Who are the Competitors to Xcelsius?

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Off late many people asked me this question, so researched a little. There are a number of competitors to Xcelsius. At the high end there is the excellent Spotfire Decision Site, as well as SAS Insight. For those looking for a less expensive system, Hyperion’s Visual Explorer and Cognos’ PowerPlay come to mind. But none of these has the same feature set and price performance as Xcelsius:

• Xcelsius Standard – $195 for development capabilities with Flash and PowerPoint output
• Xcelsius Professional – $495 adds more components, PDF output and full developers API
• Xcelsius Workgroup – $4,999 plus 25 user licenses adds Web Services and XML connections

Crystal Xcelsius Workgroup

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Business Objects has launched a new variant of Crystal Xcelsius and is called Crystal Xcelsius Workgroup. Crystal Xcelsius Workgroup lets you create visual business models from personal or corporate data with point-and-click ease. Flexible data access using Excel or SOAP-based web services means your visual models are live-with up-to-the-minute information.

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Watch the 2 minute video: How to connect Crystal Xcelsius to live data

Video: Introduction to Crystal Xcelsius

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This pre-recorded seminar gives you an excellent overview of Crystal Xcelsius. It includes examples of interactive visual analytics, a demonstration of how to create a Crystal Xcelsius visual model and many tips and tricks. Then see how you can integrate them into PowerPoint, PDF and the Web – with just one click.

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Apply the power of innovative design

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Through point and click navigation, push visual innovation to the limits. No coding required. The open design capabilities allow you to design more than just dashboards and change the traditional way to present information. Transform your company’s annual report into a quick and interactive summary for your shareholders. Or, like the example below, build a display to tell the story of your company’s history.

This visualization was created by Joyce Alper of Analysis Factory for the customer CX Challenge. (Flash format)

The corporate storyboard adds context – the real story of people, places and events that produced those indicators, providing resonance to a company’s message.
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Interpret information beyond data presentation

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Don’t just look at your data – drive decisions from interactive “what-if” visualizations. Imagine illustrating live sales information for different products, then demonstrating how changes in inventory could affect sales – all with live data connectivity. This powerful method of reviewing scenarios can guide collaborative decisions. Questions about how changes will impact your data can be answered on the spot – right within your PowerPoint presentation.

Ron Tillis of State Farm Insurance created this “what if” interactive visualization for the customer CX Challenge. (Flash format).

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Access personalized dashboards anywhere

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Access your dashboard in desktop applications you use every day.
Do you avoid opening weekly spreadsheet reports because it takes too long to find and analyze the data you need? Now, open a dashboard that is specific to you and increase your ability to make effective decisions.

PowerPoint or Portal? Employee or partner? Either way, you control the ability to present the right information to the right people. BusinessObjects Xcelsius Enterprise maintains live connectivity, interactivity, and security within Microsoft Office, PDF, and Web portals.

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Introducing BusinessObjects Xcelsius Enterprise

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Developing visual analytics for the business user is a fundamental part of any business intelligence (BI) solution. BusinessObjects Xcelsius Enterprise helps decision-makers identify important drivers of success, probe elaborate “what if?” scenarios, and peer into their company’s possible future performance, today.

How it Works:

BusinessObjects Xcelsius Enterprise is a new extension of the Crystal Xcelsius technology, specifically designed to leverage the Business Objects platform, the industry’s most trusted business intelligence platform.

A Basic What-If Dashboard

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This was one of the simplest Dashboards i have built. It takes 15-20 minutes depending on your Excel Skills. This Dashboard was for a company who is in the Computer Hardware Business. The Horizontal Bar graph shows the Sales product wise. The sliding bars gives a flexibility to drag and give various values and do What-if Analysis. Click on the Dashboard Screenshot for an Interactive Flash Version. Try dragging the bars and you will see the bar Graph showing the Projected Sales for individual products. You can also see a Pie chart which gives you the Product Mix. Also a Dial which shows you the Overall Projected Sales.

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How Xcelsius Works?

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Crystal Xcelsius is an intuitive stand-alone Windows application, designed to create engaging, interactive Excel dashboards and business presentations from ordinary spreadsheets. It is tightly integrated with Microsoft Office products, and requires no programming.

A little History About Xcelsius

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Like many of us in the corporate world, Santiago Becerra, Sr. has first-hand experience with the dull data environments that leave many managers and key decision-makers ill-equipped to manage their businesses. In his various roles in the business world, he knows that the problem he constantly faces is the same problem that many organizations suffer from — that too much information is lost in the transition between data analysis and data presentation.

What is Crystal Xcelsius?

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Its the tool to build Interactive Business Dashboards. Xcelsius! Sounds familiar, Sounds like Excel (Microsoft). Yes. you need MS Excel to create Interactive Dasboards using Xcelsius. Im going to talk more about “The Excel Connection” in the subsequent Posts to come.

What’s a Dashboard?

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The first thing that comes to your mind when i say Dashboard is your Car. Its the control panel located under the windshield of an automobile. It contains instrumentation and controls pertaining to operation of the vehicle. You see all kinds of knobs, buttons, gauges etc.

“Wait a second, What has Crystal (Now a part of Business Objects, which develops enterprise software, specifically software that provides business intelligence (BI) to businesses) got to do with Car Dashboards, is Crystal into Automobile Business?”.