Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 provides employees with critical visibility into the factors impacting their business, allowing them to make decisions and take actions that drive better business outcomes. This application empowers the broadest number of executives, managers, and front-line employees to contribute to plans and have better access to tailored information, helping them take actions that improve customer relationships, reduce costs, and increase revenues. Progress can be monitored and analyzed through personalized scorecards accessible through the familiar and easy-to-use Microsoft Office environment.

Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 also enables businesses to broadly deliver performance management capabilities across the organization by rapidly bringing together the power and ease of use of Microsoft Office and the performance, scalability, and security of Microsoft SQL Server. Customers are able to extend their Microsoft investment and reap the benefits of an application that is easy to use and less costly to deploy than traditional solutions.

Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 features robust performance management capabilities including:

• An integrated application for performance management. Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 provides all of the functionality that is needed for performance management in a single, integrated application including scorecards, dashboards, management reporting, analytics, planning, budgeting, forecasting, and consolidation. With Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, users can better understand variances between plan and actual, quickly analyze root-causes, and recast plans when necessary. Customers can enter the performance management process at any point, benefiting from a common data model shared across monitoring, analytical, and planning activities.
• Business users shape their plans the way they think about their business. Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 provides business users with the ability to define, modify, and maintain their plans easily. The application handles the sophistication of the company business processes (rules, logic, calculations, and workflows) while helping more users contribute to the performance management process.
• Flexibility to handle complex environments. Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 uses a model-driven approach to make it easier to create corporate models for scorecards, analytics, and plans that can also be used for departmental-level performance management. By providing synchronized models up and down the organization as well as across departments, users can more easily get a consistent view of organizational performance.
• Reducing complexity for IT and for the business. Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 enables businesses to broadly deliver performance management across the organization by rapidly bringing together the power of Microsoft Office and the performance, scalability, and security of SQL Server. Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 is easy to use and less costly to deploy than traditional solutions. Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 also helps IT better support corporate governance through the ability the audit the performance management process as well as control versions and report on the processes.

Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 greatly improves visibility into company performance and the factors that are driving it. Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 also enables employees to monitor and act on performance variances. Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 offers:

• Robust monitoring and analytics capabilities. Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 monitoring and analytics capabilities enable business users to see and understand performance issues quickly so they can make better decisions faster-all without the need for technical assistance. The fact that scorecards, dashboards, and analytics are all integrated into the same application makes deployment simple and helps drive alignment and accountability. Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 helps individuals to be more effective and the organization to be more agile.
  
• Improved planning, budgeting, and forecasting. Drive strategic objectives and goals into the planning and budgeting process to ensure departmental plans align with corporate strategy. Reduce the time and effort required through centralized control and administration and workflow that manages the creation and submission.
  
• Faster financial reporting and consolidation. Consolidate financial data from multiple general ledgers and reporting systems to achieve a single, integrated view of financial information. Robust integration and administration of financial information helps increase information accuracy and reduce the time and effort required for statutory and management reporting.
  
• Extends Existing IT Investments. Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 utilizes widely deployed and supported Microsoft technologies such as Windows Server, SQL Server, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server. This integration enables companies to extend their existing investments and IT skill sets in these mission-critical enterprise technologies.