BusinessObjects Selected for 10,000 User Deployment by U.S. Military Health Affairs for Department of Defense Hospitals and Clinics; BusinessObjects Helps Military Health Services System Redirect Millions of Dollars and Significantly Improve Service.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 21, 1996--Business Objects (NASDAQ: BOBJY), the world's leading provider of integrated query, reporting, and online analytical processing (OLAP) tools today announced that a key program within the Military Health Services System (MHSS) organization has successfully deployed BusinessObjects to help manage the growing costs of healthcare, enhance healthcare delivery in peacetime, and promote wartime readiness and sustainability.

Called Defense Medical Logistics, the program is under the Assistant Sec. of Health for the U.S. Department of Defense, a parent organization responsible for 225 Army, Navy, and Air Force hospitals and 400 clinics and multiple outpatient facilities worldwide.

Today, more than 4,000 users worldwide have BusinessObjects to access important information stored in the organization's database, analyze it, and create reports. This number will increase to 10,000 over the next few years. "We needed a tool to help users access and analyze data," said the executive sponsor of the Defense Medical Logistics Support System. "BusinessObjects provides online access to our data, and allows users to easily explore the information they need for better decision making."

Defense Medical Logistics Support System Redirects Millions

The Defense Medical Logistics Support System is responsible for the supply of medical equipment and medicine worldwide for Defense Department medical care facilities. BusinessObjects plays an integral role within the support system, by enabling end users to access online pricing, compare prices from multiple sources, and make purchases that are cost effective and meet inventory needs.

"With the use of BusinessObjects, we expect to reduce costs significantly," said the DMLSS deployment manager, from the program management office in Health Affairs. "There is great potential for redirecting significant funds at each facility annually on medical and surgical products, with additional cost reductions from improved pharmaceutical management." The deployment manager added, "The capabilities of BusinessObjects are just unbelievable."

With the new system using BusinessObjects, Health Affairs has already achieved significant cost reduction. For example, one hospital has avoided costs of $500,000 on prescription drugs alone. Furthermore, the new system is expected to achieve cost avoidance of more than $30.1 million per year for the organization, or $300 million over the ten year operations and maintenance period of the program.

Prior to BusinessObjects, army hospital and clinic employees had to gather information from multiple data sources, and then reenter the data, consolidate it, and often convert it. This leads to inaccurate data, was time consuming, and lacked the level of detailed reporting necessary to effectively track the costs and service of the health care delivery system.

"Now, with BusinessObjects it is considerably easier. I can get the information I need, when I need it, and print out a report that looks great, without having to go through any reiterations. You don't have to be a database guru to access information in the database and print out reports. You can query specific items within the data, whereas before it was a wild chase," said a facility management specialist at Darnall Army Community Hospital Medical Treatment Facility. "It is also much faster. Now I can easily create and print a report within an hour, that used to take as much as two weeks."

The DMLSSEnvironment

End users access data using BusinessObjects on Windows 3.1 clients, residing on an INFORMIX-Online Dynamic Server and Aviion Servers from Data General.

About Business Objects

Business Objects (NASDAQ:BOBJY) is the world's leading supplier of integrated query, reporting, and OLAP tools. The company's flagship product, BusinessObjects, provides mainstream business users with access to information stored in corporate databases, data warehouses, and packaged applications. The company pioneered the market for business-intelligent decision support tools in 1990 by introducing the first product to use a "semantic layer." This patented technology maps complex database schemas to a business representation understandable by non-technical end users.

Business Objects led the overall decision support tools market in 1995 with software license revenues of $48.7M, and outsold its nearest query and reporting tools competitor two-to-one according to IDC. BusinessObjects is in use at over 3,200 organizations in over 60 countries, and has sold more than 350,000 licenses around the world. More information on Business Objects can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.businessobjects.com. -0-

Note to Editors: BusinessObjects is a trademark of Business Objects S.A. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

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