INTERCONNECTS

Hyperion today announced that Southwest Bank of Texas, the largest independent bank based in Houston, selected Hyperion Business Performance Management software to give business managers the ability to better monitor and manage activity and performance. Southwest Bank of Texas expects to see an improvement in its planning process and forecasting accuracy, in addition to reduced planning cycle times and enhanced information management. The bank, a subsidiary of Southwest Bancorporation of Texas, Inc. (NASDAQ:SWBT) offers commercial, treasury management and investment services for businesses in the Southwest, private financial management and trust services for families and individuals, and retail and mortgage banking services. It has been using Hyperion Essbase for planning for the last two years. With the addition of Hyperion Planning, Southwest Bank of Texas will not only be able to extend planning beyond the finance organization, but also will be able to monitor performance by providing senior managers with an executive "dashboard" -- a simple and fast way to retrieve the information they need in a format they want. "As our business continues to grow and become more complex, so do the number of disparate systems and process limitations," said Randy Meyer, executive vice president and chief financial officer for Southwest Bank of Texas. "With Hyperion software, we'll now have the ability to enhance our business performance measurement across the organization and down through the business units. Hyperion will enable us to arm business managers to closely monitor the activity and performance levels across all areas of responsibility." Southwest Bank of Texas plans to first use Hyperion Planning in preparation of the next fiscal year budget, to help streamline the process and build in corporate objectives and activity measures. It also plans to use the flexible reporting module to help meet the diverse requirements of the organization, while using the Web-based desktop and dashboard to enable customized, interactive monitoring. As a result, the bank should be able to reduce planning cycle times as well as manual processes. "Southwest Bank of Texas is taking a very sophisticated, yet proven approach and partnering with the right people and technology platform," said Tom Phelps, president of ThinkFast Consulting, Inc., the consulting firm responsible for driving the implementation. "The Bank's managers should not only see immediate results-including business process improvements and operational performance-but also will have a strong BPM foundation in place for managing the success of their growth initiatives."