Most recently, this has taken the form of a new wave of applications for business process management--a software-driven analysis and design methodology for measuring and optimizing the performance of enterprise workflow.

The reputation of U.K. business intelligence provider Business Objects, meanwhile, rests on its ability to vacuum out business data from all the nooks and crannies of a firm and organize it into a coherent, unified real-time view, or dashboard, that enables managers to monitor performance in real time.

Put the two together, the companies say--as they announced last week they would do through a partnership that will integrate their flagship products--and you get deep, real-time intelligence that gets funneled into a dashboard that can then be fed back into the process management platform, endowing those systems with the ability to react automatically to problematic circumstances or hidden opportunities.

"If you learn something insightful, you can start a process to resolve it," says Jeff Kristick, director of product marketing for business process management at Tibco.

The partnership will combine the Tibco Staffware Process Suite, a platform-independent business process management product, with Business Objects XI Built for Operational BI, a performance management platform that includes Crystal Reports for enterprise reporting.

"Tibco and Business Objects share the same vision for the integration of business intelligence and process management," Janet Wood, group vice president of global alliances and Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) agreements at Business Objects, said in a statement. "We are providing embedded analytics as part of business processes, giving more end users across an organization access to the information they need, when they need it, thereby improving overall efficiency."

It's an inspired pairing, analysts say. "Workflow process management only tells you what you will be doing," says Damon Kovelsky, an analyst at IDC's Financial Insights. "But it doesn't tell you how well you've been working. Ideally, business intelligence should tell you how well things have been working, and it should be able to tell you where the failures are happening. And if it's really intelligent, it will tell you why it happened."

Systems with that degree of intelligence remain a gleam in the eye of technology futurists, but some day, say Tibco and Business Objects, their collaboration is going to deliver on that promise. Customers are already able to use the two products jointly, through standard interfaces provided by the two firms.

Kristick sees three areas in which securities firms will be well served by combining business process management and business intelligence: risk management, trade resolution and customer service.

"Obviously, companies are always trying to improve the trade resolution process to make it shorter," Kristick says. "This will give them access to more data." In the area of customer service, the matchup can benefit both the account creation process and the ongoing chore of account maintenance.

Combining business process management and business intelligence in the area of risk management is what the partners expect will make Wall Street firms sit up and take notice.

A unified view of process data, together with all other enterprise data assets, means that a financial services firm can react instantaneously to real-time problems instead of waiting for batch analytical processes to be complete, Kristick says.

This doesn't mean that real-time reporting is about to entirely replace more leisurely review cycles.

"You're never going to replace batch processing," warns Mike Schiff, an analyst with Current Analysis. Batch processes are still the right tool for the job in some cases, he says. "If you're looking at population trends, you're going to do that monthly, you're not going to look at one person at a time," he says. This allows time for human review.

For example, many companies close their books once a month and review the data at that point. On Wall Street, however, there are a number of applications for which hours, minutes, even seconds can make a vital difference, Schiff says. "If you're looking at stock market trends, you might want to analyze the data quicker," he says. "There are certain decisions you can't wait to analyze overnight."

Schiff notes that real-time business intelligence--also known as operational business intelligence--is not a new mandate for Business Objects. The company is well established in that area thanks to widespread use of its Crystal Reports product in conjunction with production systems.

Most database vendors already include real-time analytics in their packages, as well as other application vendors, Schiff adds. "Companies like Oracle will build in performance indicators," he says. "An advantage of using a third party [like Business Objects] is that you can draw across multiple systems."

IBM, with its WebLogic platform, and BEA with WebSphere, are also positioning themselves in the real-time intelligence space. Combining forces may help Tibco and Business Objects outmaneuver these rivals.