PRESS RELEASES

Amadeus Engages Sense Corp To Unlock Customer Profitability
7/1/2008 - About 85,000 travel agencies and more than 29,000 airline sales offices use Amadeus' global distribution system (the world's largest), to book flights on nearly 500 airlines. More than 73,000 hotels and almost 30 car rental agencies rely on Amadeus' systems to process travel bookings, as do cruise, tour, and ferry operators. Amadeus also delivers a wide range of superior travel technology solutions to help travel businesses compete in a competitive global market. Amadeus employs 7,800 people.

Amadeus uses an SAP R/3 enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution to run its global business. To augment the native reporting capabilities within SAP, the IT department created a custom data warehouse and extracts data from SAP tables using SQL stored procedures into data marts. IT staff created standard SAP reports using BusinessObjects™ Desktop Intelligence and BusinessObjects Enterprise. Currently, there are 21 reports that are published into a BusinessObjects InfoView portal for Amadeus managers to access.

The value of a business intelligence (BI) solution is relative to the range of information it allows users to access. For Amadeus, certain sections of its SAP database remained elusive. Important financial data around customer profitability was locked in non-transparent SAP tables. Managers in the finance, audit, tax, financial controls, planning & analysis, and budget & planning departments wanted access to the following high-priority information:

::	Expense at the cost center level.
::	Revenue by geography, calculated on tax jurisdiction.
::	Tax revenue by state.
::	Line Items for SAP expenses showing detailed journal entries.
::	Detailed budget vs. actual.
::	SAP Hierarchy Extract. Currently, managers only have access to a hierarchy cost center report.

"It's our job to supply the business with the data required to make optimal decisions," says Lisset Vega, finance manager at Amadeus. "We were constantly fielding requests for ad hoc reports from managers that needed more information than what was available on the portal. We tried re-keying data into Excel worksheets or Access databases. This was slow, labor intensive, prone to manual error, and left us with multiple versions of the truth. We spent too much time and money on data manipulation so business managers could perform the analysis they needed to run the business. We wanted a self-serve BI tool for managers to use for on-demand, ad hoc reports and analysis."

Rather than spending more money on IT resources to perform these manual workarounds, or on expensive developers to write ABAP code to extract data from the SAP database, Amadeus began looking for a cost-effective extract transform load (ETL) tool that would work in its SAP environment.

Approach
Amadeus approached Business Objects Partner, Sense Corp, for help. Sense Corp immediately recommended BusinessObjects Data Integrator to extract, transform, and deliver the business-critical data that Amadeus managers wanted.

BusinessObjects Data Integrator comes with an application interface built from the ground up as an ETL tool for the SAP environment. "Data Integrator was a perfect choice for us because it provided that built-in integration with SAP, which streamlines deployment and delivers high performance in our environment," says Vega. "And the fact that SAP recently acquired Business Objects means we can maintain a single vendor relationship with SAP while benefiting from Business Objects' expertise in the BI arena at a reasonable price. It was win win situation all around."

The Sense Corp team engaged with Amadeus in July 2007. It worked with Amadeus project stakeholders to map out business requirements and to define priorities. "Sense Corp has deep experience with data integration and consolidation strategies. The team combined that knowledge with a very astute understanding of our business," says Vega. "They helped us focus on those initial, high ROI reports that would deliver valuable business insight to the managers. This was a key success factor for the project. We decided to begin with the SAP financial (FI) and controlling (CO) modules."

Sense Corp used Data Integrator to extract, model, and transform the data into two different Business Objects universes, one for FI and one for CO. Business Objects universes contain data objects that have been transformed from raw data into more business-descriptive content structured in a way that's relevant to Amadeus' managers. "Sense Corp used Data Integrator to create flexible, analytical environments that support our BI needs," says Vega. "Now our managers can create many different reports off the same data sets."

"Data Integrator also delivers end-to-end meta data integration from the data source to the final report," says Peter Siegal, Principal, Sense Corp. "This is good news for the two people in Amadeus' BI group because it simplifies change management and support. When we finished the project, they were well prepared to manage the solution on their own."

Results
With its BusinessObjects Data Integrator solution, Amadeus managers have access to financial and controller information they never had before. They can perform efficient business analysis with relevant, reliable data to support better decisions, freeing the IT department from time-consuming data manipulation and obviating the need for expensive programmers to write code to access data. With Data Integrator, the company has gained a powerful BI platform for the long-term.

Amadeus' financial managers are now able to analyze customer profitability at the individual customer level, with more detailed accounts receivable and accounts payable information. For added value, the solution allows them to integrate cost reporting, planning, and budgeting data with financial data in the same report.

Managers are also able to:

::	Examine costs by cost center, cost element, and company.
::	Evaluate actual & commitments vs. plans and budget.
::	Drill down to cost transaction details including vendor and purchase order line items.
::	Access profit center and account group hierarchies.

"Management lacked key pieces of information about customer profitability at the individual customer level. After deploying BusinessObjects Data Integrator, we now have 100 percent visibility into profitability at the customer level. Today, Amadeus has a better understanding of which customers are most profitable so the company can market its products and services appropriately. That's going to improve our bottom line."

Self-serve access to ad hoc reports also saves time and money in the IT department. Now Vega and her colleagues have deployed a BI environment that supplies the business with information, IT has fulfilled a key deliverable in a way that was previously impossible. Today, Amadeus has a BI solution that's built to last, including:

::	A foundational layer of data that can be leveraged for additional content and report creation.
::	A flexible approach and scalable infrastructure that can be leveraged and repeated for future reporting needs.

"My boss was thrilled when I was able to provide her with a signing bonus forecast report right away," says Vega. "She walked out of my office with the information in her hands." Vega is relieved that she no longer has to help the Central and Caribbean regions figure out average invoices payments, which took many hours. It was difficult because it involved multiple company codes, geographical areas, and currencies. Now they can create this report themselves in minutes.

"We have struggled with poor access to certain data in SAP for a long time," she concludes. "BusinessObjects Data Integrator is the number one ETL tool for the SAP environment and we are looking forward to extending its value by adding more SAP modules to the solution."