MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Aug. 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Today, Mercury Interactive Corporation , the global leader in business technology optimization (BTO) software, announced it has helped Nielsen Media Research, the world's leading provider of television audience measurement, save approximately 200 hours in productivity in the first quarter of 2005 by implementing an IT governance program using Mercury IT Governance Center(TM).
Nielsen Media Research provides television audience estimates for broadcast and cable networks, television stations and national syndicators. Industry changes such as digital content and digital video recorders have required Nielsen to react to technology and customer demand at a faster pace. Nielsen was looking for a way to improve customer response time and transform their time-consuming manual portfolio management process to an automated process across business units. They wanted a portfolio management process to provide increased visibility and efficiency to quickly get proposals and requests for different audience rating services into the work flow. Nielsen was also looking to gain a more strategic approach to matching daily demand versus tactical demand.
"Nielsen's priority is delivering quality audience measurement and advertising information to our customers in a timely manner," said Christina Carbone, director of Quality and Measurement, Nielsen Media Research. "Because Mercury IT Governance Center allows us to govern and prioritize how we deploy our IT resources to meet customer demand, we have saved over 200 hours in productivity in one quarter."
Using Mercury IT Governance Center, Nielsen was able to better align IT with the needs of the business. Their portfolio management process is now automated which gives them the ability to make appropriate decisions and allocate resources more strategically when it comes to answering client requests and meeting the increased demand for faster service. IT and business alignment has led to big productivity gains.
"We have been so pleased with our results with Mercury IT Governance Center that we are now expanding the use of Mercury Portfolio Management(TM) within Nielsen," continued Carbone. "And we are starting to deploy Mercury IT Governance Center for resource management and project management as well."
"IT governance is about more than gaining a tighter grip on IT investment," said Alex Lobba, vice president of IT Governance at Mercury. "We are proud that Mercury IT Governance Center has helped Nielsen Media align IT priorities with business objectives and maximize the value of IT results to the business."
About Mercury IT Governance Center
Mercury IT Governance Center(TM) helps customers automate IT business processes from demand management to portfolio, program and resource management, to change management. Mercury IT Governance Center is comprised of integrated applications, a real-time dashboard and an enterprise foundation. Mercury IT governance products and services help customers with compliance regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, and it supports quality programs and process control frameworks such as Six-Sigma, CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration), ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library), ISO-9000, and COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and related Technologies).
Mercury IT Governance Leadership
Mercury is one of the fastest growing vendors in the IT Governance market. Mercury is positioned in the leaders quadrant in Gartner Inc.'s "Magic Quadrant for IT Project and Portfolio Management, 2005 (1)." Mercury also received the highest possible ranking and was named the market leader in the AMR Research IT Portfolio Management Report: "IT Portfolio Management Software: Clear Benefits, Converging Marketplace," June 2004.
Many companies in the Forbes Global 2000 have chosen Mercury IT Governance products including: 4 of the top 6 companies; 7 of the top 10 technology, hardware, and equipment companies; 5 of the top 7 consumer durables companies; 5 of the top 8 healthcare, equipment, and services companies; 3 of the top 5 aerospace and defense companies; 3 of the top 5 banks; and 4 of the top 7 business services and supplies companies.
ABOUT NIELSEN MEDIA RESEARCH
Nielsen Media Research is the world's leading provider of television audience measurement and advertising information services. In the United States, Nielsen's National People Meter service provides audience estimates for all national program sources, including broadcast networks, cable networks, Spanish language networks, and national syndicators. Local ratings estimates are produced for television stations, regional cable networks, MSOs, cable interconnects, and Spanish language stations in each of the 210 television markets in the U.S., including electronic metered service in 56 markets.
Nielsen Media Research is part of VNU Media Measurement & Information, a global leader in information services for the media and entertainment industries. The group serves the information and marketing needs of television and radio broadcasters, advertisers, agencies, media planners, music companies, publishers, motion-picture studios, distributors and exhibitors, and the Internet industry. VNU is a global information and media company with leading market positions and recognized brands in marketing information (ACNielsen), media measurement and information (Nielsen Media Research) and business information (Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, Computing, Intermediair). VNU is active in more than 100 countries, with headquarters in Haarlem, the Netherlands and New York, USA. The company employs 38,000 people. Total revenues amounted to EUR 3.8 billion in 2004. VNU is listed on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange. For more information, please visit the VNU website at http://www.vnu.com/.
ABOUT MERCURY
Mercury Interactive Corporation, the global leader in business technology optimization (BTO) software, is committed to helping customers optimize the business value of information technology. Founded in 1989, Mercury conducts business worldwide and is one of the fastest growing enterprise software companies today. Mercury provides software and services for IT Governance, Application Delivery, and Application Management. Customers worldwide rely on Mercury offerings to govern the priorities, processes and people of IT and test and manage the quality and performance of business-critical applications. Mercury BTO offerings are complemented by technologies and services from global business partners. For more information, please visit http://www.mercury.com/.
The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted June 22, 2005 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. For more information on the Gartner "Magic Quadrant for IT Project and Portfolio Management, 2005" please visit http://www.gartner.com/.
The Forbes Global 2000 is a comprehensive list of the world's biggest and most powerful companies, as measured by a composite ranking for sales, profits, assets, and market value. Forbes Global 2000 data was posted on http://www.forbes.com/ as of March 22, 2005.
NOTE: Mercury, Mercury IT Governance Center, Mercury Portfolio Management and the Mercury logo are trademarks of Mercury Interactive Corporation and may be registered in certain jurisdictions.
All other company, brand and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
(1) Gartner Magic Quadrant for IT Project and Portfolio Management, 2005; Authors: Matt Light, Daniel B. Stang; June 22, 2005 ID G00129208
© 2005 PR Newswire
