San Francisco, CA., June 2, 2010 - Birst, a leading provider of on-demand solutions for business intelligence (BI) and analytics, today announced that The NPD Group, the leading provider of reliable and comprehensive consumer and retail information for a wide range of industries, has selected Birst to improve its sales operations insight and efficiency. NPD expects to increase employee productivity with automated sales reporting and analysis provided by Birst's easy-to-use BI solution.
"We expect that Birst will save us about 40 hours of work per month," said Jessica White, Executive Director of Sales Operations, The NPD Group. "That's the amount of time my team currently spends running, exporting, editing, and emailing revenue reports provided by Salesforce.com. With Birst, we anticipate being able to automate that entire process. Then, we can spend that extra time really looking at what all that information means to our business, and working on other projects to increase our efficiency."
NPD's sales operations team plans to use Birst to provide internal reporting and analysis that combines revenue forecasts, goals, and results. The team currently provides this information using macros and Excel , which need to be manually recoded each time the data changes. The process is time-consuming and complicated. With Birst, users will be able to easily configure reports that combine and compare metrics. "Because it's so easy to use, we think Birst will provide the widespread transparency we need to increase our productivity and deliver better business insights," said White.
NPD chose Birst after evaluating a variety of BI tools that interface with Salesforce.com. NPD selected Birst because it offered the most functionality and the simplest user interface. Added White, "Birst's dashboards and charts were far more flexible than any of the others we saw. Also, Birst's graphics are light years ahead of Salesforce.com's—which increases the impact of our emails and presentations." Other key factors included the ability to automate the emailing of reports, and to email reports to recipients who aren't using Birst or Salesforce.
"At Birst, we understand that the ability to quickly and easily access information dramatically increases its value," said Brad Peters, CEO of Birst. "So, we provide not only advanced BI functionality, but also a straightforward user interface and the automation of reports and their distribution. That means that companies using Birst get a good look at the big picture—and still have the time and resources available to do something about it."
About The NPD Group
The NPD Group is the leading provider of reliable and comprehensive consumer and retail information for a wide range of industries. Today, more than 1,800 manufacturers, retailers, and service companies rely on NPD to help them drive critical business decisions at the global, national, and local market levels. NPD helps our clients to identify new business opportunities and guide product development, marketing, sales, merchandising, and other functions. Information is available for the following industry sectors: automotive, beauty, commercial technology, consumer technology, entertainment, fashion, food and beverage, foodservice, home, office supplies, software, sports, toys and wireless.
For more information, visit www.npd.com.
About Birst
Birst™ is the leading provider of on-demand business intelligence solutions. Birst brings the benefits of fact-based decision-making to a much broader audience by making it affordable, fast, and easy to use. Birst is designed to support users of all sizes—from individuals to groups and entire companies, so that everyone can benefit from greater insight into their business.
More information is available at www.birst.com.
For more information, contact:
Kimberly Weber
Atomic PR
birst@atomicpr.com
(415) 402-0230
Copyright © 2010 Birst
