Teradata Customer BNSF Railway Recognized for Leadership in Finance and Performance Management

Centralized data warehouse approach to forecasting and planning accelerates access to detailed information and business performance insight

August 1, 2006 , DAYTON, Ohio – Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR), and the global leader in active enterprise intelligence, has announced that BNSF Railway Company (BNSF) is the winner of the 2006 award for Financial Performance Management from Ventana Research, the leading Performance Management research and advisory-services firm.

BNSF, which operates one of the largest railroad networks in North America, won the award for its OnTrack planning and forecasting system. “The complexity of our railroad network and the multiple departmental data silos built around it had challenged BNSF’s planning and financial performance management processes,” said Charla Moore, manager of Business Intelligence Technology Services for BNSF. “By leveraging the Teradata warehouse, which integrates BNSF’s actual financial and operational data, OnTrack was able to prepare our forecasts and plans with greater speed and accuracy. The Teradata warehouse has helped us quickly and easily drill down into detail data and, in combination with Hyperion, perform multidimensional analyses that increase our insight into business-performance drivers.”

Moore describes OnTrack as a “key tracking mechanism for regional managers’ use in accessing performance information.” All OnTrack data—the actual enterprise data stored in the Teradata warehouse as well as the forecast and plan data created within OnTrack itself—is delivered to business users through a variety of analytical tools, including those provided by Hyperion, the global leader in business performance management software and a Teradata partner at BNSF and other Fortune 3,000 organizations.

BNSF’s Ventana award submission notes that before implementing the OnTrack system, the company’s forecasting and planning was “based on a spider-web of 2,000 spreadsheets,” resulting in a slow, manually-intensive process which was inflexible, difficult to maintain and lacked security.

“Forecasts were generally based on high-level trends with little relationship to key business drivers,” says Moore, noting that budget managers were forced to set plans and forecasts with limited business and operational insight.

According to BNSF, benefits of the new, data-warehouse-driven OnTrack system include:

* improved performance visibility; managers’ access to results went from 30 days after the fact to next-day availability, so they can now act quickly on exceptions;
* the ability to create more accurate financial forecasts and plans based on key operational drivers and standard data definitions;
* and automated consolidation and roll-up of departmental and regional forecasts, reducing forecast time from a week to approximately three hours. Time saved empowered BNSF Finance employees to shift their work focus from data gathering to detailed variance analysis and corrective action.

“Teradata has a strong track record of helping leading transportation companies like BNSF leverage their data warehouses for improved finance and performance management capabilities,” said Kathy Black, transportation industry sales vice president for Teradata. “Customers such as BNSF, Continental Airlines, and British Airways are using enterprise intelligence to build a competitive advantage in their industries. BNSF’s recognition by Ventana is clear evidence of this, and we appreciate the opportunity to play a role in BNSF’s successful coordination of the people, processes, information and technology used to optimize their performance management programs.”

BNSF also recently received a Business Performance Management Award from The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) for an innovative BNSF corporate dashboard application that sources enterprise data from Hyperion Essbase and from the underlying Teradata Warehouse. Teradata Finance and Performance Management solutions deliver a continuous, detailed, and actionable view of financial and operational data.

For more information on Teradata Financial and Performance Solutions, visit www.teradata.com/t/page/43093/index.html.

About BNSF

A subsidiary of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation (NYSE: BNI), BNSF Railway Company operates one of the largest railroad networks in North America, with about 32,000 route miles in 28 states and two Canadian provinces. With about 40,000 employees, BNSF is among the world’s top transporters of intermodal traffic, moves more grain than any other American railroad, transports the components of many of the products we depend on daily, and hauls enough low-sulphur coal to generate about 10 percent of the electricity produced in the United States. For more information, see www.bnsf.com.

About Ventana Research

Ventana Research is the leading Performance Management research and advisory services firm. By providing expert insight and detailed guidance, Ventana Research helps clients operate their companies more efficiently and effectively. These business improvements are delivered through a top-down approach that connects people, process, information and technology. What makes Ventana Research different from other analyst firms is a focus on Performance Management for finance, operations and IT. To learn how Ventana Research Performance Management workshops, assessments and advisory services can impact your bottom line, visit www.ventanaresearch.com.

About Teradata Division

Teradata (www.teradata.com), a division of NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR), is the global technology leader in enterprise data warehousing, analytic applications and data warehousing services. Organizations around the world rely on the power of Teradata’s award-winning solutions to get a single, integrated view of their business to enhance decision-making, customer relationships and profitability.

About NCR Corporation

NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR) is a leading global technology company helping businesses build stronger relationships with their customers. NCR’s Teradata® data warehouses, ATMs, retail systems, self-service solutions and IT services provide Relationship Technology™ that maximizes the value of customer interactions and helps organizations create a stronger competitive position. Based in Dayton, Ohio, NCR (www.ncr.com) employs approximately 29,300 people worldwide.

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Mike O’Sullivan

NCR Corporation

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