Hard Dollar's Lasso Project Intelligence Leverages Birst to Help Customers Quickly Identify Cost and Schedule Problems Hiding Within Their Construction Projects

SCOTTSDALE, AZ and SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Jun 19, 2013) - Birst Inc., the leader in Cloud BI, and Hard Dollar Corporation, the category creator and leader of project cost management (PCM) software for capital and asset-intensive industries, today announced that Hard Dollar is utilizing Birst's BI platform to deliver the first cloud-based project intelligence solution, Lasso Project Intelligence (LassoPI). Built with the help and guidance of some of the largest construction firms, LassoPI provides managers with a single accurate view of project performance against plan, instant information exchange, and transparency at the project and portfolio level among all internal and external stakeholders.

Hard Dollar's Lasso Project Intelligence, available at lassopi.com, provides executives, project managers, engineers, and business managers with immediate, actionable insight that helps speed and improve decision-making while reducing costs through automated data collection and dynamic report creation. Leveraging Birst's open architecture and ability to combine data from multiple systems, LassoPI can display information from any number of sources. LassoPI users can access dynamic dashboards, interactive charts, and traditional tabular reports, and schedule automated report distributions via PC, laptop, iPad, Android tablet, and most smartphones -- without the help of IT. The solution exchanges information among internal and external project stakeholders through secure, invitation-only portals, while allowing users to share as much or as little data as needed. 

"Traditional analytics solutions can take months to architect, design, and develop, creating a void for organizations that need fast, easy, affordable business insight," said Doug Nicholas, CEO of Hard Dollar. "We are working with Birst to address that problem at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional business intelligence solutions. Our customers can be up and running with Lasso Project Intelligence in a matter of minutes, viewing key project information and making more meaningful decisions as a result."

After evaluating dozens of solutions, Hard Dollar selected Birst to serve as the platform for Lasso Project Intelligence due to its combination of enterprise-caliber capabilities, ease of use, and deployment flexibility. Birst's open architecture enables Hard Dollar customers to easily integrate LassoPI with existing applications, while flexible deployment options allow for implementation in the Cloud or on premise.

"Whether embedding analytics within an existing application or creating a new solution from the ground up, organizations are using Birst to quickly provide users with cost-effective, enterprise-class business intelligence," said Brad Peters, CEO of Birst. "With Birst, businesses can break new ground with low-risk, comprehensive analytical offerings that increase revenue, improve customer loyalty, and provide a significant competitive edge."

About Hard Dollar
Hard Dollar is the leading provider of project cost management software. Founded in 1989, Hard Dollar delivers project cost management software and services worldwide within the infrastructure, mining, oil and gas, and power and process industries. HD PCM centralizes project cost and schedule information providing a complete view of performance across the project lifecycle. The software suite includes HD Project Estimating, HD Project Performance, and Lasso Project Intelligence. To start analyzing your construction project intelligence data in the cloud, visit www.lassopi.com.

About Birst
 Birst is the only enterprise-caliber Business Intelligence platform born in the cloud. Less costly and more agile than Legacy BI and more powerful than Data Discovery, Birst is engineered with an automated data warehouse and rich, visual analytics, to give meaning to data -- all types and sizes. Coupled with the agility of the Cloud, Birst gives business teams the ability to solve real problems. Fast. Find out why Gartner named Birst a Challenger in its most recent BI Magic Quadrant and why more than a thousand businesses rely on Birst for their analytic needs. Learn to think fast at www.birst.com and join the conversation @birstbi.