Judith Graham, Product Director of Optial, said, "Firms need to find and prove value from their operational risk management initiatives and OBI makes this easier than ever. OBI is a very major enhancement to the Optial platform, which allows management at all levels to mine the rich data collected in the modules for Incidents, Risk, Compliance and Audit. This enables managers to identify key risk indicator trends, analyse weaknesses and create quantifiable business cases for initiatives aimed at improving the quality of managing the wide variety of operational risks with which any institution is faced. Analytical slice and dice techniques, high quality graphics, the rich reporting functionality and a simple user interface together mean that true operational risk business intelligence is now only a click away. At the same time, sensitive data continues to be fully protected using Optial's stringent access control model. Detailed cube analysis is complemented by one-click dashboard reports with drill-through, which are designed to give line managers maximum information with minimum fuss, using industry-standard technologies built to support large data volumes.

"OBI has already generated a high level of interest from our client base and we expect to announce its first live implementation in a matter of weeks", she continued. "As well as OBI, the version 6.0 release further includes a number of significant enhancements to the product, all of which are designed to make the user experience more streamlined and to increase flexibility. These include new capabilities for measuring aging and thus process efficiency, new grid-style interactions for list functions and a number of useability features such as smoother design of pages for risk assessment questionnaires, enhanced abilities to support defaults to make data entry easier, and further capabilities to display information messages. These kinds of practical improvements provide real assistance to people carrying out their work in Optial."