Oco Launches New Cost Analytics SaaS BI Solutions
WALTHAM, Mass., April 14, 2010 - Oco, Inc., the leading innovator of enterprise-class Software-as-a-Service business intelligence (SaaS BI) solutions, announced today two new SaaS BI products that enable users to analyze complex cost structures in order to find new ways to increase profitability. The new offerings include Oco Contract Compliance Analytics and Oco Spend Variance Analytics.
Oco Contract Compliance Analytics is a turn-key cost analysis solution that reveals how well vendors, carriers and other contractors are complying with the terms of their agreements. With so many supply chain partners operating in dynamic environments, compliance visibility is challenging. For example, within transportation spend, the Oco solution identifies aggregate contract spend variance and the underlying influence of load changes, contract carrier overcharges, the use of non-compliant carriers, and expediting charges. By automatically highlighting variations from contract terms, the new Oco solution saves business people the time and effort needed to manually research contract compliance and eliminates most overcharges.
Oco Spend Variance Analytics breaks down the factors contributing to any cost, margin or profitability variance and flags the causes contributing to the variances between planned and actual performance. For example, the new Oco solution could determine why a negotiated lower-cost supply chain sourcing contract is not providing the expected savings and whether it is due to changes in exchange rates, point-of-sale volume and mix changes, inventory costing methods contributing to more expensive valuations being pulled from inventory, supplier overcharging or other factors. This capability greatly simplifies profitability analysis for finance executives and allows them to quickly take corrective action.
"In the current economy, it is vitally important for companies to find cost-saving opportunities as soon as possible and to provide upward guidance to executive management," said Krishna Roy, enterprise software analyst at The 451 Group. "However, monitoring and understanding complex cost structures within medium and large-sized companies can be very challenging, especially with cost data existing in multiple systems, locations and formats. Turn-key, on-demand SaaS BI solutions can provide companies with a faster, lower-risk solution to the challenge with much lower start-up costs and no data center overhead."
Both solutions are built on Oco’s enterprise-class SaaS BI platform. Oco simplifies the costly and time-consuming process of integrating, warehousing and presenting data from SAP and other enterprise applications that contain the data required for these analytics. Results are served to business people via easy-to-use, web-based interactive scorecards, what-if dashboards, multi-dimensional reports, and ad-hoc analysis tools. The on-demand, turn-key solution eliminates the development and data center costs associated with traditional on-premise BI solutions, and more importantly, is implemented in a fraction of the time, usually within several weeks.
The two new Oco SaaS solutions will be featured in a webinar entitled “Drive Cost Reduction in 6 weeks with BI OnDemand for SAP,” co-presented by Oco and SAP on Wednesday April 28 at 1:00 p.m. EDT (click here to register). The Oco Contract Compliance Analytics and Spend Variance Analytics solutions are available immediately and licensed on-demand for a monthly fee. For more information, please visit www.oco-inc.com.
About Oco, Inc.
Oco is the leading innovator of enterprise-class Software-as-a-Service business intelligence (SaaS BI) solutions. The company provides complete BI solutions to customers such as Dunkin' Brands, Fidelity Investments, Office Depot, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Welch's. Oco's unique business-centric approach to BI helps companies solve targeted business issues, achieve payback within 90 days and triple their return on investment. Leveraging a library of best-practice analytics, pre-built data models, and patented technology, Oco's SaaS-based solutions are delivered in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions, with fewer IT resource requirements than traditional approaches. In addition to its own product portfolio, Oco also offers an on-demand BI solution through its partnership with SAP BusinessObjects. Oco was founded in 1999 and its headquarters are in Waltham, Mass. More information about Oco can be found at www.oco-inc.com.
