Axicom, Australia’s leading provider of independently owned wireless infrastructure, was facing a challenge in combining data from on-premises and cloud-based business applications to create cross-platform portals, dashboards, and reports. The company was using a JD Edwards ERP system and a new asset management system called Siterra. However, they needed an analytic platform that could span both on-premises and cloud-based information systems. They also needed an integration environment that could enable real-time and batch integrations between JD Edwards and the Siterra applications to avoid duplication of effort and potential inconsistencies in the data.

Boise Cascade, one of North America’s largest producers of engineered wood products and plywood, faced a significant challenge in their operations. The company had poor visibility into millions of dollars in annual rebates and lacked the ability to visualize data from sales, production, inventory, and other key business functions. The company also wanted analytics capabilities to more accurately track more than $30 million in annual rebates that the company pays out to its customers and dealers. Accountants were using an Excel-based system for tracking the rebates and couldn’t get fine-grained analytics to determine if the rebates provided actual value to everyone involved. The company needed a solution that would provide them with the necessary insights and analytics to improve their operations.

Curtiss-Wright’s previous reporting environment, based on Microsoft .NET, could not provide clients with the information and visualizations they needed. Requests for custom reports sometimes took days to fulfill. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) library is very difficult to navigate, and it’s not conducive to the kinds of research that these power plants want to do. They had pressure from competitors who offered analysis and reporting capabilities that they couldn’t match. They selected WebFOCUS because it has a nice way of visualizing information and a flexible environment for developing and embedding analytic applications in their SaaS solutions. Information Builders also offered implementation capabilities to help them build a new analytic portal.

Millennium bcp, Portugal’s largest privately owned bank, needed to modernize, automate, and create a process for generating key performance indicators (KPIs) for comprehensive management reporting. The bank wanted to minimize decentralized reporting activities within individual lines of business and establish standard calculation methodologies for KPIs. This would ensure consistency in reports throughout the enterprise while providing for clean, accurate, and usable information across the various lines of business. The overriding goal was a lofty one: to boost awareness of how each employee contributes to the bank’s profitability. The bank also wanted to ensure high levels of user adoption, so the new dashboards would need an attractive design, an efficient layout, and comprehensive data-gathering and drill-down capabilities.

Nordic Investment Bank (NIB) needed to comply with international accounting standards and lending guidelines, which required continual monitoring of lending activity, liquidity, and cash flow by business sector, region, timeframe, and other variables. The bank faced tough lending standards and conservative guidelines for capital reserves. As an international finance institution, NIB had to ensure that it complied with regulations. NIB also tracked its lending activity by business areas, such as energy and environment; infrastructure, transportation and telecom; industries and services; and financial institutions and small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Officers in the Treasury and Risk departments used WebFOCUS to analyze liquidity as they monitored the inflow and outflow of funds by sector, time period, portfolio, and other variables. An InfoApp computed liquidity buffer survival horizons – projections of financial liquidity based on current and expected lending activity.

Sparta Systems, a leading provider of quality management software (QMS) solutions, was facing a challenge with its TrackWise QMS. The system lacked an enhanced analytics module, making it difficult for users to perform ad hoc analysis. Some customers resorted to using Excel for this purpose, but the volume of data often became overwhelming. Others used their organization’s own business intelligence (BI) tools to create their reporting and analysis, but they typically relied on the IT department to develop complex SQL scripts to locate, extract, and reassemble data. Sparta Systems sought an embedded BI platform that would allow for end-user reporting, data visualization, and analysis.

St. Luke’s University Health Network was facing a challenge of obtaining a single, consolidated view of critical information due to diverse sources of data. This was affecting their clinical, financial, and operational analysis. The organization needed a solution that would allow stakeholders to gain insights across all mastered data domains and cover the full continuum of patient care. The requirements for this BI/EDW initiative included improving clinical quality, reducing costs, improving patient experience, building market share, and fostering success under value-based reimbursement models. The entire team was committed to increasing self-service reporting capabilities for end users and replacing a legacy warehouse and BI system.

Toppan Interamerica, a division of Toppan Printing, a $16 billion corporation based in Tokyo, was facing challenges with its reporting processes. The small IT staff was burdened with a steady stream of report requests, and employees often had to wait two days or more to obtain information about sales, accounting, production, and other key business activities. The company was still performing most financial and production reporting manually. The IT staff could barely keep up with the reporting demands of their old systems. They needed to make some changes in their reporting environment if they were to adequately support the information management needs of the business going forward.

The Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) in Mexico was tasked with managing the country's environmental and natural resource policy. However, the agency faced challenges in integrating, processing, analyzing, and distributing environmental information from its network of offices to meet the demands of internal and external users. Most of SEMARNAT's environmental analytics efforts were performed manually, using print publications to disseminate figures, images, and maps with relevant environmental information. This process was cumbersome and inefficient, leading SEMARNAT to realize the need for a solid business intelligence (BI) and analytics platform.

The County of Los Angeles, one of the largest regional governments in North America, faced a significant challenge in managing the compensation and benefits for its approximately 100,000 employees. The county’s previous reporting tools required nightly data dumps and custom coding, which limited analysts’ ability to respond quickly to requests for information. This was particularly problematic when dealing with labor negotiations with state and national labor unions, which represent approximately 80 percent of the county’s workforce. The county needed a more efficient and effective way to extract, analyze, and visualize the immense amount of data involved in managing employee compensation and benefits.

Sound Credit Union was facing a challenge of lack of visibility into member data. This made it difficult for the employees to answer member questions and take action on their behalf. They could not easily combine data from diverse sources to achieve a cohesive, 360-degree view of member activities. The organization was bogged down with too much manual work and too many assumptions based on incomplete data. For instance, they knew they needed more deposits, but they couldn’t decipher the trend in their checking accounts, savings, money market accounts, CDs, and other deposit vehicles. They needed an executive dashboard and solid analytics to give them answers.

Goodfellow Inc., a wholesaler and distributor of wood and wood byproducts, was hit hard by the economic downturn. The company was seeing a dwindling number of construction projects and clients going out of business. Goodfellow knew it needed better insight into key operations to maintain its position as an industry leader and its reputation for expertise in lumber processing and customer satisfaction. The company wanted a solution that could maximize efficiency and facilitate just-in-time business models – a strategy made even more critical by diminishing cash flow. Until recently, the IT group at Goodfellow struggled with an issue very common in large enterprises: All requests for information were routed to the IT department. Fulfilling these requests was very time-consuming for IT Director Graham Rattray and his group, so they needed to implement some major changes in the way information flowed throughout the company.

ICA Fluor, a leading industrial engineering construction company in Mexico, was facing the challenge of consolidating information from multiple sources into one repository and making the data available to approximately 70 senior managers. As the company grew in size, the volume of data generated also increased exponentially. The company's executives were looking for a new business analytics system with powerful capabilities for frontend business intelligence (BI) and back-end data management. They wanted to develop a user-friendly analytics environment that streamlines access to current project information and extends self-service reporting functionality to HR, procurement, and other departments.

Informa plc, a multinational publishing, conference, and information management company, was facing a challenge with its massive amount of data. The company generates a large amount of data through its various divisions, including Global Events, Academic Publishing, and Business Intelligence. The database serves a global audience and contains 13 million corporate addresses and about 35 million personal records. However, every country has its own way of listing addresses, zip codes, locations, street numbers, and other identifying information. This led to a problem of data inconsistency and duplication. The quality of the information could vary by source, and over time information ages and loses its relevance. Problems arise if the data is not periodically updated or removed.

International Car Operators (ICO) is a leading company in the material-handling industry, specializing in loading and unloading cargo ships. They offer a broad range of logistics services related to terminals, vessels, shipping agencies, vehicle support, and customs clearance. The company faced a challenge in offering a system that would facilitate the efficient processing and sharing of information between entering ships, material-handling and logistic service providers, and customers. They needed a system that could collate all available information and present it to customers in the most convenient and accessible way possible. The information should also be available to support key business processes.

Maitland, a global provider of fund administration, legal, tax, fiduciary, and investment advisory services, was seeking a general-purpose software environment that could simplify data integration, data quality, application integration, and B2B integration for SWIFT message processing. The company wanted to link its trading and settlement systems and orchestrate new interfaces to internal and external systems. The challenge was to find a platform that could read, write, and enrich SWIFT transactions while shielding clients from the complexities of the underlying computing environment. The company also wanted to enable straight-through processing (STP) by setting up SWIFT-based messaging for Maitland’s external trading partners.

Pershing LLC, a leading provider of clearing and financial services outsourcing solutions, was facing a challenge. They needed to find a way to deliver targeted analytical information to tens of thousands of busy brokers without requiring them to learn a report writer or deal with cryptic database technology. The company serves more than 1,100 financial organizations and independent investment advisors, who collectively represent nearly six million individual investors. Pershing has more than $800 billion on under administration. Previously these investment professionals could only access customer information via hard copy reports or standard files containing all their data, which they had to manage and use on their own. NetExchange Pro had some rudimentary reporting capabilities, but they were geared toward accessing information one account at a time or one investment professional at a time. As a result, many of these external users were requesting custom reports from Pershing’s IT department, which was putting a drain on programming resources.

Scotiabank, a premier financial institution in North America, was facing challenges with its outdated sales information infrastructure. The existing system was causing delays in the delivery and validation of key information needed to support critical growth strategies. The bank's retail banking executives needed to automate a complex sales reporting process for their branch operations. The manual sales reporting process was dependent on officer input, leading to inconsistencies in reported results across the bank's 1,024 branches. The interpretation of complex business rules in the manual system resulted in inconsistency of reported results. The bank wanted to replace this manual system with an automated one that captures sales opportunities and then reports the data back to sales officers in the form of coaching and sales results reports.

The University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) was facing challenges in gathering information from disparate relational databases and their Banner ERP system. They were using Microsoft Access queries to collect data, which was then loaded into Microsoft Excel spreadsheets for analysis. This process was time-consuming and did not scale well. Each new project or field of inquiry required a new set of queries and spreadsheets. The university wanted to improve the distribution and availability of data within the institution. They were looking for a solution that could consolidate their data for clean, aggregated reporting and provide metrics about enrollment, academics, programs registration, and other domains.

Winston Brands, a fast-growing direct-to-consumer multi-channel merchandising firm, was facing challenges in integrating a wide array of systems, both internal and external, to support the increasing number of transactions resulting from the company's continued growth. The company's technology solutions struggled to keep pace with such rapid expansion, and they were replaced with several new, more robust information systems. However, connecting those systems, many of which were deployed simultaneously, proved to be a challenge. The organization evaluated all the other primary integration vendors on the market, including, TIBCO, and IBM.

Allegis Global Solutions (AGS) had more than 100 variations of an Excel-based reporting solution, making it difficult to create, manage, and benchmark contract labor programs. While these reporting tools do let users see program performance, business leaders had difficulty using them to include comparative analytics and performance benchmarking. Because different customers have different requirements, AGS amassed more than 100 different variations of the same basic spreadsheets and reports. It was cumbersome to create, manage, and keep track of so many variants. AGS set out to create a more versatile analytics environment using a popular new data visualization tool. Unfortunately, after making some headway with the front-end components, AGS realized that the tool did not have adequate capabilities for enterprise deployment.

Halifax Health, the largest healthcare provider in Volusia and Flagler counties, was facing challenges with its legacy reporting tools which were designed for professional analysts. The organization needed a general-purpose BI environment that could empower the enterprise to access, analyze, and share information. The existing tools, McKesson’s Trendstar and Meditech NPR report writer, required staffing by highly-experienced IT personnel for in-house development. The organization wanted to leverage clinical and administrative data in Meditech, TeletTracking, eSignature, Kronos, and Allscripts applications. They also wanted end-user dashboards that could display key performance indicators (KPIs) for inpatient quality, patient safety, core measures, and financial measures. Ideally, the solution would also support drill-down capabilities, mobile computing, offline analysis, self-service reporting, report scheduling, and intelligent report distribution.

Arcadia Group, the UK's largest clothing retailer, recognized the need for a robust business intelligence platform to improve decision-making and business performance. The retail industry has become fiercely competitive, and consumer loyalty is no longer guaranteed. To gain a competitive edge, Arcadia sought to access and analyze accurate, consistent, and timely information. In the late 1990s, Arcadia embarked on a major data warehouse project with IBM to centralize information for its international, group finance, and branch merchandising teams. By 2005, Arcadia had created a robust, well-structured data warehouse for its central operations, supplemented by a business intelligence (BI) tool providing reports to around 200 users. However, Arcadia recognized the need to extend the solution across the enterprise to include the buyers and merchandisers of its eight trading brands. These teams were using legacy applications, which had become inflexible and restrictive in Arcadia’s international strategy, such as lacking multi-channel access or multi-currency functionality.

Belcan Corporation, a provider of engineering, staffing, and other innovative outsourcing solutions to the manufacturing industry, was facing a challenge in improving access to critical business information contained in JD Edwards systems running on an IBM i platform. The company had received a request to provide access to information residing in its JD Edwards World systems. Although the requests were met, the implementation did not provide the flexibility end users needed, nor did it support all platforms required in today’s changing technology environments. The company needed a solution that could streamline real-time data access across multiple platforms.

BGL Group, a UK-based financial services group, was seeking to improve its communication with customers and partners by providing better insights more frequently. The company undertook a strategic review of its existing Management Information strategies and systems, as well as the future demands these would experience. The review identified key goals around improving the delivery of information to partners, customers and users throughout the business, as well as improving the efficiency of the development requirements that would support this. The group-wide platform had to meet the very different demands for each user group. With executives pulling ad hoc reports in meetings, super users manipulating data to discover new insights and partners drilling down into their own information, customised apps and ultimately secure access to the right data for each user was vital.

Butler Health System (BHS) was required to demonstrate to the federal government that it was using electronic health record (EHR) technology to earn incentive payments from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), as defined by the HITECH Act of 2009. There were a number of criteria that verified this “meaningful use” eligibility, including submitting Clinical Quality Metrics to CMS. BHS was also required to guide its pay-for-performance initiatives. Previously, its analysts created reports directly from operational reporting systems such as MEDITECH. They also used Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Reporting Services, Microsoft Analysis Services, and general-purpose BI tools from MicroStrategy. However, none of these tools provided what was needed to meet the Federal requirements for meaningful use or the detailed analysis required for the hospital’s pay-for-performance objectives.

As CEMEX increased in size, IT leaders realized that the volume and variety of operational data they had to process would soon overwhelm their IT environment. For example, when it came to reporting, it was difficult to achieve a consolidated view of financial and operational activities, which severely impacted decision-making throughout the company. The corporate comptroller, responsible for providing critical financial and operational information to the vice president of finance, was especially challenged to manage the influx of information.

Central Washington University (CWU) was heavily reliant on an Oracle PeopleSoft enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for most of its reporting activities. However, the process was slow, laborious, and paper-intensive. Some queries took 20 minutes or longer to execute, which impacted the performance of the ERP system and sometimes caused it to crash. Keeping up with state and federal compliance requirements was particularly difficult. For example, one report for the Public Centralized Higher Education Enrollment System (PCHEES) included hundreds of pages and took eight months to produce. The university also had to create large reports for U.S. News & World Report, ACT, and Petersons. This meant the reporting team had to respond to dozens of public requests from state agencies and create more than 100 internal reports each year.

CBIZ, a professional services company in the U.S., provides a comprehensive range of outsourced business services, products, and solutions to help organizations manage their finances, employees, and technology. Over the years, the company followed an enterprise software strategy that included purchasing best-of-breed software applications for human resources (HR), customer relationship management (CRM), time and billing, scheduling, and other key operations. These applications rely on relational databases, such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server, to store and share information. However, the organization’s small IT team struggled to integrate those systems cohesively. CBIZ had difficulty creating a uniform, high-quality data store that ensured accuracy and minimized manual data entry and auditing procedures.

The City of Irving, Texas, which supports 24 service departments, was looking to create a culture of transparency and accountability. The existing performance measurements were activity-based and not tied to departmental goals and funding allocations. As a result, measurement selections and outcomes were not adequately discussed. The city wanted to improve its ability to monitor performance and trends across all city departments and provide transparency into its administrative processes.