Non-IT experts can now create management dashboards

in a matter of minutes without any assistance from IT

Saarbruecken, January 18, 2010

The ARIS innovation offensive and associated expansion of IDS Scheer’s product portfolio continue in 2010. ARIS MashZone is now available, allowing non-expert users to create management dashboards (MashApps) flexibly and interactively in just a few minutes. This capability offers key benefits that facilitate everyday tasks, such as integration and interactive visualization of data from a wide range of sources and transparency of relationships within the enterprise. In addition, using tailored, analytical applications enables a more efficient way of working and faster decision-making.

User departments are constantly confronted with the same problems— having to leverage a vast amount of decision-relevant data from myriad sources, both internal and external. Relationships and dependencies are often unclear, leading to decisions based on inadequate information or made without proper insight into the problem. Evaluations of marketing campaigns, procurement and sales efficiency, compliance with service level agreements, etc., need to be regularly updated to meet current requirements. To achieve this, user departments require new reports—which are traditionally created by the IT department. This leads to often lengthy wait times for the user department and excessive workloads for IT staff.
ARIS MashZone solves the problem by allowing departmental users without programming skills to combine data sources, analyze data, and visualize it in the form of attractive MashApps. Using Web 2.0 technologies, the MashApps can be shared and developed collaboratively within the enterprise. The rigid view of individual areas is replaced by an integrated view of all decision-relevant data, thus bridging the gap between static tables and inflexible reports on the one hand and the need for graphical, interactive, easy-to-understand dashboards on the other hand. Users no longer have to wait for new reports and the burden on the IT department is reduced. In addition, linking internal company data with publicly accessible data sources and Web services (such as statistics on economic data, demographic and geographical information) delivers valuable new insights and provides a solid foundation for business decisions. 
ARIS MashZone can be obtained online at www.mashzone.com. The website contains video tutorials, a MashApp gallery with practical application examples for marketing, sales, purchasing, and human resources, and a free download version of the product. A special MashZone group within ARIS Community has already generated considerable information exchange between users.
“ARIS MashZone is taking us in a completely new direction and gives customers the opportunity to create ad hoc management MashApps and share them with colleagues at the push of a button. Timely corrective action can then be taken at the process level–a key benefit in challenging economic times,” says Dr. Wolfram Jost, Member of the Executive Board with responsibility for the worldwide Product Strategy and Development of IDS Scheer, summarizing the customer benefits of ARIS MashZone.