The following are frequently asked questions about Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005.

Q: What is Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005?

A: Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 is a new server-based business performance management scorecard application. Previously code-named "Maestro," the new application takes advantage of the power of the Microsoft Office System to help organizations perform deep analysis by allowing them to build, manage and use scorecards and key performance indicators -- all within an intuitive and collaborative environment.

Q: Who is the target audience, or market, for Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005?

A: The target audience for Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 is companies who want to gain better insight into the business and financial trends that impact their organization as well as companies that seek a better way to align objectives with employees’ daily activities and those that require business transparency for better regulatory compliance. This includes not just enterprises, but also midsize companies as well.

Q: Who in the organization do you see using Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005?

A: Business decision makers like CFOs, CIOs, and CEOs would definitely want to tap into the scorecarding, analysis and perspective Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 provides them about the business and financial trends that impact their business. But we’re also seeing an increased demand among companies today for business / information users across the organization to get this kind of information as well, so they can better relate how the things they do map to goals and objectives. Executives in organizations are looking at ways to align the big objectives with daily activities done throughout the organization. By putting a scorecard in front of most employees, the company can improve this alignment. That’s why the approach we took with Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 – where users get customized portal views based on what they need to know to do their jobs, and where they can collaborate with others – is so important.

Q: What’s the connection between Business Scorecard Manager and compliance?

A: Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 enables real time views about what’s going on within the organization. This empowers CFOs, sales managers, R&D Managers, CIOs and other decision makers to increase their business’ predictability and transparency by achieving greater visibility into business and financial trends as they are going on, so they can react and monitor potential issues, rather than simply shake their heads after the fact.

Q: How complicated will it be for organizations to deploy Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005?

A: Due to “Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005’s” scalability, its intuitive interface, and the fact that it’s built on Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies, Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 is easy to deply, manage and use. That said, we have developed training materials to assist companies as they begin to deploy Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005.

Q: What kind of skillset would a customer/partner start working on and/or need to know to work on this?

A: We recommend the customer and/or partner implementing a scorecarding solution to plan ahead for the business processes involved with defining and monitoring performance metrics and to have domain-specific expertise available where appropriate. As for technical skills, the implementation team would need to be familiar with, or prepared to quickly learn, BSM’s platform technologies, mainly SharePoint, SQL Server Analysis Services and (optional) SQL Server Reporting Services. An ideal implementation partner would have Microsoft certifications in both the Information Worker and Business Intelligence Competency programs.

Q: Is Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 the second version of Business Scorecards?

A: Yes and no. Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 builds on the learnings and customer feedback from the Microsoft Office Business Scorecards Accelerator. Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 is a major step in fulfilling Microsoft’s overall vision for BI by providing tools that empower companies to align actions with strategic goals and generate more transparency necessary in today’s business world.

Q: Does Business Scorecard Manager support XML?

A: Yes. All business definitions in Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 are available through XML. Documentation on the web services API used to access the definitions is already available via Office On-line.

Q: How is Microsoft anticipating Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 will be able to let the XML scorecarding schema grow/adapt as companies’ data schema changes over time?

A: Business definitions, such as KPIs and Scorecards, in BSM are XML-based and extensible. Customers can continually extend and tailor the definitions to their business needs in a managed environment that supports auditing, reverting and version comparison for both the core definition and custom extensions.

Q. What are the system requirements Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005?

A: The system requirements for Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 are the following: Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (required for SharePoint Server and Windows SharePoint Server) Microsoft SQL Server 2000 / 2005 Microsoft Office 2003 (Optional if want to use charting and analysis)

Q: Will Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 be localized?

A: Yes, English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish languages will all be supported, but this mainly applies to the “Help” and Scorecard UI content. BSM content supports a wide range of localities by enabling the storage of all business definitions in UTF-8.

Q: How much does Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 cost?

A: Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager is priced at $5000 for the server, with a client access license of $175 ERP (US).