Anna's Linens chose BusinessObjects Edge Series as its BI platform to empower its executives and management team with actionable information. Armed with the right data, Anna's Linens employees can measure performance against strategic goals over time, ensuring that the company achieves its growth strategies

"It's our responsibility as managers to motivate our operations team," Gladstone says. A key factor in motivating and enabling our store operations, finance, HR, logistics, and merchandizing teams to achieve our goals is to provide them with a single, cohesive reporting and business intelligence solution.

"That's where Business Objects will be a key enabler in incentivizing our employees to align around our growth initiatives," he continues. "The enduring value we get from Business Objects lies in our new ability to communicate what is expected of our employees and most importantly, to provide the BI tools for them to execute on those goals and measure their performance."

One of the key decision points for Anna's management was the solution's dashboarding functionality. "For myself, and other C-level executives, the dashboard-level reporting with the ability to drill down but also have the quick, graphical understanding of what's happening in departments is key to identifying trends or problems in the business," says Gladstone.

Anna's also chose BusinessObjects Edge Series because it is a scalable, Web-based distribution mechanism suitable for a multi-unit retailer with geographically dispersed stores and regional managers that are often on the road. It also had to be able to access data from disparate sources, including the AS400 database that powers its JDA system and the POS system and store support center systems that run on a SQL Server 2003 database in a Microsoft Windows-based environment.