Life Fitness Converts to Oracle(r) Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing

To support its growing business intelligence (BI) initiatives, Life Fitness, a division of Brunswick Corp. (NYSE: BC), has consolidated its BI and data warehousing platforms on Oracle. Life Fitness selected Oracle(r) Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (EE) to replace its existing BI solution and is upgrading its data warehouse to Oracle Database 10g Release 2. Life Fitness is the global leader in designing and manufacturing a full line of reliable, high-quality fitness equipment for commercial and home use.
Several key factors motivated Life Fitness to reevaluate its BI platform strategy. Specifically, Life Fitness sought to take advantage of Oracle Business Intelligence Suite EE’s architectural advantages, information delivery capabilities, and its integration with Oracle Database, Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Fusion Middleware products -- all of which Life Fitness relies upon.

The Life Fitness evaluation of Oracle Business Intelligence Suite EE found that the product included key functionality in a single solution that was not included with its existing BI tool. Rather than going through the time-consuming process of running multiple different reports in series to get the information they need, Life Fitness constituents will be able to quickly access and view all of their BI information simultaneously in one place through Oracle Interactive Dashboards. Life Fitness will also implement Oracle Delivers, a proactive intelligence solution that helps to enable pervasive BI by providing business event monitoring and alerting to users via email, dashboards, and mobile devices. Oracle Delivers will free Life Fitness analysts from having to continuously run activity reports to search for exceptional conditions. Instead, they will be alerted only when specific conditions, opportunities or problems arise.

“Choosing Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition made sense technically and strategically for Life Fitness,” said Peter Malling, Senior Manager of Data Warehousing and Network Operations, Life Fitness. “Technically, we value having a single, unified BI metadata model because we’ve struggled to maintain consistency across different subject areas of data with our other BI tool. Strategically, we expect significant benefits from having a BI platform that is more tightly integrated with our other key applications and infrastructure software including Oracle Database, Oracle Portal and Oracle E-Business Suite. Oracle is best positioned to help us get the most value out of those products.”

Life Fitness will upgrade its existing Oracle data warehouse to Oracle Database 10g Release 2 running on IBM AIX to take advantage of its enhanced manageability and performance capabilities. The centralized data warehouse contains inventory, manufacturing, supply chain and transactional data extracted from Oracle E-Business Suite as well as from systems of its international subsidiaries. “We expect Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition is going to utilize every drop of data warehousing features and functionalities within Oracle Database 10g,” added Malling.

Life Fitness to Grow BI Platform with Oracle
Headquartered near Chicago in Schiller Park, Ill., Life Fitness is the leading brand of fitness equipment in health clubs worldwide and distributes its equipment in more than 120 countries. Since 1999, Life Fitness has relied on business intelligence (BI) to distill and disperse critical information to key constituents and decision makers within the company as well as to external dealers, suppliers and large customers. BI is critical for the enterprise globally and supports engineering, field sales, finance, inventory management, order management, and supply chain management. For example, the Life Fitness sales organization relies on BI to track sales and order pipeline related to goals, while the order management and supply chain organizations relate projected and actual sales information to available inventory, assuring adequate product availability to meet demand.

Today, over 500 financial, manufacturing, marketing and sales professionals at Life Fitness rely on BI daily. Going forward with Oracle, Life Fitness intends to double the size of its BI initiatives to approximately 1,000 users by early 2008 as well as integrate BI more seamlessly with other key business applications and technology on a global basis.

About Life Fitness
Life Fitness, a division of Brunswick Corp. (NYSE: BC), is the global leader in designing and manufacturing a full line of high-quality fitness equipment for commercial and consumer use. It is the largest commercial fitness equipment provider in the world and the only fitness equipment manufacturer that has been providing premium equipment for nearly 30 years. Life Fitness’ cardiovascular and strength-training products, including the renowned Lifecycle exercise bike, are used worldwide in health clubs, fitness centers and wellness facilities, as well as in homes. The company is headquartered near Chicago, in Schiller Park, Ill., and distributes its equipment in more than 120 countries.

About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world’s largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com .