Information Builders’ Latest PMF Eases BI for Users, IT 
Information Builders is making BI easier for users and architects with its upgraded WebFocus Performance Management Framework. PMF 5.2 sports a personalized dashboard that lets business users view and output reports, while maintaining auditable data. PMF also integrates with CPM and Web 2.0.
Information Builders is making BI easier for users and architects with its upgraded Performance Management Framework.
PMF 5.2 sports features to improve ability of business users to measure and execute business strategies. Notable upgrades include:
- Personalized dashboard that lets business users view and output reports, while maintaining auditable data.
- Collaboration through wide array of more than 60 Web 2.0 tools and widgets, including group-based social media.
- Under-the-cover integration with a wide array of enterprise data assets, including legacy mainframe, ERP, SQL and other systems
- Set and track goals within the PMF system, and with other business systems, including Tagetik CPM and Microsoft SharePoint
PMF 5.2 features are designed to provide users the precise info they need, maintain ability to audit data -- all without IT support. 
“People who can’t find info on their own really want to customize, for example moving columns down the side rather than across the top, or create output in a variety of formats,” Jake Freivald, IB’s vice president of corporate marketing told Integration Developer News. “That can often require the help of IT, or have the user be a BI specialist. And even then, afterwards the data may not be auditable.”
PMF 5.2 enables a sales director to access regional or product details, create a custom view to see where the numbers may be lagging, drill down into what leads are being followed (or not), compare results to staff goals and even check on status of pending shipments and inventories, to help diagnose if the supply chain is holding up sales.
IB’s ‘Good Citizen’ Approach To Integrated, Customizable BI
IB’s PMF combines powerful user customization technologies at the front end with a rich set of server-based integration technologies underneath. The result is that the end user gets to create, view and output data in a way they want, without requiring custom UI or integration work from IT staff.
Further, the integration underpinnings of PMF power the user’s customization abilities, Freivald added “Through APIs and other integration capabilities, we can provide users access to any RDBMS, ERP even legacy data. Then, the user can output it as a web form, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF or any format, and the data will remain auditable.” A Universal Adapter running on a WebFocus reports server also provides transformations and joins to help IT from making trade-offs between the level of integration and level of access afforded users, he added.
We think creating a form for BI should be more like eBay than Excel,” he added, noting that no matter what the look-and-feel or what level of detail the user wants for his form, all the underlying data is auditable by the system. .
PMF also runs in a ‘disconnected’ mode, Frievald said, allowing users to do more analysis. This capability, called ActiveReports provides users “a ball of functionality, designed to be easy to use.” He told IDN. The functionality includes, a payload of data embedded into an HTML page, an analytical engine for working with the data, and the interface access that info (chart, table, in some other form)
One analyst noted benefits from PMF’s simplified-yet-auditable approach to visualization. "The data visualization… improve[s] user comprehension of business data, increase their productivity in using the data, and encourage them to become smarter about its finer points and implications," said Robert Kugel, senior vice president of Ventana Research, in a statement.
