Arcplan is a

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

for

business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical pr ...

(BI), budgeting, planning & forecasting (BP&F), business analytics and collaborative

Business Intelligence Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical pr ...

. It is the enhancement of the enterprise software inSight® and dynaSight of the former German provider arcplan Information Services GmbH. The company got merged with Canada-based Longview Solutions in 2015. Version 8.7. is available in a 32 and a 64 bit version at the moment. Before the merger the company was managed by CEO Roland Hölscher and COO Steffen Weissbarth.

Introduction

The software supports users especially in the area of business intelligence (BI) that comprises clustered processes to select, evaluate and present data electronically. Furthermore, enterprise planning and decision making processes can be executed via data analysis. Arcplan is usually employed in midsized companies and large enterprises. Public institutions as well use arcplan. In

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...

arcplan is developed, distributed and maintained by arcplan Information Services GmbH (Langenfeld, Northrhine Westphalia).

History and development

The Arcplan software emerged from the client server based software Insight in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in ...

, Germany in 1993. The founders were the brothers Udo Wollschläger and Frank Hagedorn (both physicists) as well as the mathematician Dr. Hartmut Krins and the chemist Dr. Bernd Fröhlich. Initially, the software development was done by the physicists Udo Wollschläger, Frank Hagedorn, and Svend Dunkhorst. Holding 40% of the capital, the German Lindner Hotels Group was the largest shareholder, the other shares were held by the founders. In 2005 the company was acquired by Frankfurt (Main) based venture capital company ''Viewpoint Capital Partners GmbH''. In 2015 arcplan got sold to ''Marlin Equity Partners'' and merged with their portfolio company Longview Solutions. Insight had an integrated development environment that reflected a flexible editor´s concept. With the help of the editor´s concept users were enabled to create customized reports via Drag & Drop without any programming skills. The editor´s concept in general and the drag & drop report development in particular were innovations in comparison to the competition. In the early 90s arcplan was one of the first software programs to directly access SAP data for reporting and analysis. In 1996 Insight being the integrated development environment became part of the webserver based software Dynasight. Dynasight was one of the first software solutions to integrate corporate management. It enabled the access to business applications via a Java-capable browser. After having developed Dynasight to a business intelligence platform, dynaSight (Version 4.1) evolved to arcplan Enterprise (Version 5.0) in March 2006. Since September 2013 the business intelligence platform is available as arcplan 8 providing three modules for a different scope of applications. With the release of version 8,

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HT ...

is supported; furthermore the access via mobile devices was simplified by implementing a responsive design approach. Before the merger Arcplan had offices in Germany, the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

, Switzerland and

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

. Arcplan resellers were located in the People´s Republic of China,

Korea Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republi ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bo ...

and

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eigh ...

. The company employed around 100 people globally before the merger.

Scope of applications

The software meets the typical requirements of a business intelligence application and offers, depending on the package, several additional functionalities. The integrated platform for reporting and planning is looked upon as a unique selling proposition by IT market research provider Gartner Inc.

Scope of applications (selection)

OLAP Online analytical processing, or OLAP (), is an approach to answer multi-dimensional analytical (MDA) queries swiftly in computing. OLAP is part of the broader category of business intelligence, which also encompasses relational databases, repo ...

(Online Analytical Processing) * Reporting *

Balanced Scorecard A balanced scorecard is a strategy performance management tool – a well structured report, that can be used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff within their control and to monitor the consequences arising from ...

s *

Budgeting A budget is a calculation play, usually but not always financial, for a defined period, often one year or a month. A budget may include anticipated sales volumes and revenues, resource quantities including time, costs and expenses, environme ...

Analytics Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It is used for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data. It also entails applying data patterns toward effective decision-making. It ...

Planning Planning is the process of thinking regarding the activities required to achieve a desired goal. Planning is based on foresight, the fundamental capacity for mental time travel. The evolution of forethought, the capacity to think ahead, is c ...

and

Forecasting Forecasting is the process of making predictions based on past and present data. Later these can be compared (resolved) against what happens. For example, a company might estimate their revenue in the next year, then compare it against the actual ...

In its periodic market study The BI Survey European market research company BARC rated arcplan software as a software for midsized working groups and leading in 8 peer groups.

Data sources

The software provides direct access to the following data sources: *

SAP Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a separ ...

R/3 * SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW) * SAP BW BAPI * SAP BW-IP * SAP HANA * SAP Query - Data Extractor *

Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The wor ...

DBMS * Oracle Essbase * Oracle OLAP Server * Oracle Enterprise * Oracle Financial Management (formerly Hyperion Financial Management) * IBM DB2 & Cubing Services * IBM Cognos TM1 * Infor (PM OLAP Server, former MIS ALEA) * Kognitio (Virtual Cubes/Pablo) * Longview 7 *

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

(MS SQL Server - Analysis Services) * MIK (MIK OLAP) * Paris Technologies (PowerOLAP) * Simba Technologies (MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP) * Software AG (Adabas) * Teradata (Teradata RDBMS, Teradata OLAP Connector) * ODBC-, OLE DB-, XMLA-, XML- or every Web service/SOA with open API.

Customers

Arcplan is globally employed by about 3.200 companies. Additionally the software is used in many public institutions such as

Swiss Post Swiss Post (french: La Poste suisse, it, La Posta Svizzera, german: Die Schweizerische Post, rm, La Posta Svizra) is the national postal service of Switzerland. A public company owned by the Swiss Confederation, it is the country's second l ...

, the municipal Data Processing Centre city of Frechen (KDVZ Frechen) and the bank of

(Banco Central de Chile).Customers
. Arcplan Information Services GmbH. Access October 2014

References

{{Reflist Business intelligence software Software companies established in 1993 Business intelligence companies Online analytical processing