Ignify, a vendor of accounting and e-commerce tools, is making a play in the business intelligence market with a portal that integrates with Microsoft Dynamics business applications .
Ignify’s BI Portal, announced Tuesday, gives executives a one-screen view of business performance information culled from multiple data sources, and uses familiar red, green and yellow indicators to signify whether sales numbers and other business indicators are in good or bad shape.
“If any of this business information changes beyond a particular range for a specific function, it sends out an alert to the specific executives so they know of the problem as it occurs,” says Bhavesh Ashani, vice president of business development for Ignify in Los Angeles. “If you can identify the problem early, you can fix it earlier.”
Ignify’s BI Portal can be deployed relatively quickly, Ashani says, because the out-of-the-box version integrates with Microsoft Dynamics suite of supply chain management, customer relationship management, and financial management tools.
APIs can be used to connect to other systems, but implementation takes longer when Ignify’s product is not integrated as it is with Microsoft, he says.
Pricing starts at US$15,000. Depending on the size of the organization, most companies will pay between $40,000 and $200,000, Ashani says.
Ignify will face stiff competition in the business intelligence field from vendors like Oracle, HP and Business Objects.
IT executives say business intelligence will be their top spending priority this year, according to a recent survey by Saugatuck Technology and BusinessWeek Research Services.
Ashani says Ignify has about 100 customers, primarily for its e-commerce products, including Asurion , which provides services for wireless subscribers, and Sakata Seed Corporation, a Japanese seed exporter.