Walker boosts Horizon sales 200%

Walker, a provider of financial, operational and analytic applications, has announced a 200% increase in new Horizon customers since 4Q 1997. This growth has been fuelled by strong demand for enterprise implementations of the Walker Horizon analytic application suite, which is integrated with Hyperion Essbase OLAP Server from Hyperion Solutions.

The IBD Group is the South African distributor for Walker Horizon and analytic applications allow organisations to take a "predictive and corrective" approach to managing company performance. The application suite has been optimised to leverage the performance, scalability and robust calculation capabilities of Hyperion Essbase OLAP Server as a strategic platform for enterprise management reporting, budgeting and financial consolidation.

Walker Horizon customers include Fortune 500 companies across a spectrum of industries, including banking and financial services, insurance and investments, utilities and manufacturing. The rapid adoption of the Horizon suite places Walker at the forefront of the burgeoning analytic applications market, which IDC predicts will grow to $2,6bn by 2001. The Walker Horizon modules include:

• Planning and forecasting: Automates the planning, forecasting and budgeting processes to reduce planning cycles, facilitate continuous planning and enable the prediction of company performance.
• Financial Consolidation: Manages the collection, adjustment and reporting of consolidated results for enterprise-wide statutory, management and tax reporting;
• OLAP reporting and analysis: A powerful reporting and analysis solution for designing reports and performing analyses on top of leading OLAP technology, including Hyperion Essbase.

Electronic Manufacturing Systems (EMS), a leading provider of contract manufacturing and electronic systems integration services, chose Walker Financial Consolidation with Hyperion Essbase for its ease of deployment.

"We initially had our financials running on multiple independent platforms," says Ken Taylor, corporate controller, EMS. "We needed a solution that would quickly consolidate our information into a centralised repository while ensuring data integrity. We chose Walker primarily because it was easily deployable. Equally important, Walker Horizon provided us with an audit trail for board directors and internal management, giving us an easier and more effective way to transform data into actionable information."

Walker Horizon is seamlessly integrated with Hyperion Essbase, leveraging a single enterprise OLAP platform. Horizon exploits robust OLAP functionality to deliver actionable information to any level of an organisation. Horizon provides companies with the flexibility to define business metrics, such as key performance indicators, creating a "scorecard" to measure company performance. Users can drill down to any level of detail necessary to gain insight into problems or opportunities. Additionally, companies can model their organisation and business processes to preview the effect of potential business decisions.