Michigan State Police (MSP) faced the challenge of accessing vital criminal, incident, and activity data from a variety of disparate sources and disseminating it to patrol officers, detectives, investigators, commanders, and other headquarters staff. The data management platform of MSP extends information to 142 local law enforcement agencies, facilitating collaboration across the state of Michigan. However, with a diversity of data coming from multiple real-time sources and databases, the analysts and detectives couldn’t directly access all the data. This was due to the lack of a consistent and accurate way to match people across systems, as well as to cleanse and enhance the data. The results were sometimes missing key data points, which meant that important information, such as concealed weapons permits and domestic violence reports, were not available when patrol officers needed them.

The Minnesota Department of Education (DoE) was facing a challenge in evolving their systems for data collection and basic compliance reporting to offer school districts greater insight into current activities and help them predict important trends. The department was gathering student enrollment data, student assessment data, staffing data, and other information that helps schools compute funding formulas at the federal and state levels. However, their previous reporting efforts focused on basic utility reports for delivering data to their constituents, along with a variety of compliance reports to obtain and secure funding. There was not a lot of consistency in how data was analyzed and shared, nor was there the broad accessibility that they desired.

The Missouri Department of Social Services (DSS) coordinates a variety of programs to keep families together, prevent abuse and neglect, and encourage self-sufficiency. The department provides public assistance to children and their parents, access to health care, and specialized assistance to troubled youth, among other services. It has an annual budget of $6.2 billion and employs approximately 8,800 people. Approving and coordinating these public services to millions of recipients is a massive information-management challenge. To simplify the job, Missouri DSS has been using software from Information Builders for nearly a decade. In 1995, IT pros installed FOCUS on the department’s mainframe computer and began teaching power users to create ad hoc reports. In 1997, they deployed data integration software from iWay Software to help PC users access mainframe data stores. But the real breakthrough came in 1999 when the Department of Social Services adopted WebFOCUS as the end-user reporting tool for its Family Assistance Management Information System (FAMIS).

Nacional Financiera (Nafinsa) was hindered by complex financial calculations, large databases, and manual information management processes. The bank was spending too much time gathering and analyzing data and producing important reports. The bank sought to standardize and automate its analytics and decision-making processes. The bank formed a selection committee to compare market-leading BI tools according to applicable procurement laws. It focused on software vendors that were well positioned in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for analytics tools.

NSK, Japan’s largest bearing manufacturer, was in the process of migrating its mission-critical system to an open environment. During this transition, the company was looking to contain costs and better leverage IT skills by eliminating disparate reporting tools across the business. NSK decided to consolidate and centralize its various disparate reporting tools with a single business intelligence (BI) standard that could be used throughout the company. The company needed a solution that could support a broad user community comprising end users, power users, and IT staff. Additionally, the environment had to offer rapid implementation, ease of use, global support, and fixed licensing costs.

The Oklahoma Department of Human Services (OKDHS) was faced with the challenge of sorting, summarizing, and presenting information about thousands of children to help caseworkers provide better family services. They also needed to enable agency directors to meet federal Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) mandates. The data needed to be dynamic, allowing caseworkers to view it in different ways and filter and sort it as they choose. Prior to the mid-1990s, the system used by Child Welfare staff was written in COBOL and the data was stored in a mainframe IMS database. This system provided only skeletal information indicating whether cases were opened or closed and a few sketchy notes, but nothing that allowed them to track cases or provide case-management services like they can do now. If they wanted to sort or filter the data in a different way, they had to ask a programmer to manually produce a special report.

Orange and Rockland Utilities, a subsidiary of Consolidated Edison, Inc., was facing the challenge of managing vast amounts of data and turning it into useful information. The company needed to provide upper management with secure, real-time access to employee information, eliminate calls to HR, and improve processes involved with tracking equipment tests for regulatory agencies. Previously, HR information was obtained by running scheduled batch reports on mainframe computer systems. These reports were static, so if managers wanted additional information, IT professionals would have to create additional reports. Furthermore, the company was under a deadline to create an executive HR system.

Panasonic Electric Works (PEW) recognized the importance of using the massive volume of data generated from daily corporate activities to evaluate the state of the business and forecast future conditions. However, the reporting tools chosen and implemented by end users required extensive data preparation before analysis, leading to significant dependence on IT. The Lighting and Control Device Divisions of PEW needed a data-analysis platform that could better support supply-chain management and work seamlessly with the related systems that were deployed a few years prior. They needed a tool that offered simple data preparation, so reports could be generated and modified quickly based on user requests.

The Western Cape Education Department in South Africa was faced with the challenge of analyzing and distributing information from thousands of schools in a consistent, cost-effective way to help prioritize investments and allocate funds. The department needed to supply flexible, simple, self-service reporting via an intranet and extranet so managers have immediate and accurate answers to their questions. In addition to textual reports, the department wanted to make the data available graphically through geographical information system (GIS) views. The department supports a staff of 29,000 educators and 8,000 staff responsible for schools throughout the province. In addition, the department coordinates and monitors many adult education programs, early childhood development centers, and further education and training colleges.

PSA Antwerp, a major terminal operator in the Port of Antwerp, Belgium, needed to determine the status of all facets of its loading and unloading operation. The company had to make multiple decisions to coordinate loading activities, allocate resources, and optimize the handling of each type of cargo within the fixed time span of a ship docking and leaving port. These decisions impacted the profitability of the operation. The company also faced pressure to improve productivity as it competes against Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Having the best logistics, planning techniques, and equipment is what gives PSA Antwerp a competitive edge. The company needed reporting software that could give them complete and accurate management information.

RealD, a leading global provider of 3D and other visual technologies for the motion picture industry, was facing the challenge of harnessing information from multiple internal and external sources to provide greater insight into all aspects of the business. They needed to aggregate data from different systems, improve the consistency and quality of that data, and visualize it through easy-to-understand dashboards, charts, and maps. The company was also struggling with organizing information among information systems, addressing the integrity of the data in those systems, and visualizing that information in a meaningful way.

ReaderLink, a premier distributor of paperback and hardcover books, was struggling with data accessibility and report generation due to its custom-built information systems. The company had disparate legacy systems that made it difficult to quickly access data and develop ad hoc reports. This led to inconsistencies in sales numbers and a lack of confidence in the data. The company sought to revolutionize the way it collects, reports, analyzes, and distributes information. However, the team feared that creating an enterprise BI environment would be time-consuming and cumbersome, partly due to previous experience with data warehouse projects. ReaderLink's applications were developed and deployed over many years, leading to poor integration and a tremendous amount of data redundancy.

Saint Louis University (SLU) was transitioning from its SCT/Plus ERP applications to SCT Banner. The challenge was to enable end users across 300 departments to generate reports from the new ERP system, with no disruption to their familiar reporting activities. The university also wanted to isolate end-user reporting activities from the back-end ERP infrastructure to keep business processes on track during the changeover. The goal was to create a Web-based reporting system as a front-end for the ERP applications, providing instant end-user access to information from the desktop and create an executive dashboard for new types of forecasting, trending, and analysis exercises.

Scherer Bros. Lumber Co., a third-generation family-owned business, was looking to retool its operation to become a lean manufacturing organization. The company wanted to shift from creating materials in anticipation of demand to a model where materials are not purchased and goods are not produced until they are pulled into production by customer orders. This required a significant amount of new business information and a performance management framework to measure progress. The company also wanted to improve its retail-side reporting to enhance decision-making, create efficient and balanced delivery loads across multiple yard locations, and eradicate errors in customer information.

Staples Promotional Products was struggling with an inefficient and inconsistent reporting environment. The IT department was constantly writing reports to meet the needs of various departments, using a variety of tools including DB2 reports on the AS/400, Cognos' Impromptu, Microsoft Access databases, Excel data analysis, and Web forms for querying data. The lack of consistency and the time-consuming nature of this process led to the IT department seeking a more efficient solution. They wanted to provide end-user reporting tools to the entire organization, requiring a reporting environment that was accessible to a broad base of users, not just application developers or systems analysts.

State Volunteer Mutual Insurance Company (SVMIC) was seeking to augment its current information resources by empowering its business decision-makers with fresh, data-driven insight. The company wanted to enhance its competitive advantage and financial stability. SVMIC needed to manage its financial solvency to ensure the physicians and group medical practices that depend on their malpractice coverage could continue treating patients with confidence. The company required access to real-time data to get their pricing right, which involved choosing risk carefully and pricing their insurance policies appropriately. This required a deep understanding of their data points and a thoughtful assessment of risks and trends.

Steel Technologies, a steel processor with 24 facilities located throughout the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, needed to carefully track steel as it moves through the supply chain. This was one of the main factors that motivated the company to acquire business intelligence (BI) and integration technology from Information Builders. The company's customers expect to see an accounting of every pound of steel that they process, including scrap. As a $2 billion company, a large portion of Steel Technologies' capital is tied up in inventory. The company uses business intelligence to keep a finger on the pulse of where their inventory stands at any point in time. They use integration technology to load their data mart and simplify their EDI connections. Before the implementation of iWay, Steel Technologies had unique EDI maps for every trading partner. They were maintaining hundreds of maps, which made it difficult to respond in a timely fashion to new business requirements. They had a tremendous backlog of requests to add new trading partners.

Tarleton State University was facing challenges with their previous reporting system. The system was inefficient, requiring the same reports and database queries to be run repeatedly, tying up valuable resources. The problem was further compounded by the time-consuming process of formatting reports in Excel. Some reports, such as semester reports, took up to two weeks to produce, while others, like enrollment, had to be run each day, further burdening the staff. The university was in need of a more comprehensive solution to their reporting needs.

Thomas Nelson, the world’s largest Christian publisher, was facing challenges in accelerating decision-making and minimizing the burden on IT by helping users become more self-sufficient in addressing their own reporting requirements. The company's information architecture was quite diverse, made up primarily of SQL, DB2, and Oracle systems that recently replaced antiquated mainframe databases. Before the implementation of WebFOCUS, requests for reports could take several weeks to fulfill. Those lagging turnaround times often hindered the usefulness of the data for those who needed it, and created substantial delays in important decision-making activities. With an IT team of only 25 professionals available to address those requests, Thomas Nelson knew it needed to make its end users more self-sufficient.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) oversees all public postsecondary education in Texas. It works with various entities to provide the citizens of Texas with the widest access to higher education of the highest quality possible. One of the key functions of THECB is to develop, implement, and evaluate a long-range strategic plan for Texas higher education. For example, the THECB’s “Closing the Gaps by 2015” initiative centers on four goals: increasing student participation, increasing student success, expanding institutional excellence, and increasing research expenditures. To reach these and other objectives, THECB needed to increase the efficiency of its staff. At the same time, it needed to improve communication and information sharing with external stakeholders. As THECB was migrating from a mainframe to a server-based environment, the agency turned to Information Builders’ WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) platform to enhance information management across and beyond the organization.

Trustmark, a leading provider of employee benefits services, was facing a challenge with its Voluntary Benefit Solutions (VBS) subsidiary. The company lacked formalized metrics and indicators needed to support a five-year strategic transformation and revenue growth initiative. Existing reports took weeks to complete and delivered limited insight. As a result, business users often relied on Excel spreadsheets, which contained incomplete or outdated information. The company needed a centralized business intelligence (BI) and analytics capability to consolidate data from multiple diverse systems and make it readily accessible to executives, process owners, and operational workers so they can closely monitor VBS operations and activities.

Shikoku Electric Power Co., Inc., a leading multi-utility company in Japan, was facing challenges with the speed and efficiency of spreadsheet output, a crucial element of the company’s day-to-day business operations. In 2004, when Shikoku adopted SAP R/3 as a new management system for the entire group, the company also introduced a reporting tool for creating spreadsheets. Three years later, Shikoku decided to upgrade its SAP R/3 enterprise reporting (ERP) system, and began searching for a new, compatible spreadsheet creation tool.

ASM Research, a leading provider of application, software, system, network, database, and reporting solutions to U.S. government customers, was faced with the challenge of modernizing an outdated reporting environment. This environment was used by military training personnel to track the training activities of U.S. Army individuals within the training and developing programs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and other federal agencies. The old system was antiquated, difficult to use, and posed numerous challenges when it came to tracking training-related events and monitoring how resources were being allocated and funds were being spent. There was an urgent need to update and modernize the environment, without disrupting training services.

United Way, the world’s largest privately funded nonprofit organization, needed to help its worldwide network of 13,000 employees understand which partners have the best performance, which programs are the most successful. The organization was only able to view resulting data from their studies via tabular reports and high-level summaries. As more sophisticated analytics tools became available, United Way realized that the entire staff would be more likely to recognize patterns, dependencies, and anomalies in the data if it were presented visually through dashboards, maps, and charts. United Way carefully evaluated several market-leading analytics tools before purchasing the WebFOCUS platform from Information Builders.

Walsworth Publishing, a publisher of yearbooks and other print materials, was facing a challenge in providing its clients with quick and easy access to information. The company was undergoing a massive technology overhaul that included deploying a new ERP system called Prism Win, a vertical application suite for the printing industry. This overhaul impacted Walsworth’s customer-facing applications as well as its internal reporting systems. The company needed a single business intelligence (BI) platform that could combine fragmented data created by different programmers using different databases and data management tools. The former reporting capabilities weren’t scalable, they weren’t flexible, and they couldn’t keep up with the company's growth.

Western Power Distribution (WPD) is the electricity distribution network operator for South West England and South and West Wales. The network consists of 83,000 kms of overhead lines and underground cables, and 90,000 substations. The company has approximately 2,300 staff. Over the years, the company had established a number of different enterprise applications and systems. However, WPD wanted a business intelligence platform that would allow the company to have a single view of the business, based on multiple data sources, and have the flexibility to offer standardised and bespoke reports respectively. One of the major challenges that WPD wanted to overcome by moving to a new BI platform was the ability to access multiple data sources via a single tool. With key data residing in a variety of systems ranging from a mainframe, Oracle 10g database and other enterprise software applications, WPD did not want to continue providing a reporting tool for each application but rather access all the data and present it using a single BI solution.

Willis Towers Watson, a global multinational risk management, insurance brokerage, and advisory company, was facing challenges in modernizing the customer experience, simplifying security, and streamlining access to sensitive client information. The company wanted to create a customer-facing analytics portal that serves multiple lines of business, anchored by a HIPAA-compliant security layer that allows single-sign-on access to essential business functions. The initial version of their BenefitView application did not keep pace with the growing needs of the company. It was not scalable for high-volume transactions and required significant maintenance. The company needed to upgrade to a scalable solution with a robust architecture that would continue to manage their business-critical requirements, including absolute security for HIPAA data.

Wings Travel Management, a company specializing in oil and gas-related travel, faced the challenge of capturing travel data for clients operating across Europe, North America, South America, Africa, and the Middle East and putting it in a form that they can use to monitor their travel programs. The company wanted to create customer-facing analytics portals along with a secure metadata layer that enables clients to visualize just their subset of the travel data via interactive charts, graphs, and maps. However, their previous analytical inquiries couldn’t prevent users from changing formulas that the IT team created, which meant similar inquiries sometimes yielded conflicting results. Managing the underlying data was also tedious as they had to manually control hundreds of individual queries and reports.

York Regional Police (YRP) had been amassing valuable data for years from various systems including a dispatch system, a records management system, a PeopleSoft ERP system, and various other sources, including Microsoft Excel. However, to support data-driven decision-making, data had to be manually aggregated and deconflicted to answer questions about how, when, where, and why police assets were deployed. YRP wanted an easy way to query this data to gain real-time insights into officer activity and performance; how an officer’s work time is compartmentalized across a variety of official daily duties; where they stand with sick time, personal leave, vacation, and overtime; and early flagging of traumatic incidents that can threaten an officer’s mental and physical well-being.

As Colorado State University's analytics endeavors expanded to include many types of data and reporting tools, the institution’s faculty and staff members had a difficult time obtaining consistent data. People were showing up at meetings with conflicting numbers due to inconsistent operational definitions and the lack of a central reporting platform. The university needed one centrally supported platform that could deliver one version of the truth. Campus constituents wanted a cloud-based solution that could improve student outcomes through predictive analytics, boost operational efficiencies, and differentiate CSU from other institutions with externally facing dashboards and fact books.