Fast-growing Costa Crociere wanted to improve its booking process to handle more service options and more reservations than ever before. Travel agents and customers needed to be able to make a reservation through any channel. Behind the scenes, corporate systems needed to be integrated into the booking process. With such a large number of travelers to serve, the group’s booking system is equivalent to the ordering system of a large manufacturer. Costa’s ERP system must guarantee efficient functionality to reduce the time it takes to manage bookings, and it must constantly adapt to new business developments. The system stores and manages all the essential information about the cruise holidays chosen by customers: the itinerary, cabin type, personal details and additional services, such as flights, transfers and hotels. The job of managing this huge amount of information is further complicated by the fact that the booking system also offers options for purchasing cruises and associated ser- vices that are open for varying periods, prior to booking confirmation. If a booking is not confirmed, all cabins and other options must be made available in real-time to other potential customers.

HSBC Turkey had planned to double its customers and regional branches in five years without changing staff. To support this fast expansion, HSBC Turkey took a holistic approach to SOA governance—one that will assure effective lifecycle management, asset governance and impact analysis while increasing service re-usability. From the first application deployed, it was obvious SOA governance was essential to getting the maximum value from SOA. Governance would guarantee the success of the company’s transformation to an SOA and unify all legacy governance processes within a single framework. The company would be able to enhance asset management and re-usability by improving existing governance roles, procedures and rules.

Bank Mandiri, Indonesia's largest bank, aimed to transform its payment processes to significantly reduce the time and cost of transactions and fuel revenue growth. The bank wanted to deliver highly efficient, competitively priced electronic payment and transaction services in a uniform way across multiple channels and touchpoints. The bank also aimed to anchor itself as the dominant and preferred partner for Indonesia’s move to a cashless society.

VR Leasing Group, a member of FinanzVerbund, a cooperative association of financial solutions providers based in Germany, was facing challenges due to its heterogeneous IT landscape. The disparity in the IT landscape made it difficult to standardize or automate sales processes, particularly the loan application processing. Each disparate application in the process had its own address list, and data had to be entered manually and then verified. This resulted in an overlap in functionality between systems, adding to the inefficiency. The sales partners used various browser-based online front-ends, each with its own specific application process and its own address list, which was not always consistent with addresses stored in the other front-ends or in back-end application management and customer relationship management systems. This resulted in an excessive effort to test and maintain application functions and interfaces that carried out similar tasks. The same was true for assuring the quality of master address data since data was not exchanged automatically between disparate applications.

As Canada’s leading electronic healthcare solutions provider, TELUS wanted to create the nation’s most comprehensive Electronic Health Records (EHR) system. The system would give clinicians immediate and secure Web-based access to patient e-health records at any time. Canada is investing billions of dollars to build an Electronic Health Records (EHR) system that will enable healthcare providers, coast to coast, to access and update any Canadian’s health record electronically and securely. By 2016, the plan is for every Canadian to have an e-health record, containing a variety of medical documents, from doctor’s notes and diagnostic images to prescriptions and test results. TELUS Health Solutions is helping Canada “get there faster” by delivering a Health Information Access Layer (HIAL) solution that aligns with the Canada Health Infoway Blueprint and will enable every provider in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador to access DIS data. This is among the first provincial DIS systems in Canada.

Gwent Police, a force in South Wales, United Kingdom, was facing several challenges. The existing performance management system was incapable of providing information for internal stakeholders. The force needed a system that could provide crime mapping and support intelligence-led policing. The previous system was paper-based and took a whole day to compile monthly staff performance reports. Information was dispersed under different applications in the force’s Command and Control system. The force was also keen to identify the availability of appropriately trained staff and highlight where there were shortages.

Choice Logistics, a global leader in mission-critical service parts logistics, recognized the need for dashboards to drive efficiency by creating a single data presentation layer that leveraged consistent data sources, metrics, and KPIs. The company had implemented a data warehousing system, which allowed them to pull data and create manual static reports in Excel. However, they saw the opportunity to build upon the data warehousing system and provide real-time dynamic reporting to its clients with a dashboard solution. The company decided to implement a solution that would give clients more control and more insights into the areas of their business they wanted to monitor.

In 2011, the Neo@Ogilvy London Office wanted to improve their existing reporting processes to match the increasing demands of managing global digital media campaigns for their clients. They needed a more advanced Business Intelligence solution and a data presentation platform to expose the reporting data housed in their data warehouse. Initially, many of their reporting processes were done in Excel. They implemented Microsoft’s SQL Server to manage the agency’s data more effectively but still needed a solution to expose that data to their clients and account teams.

Eggborough Power, a company that has been constructing power stations since 1962 and supplying electricity to the National Grid in the United Kingdom since 1967, faced a challenge in monitoring the plant’s performance and identifying potential improvements. The company had to make decisions based on reports, which involved scanning through the database daily and looking for anomalies hidden amongst rows and rows of data. This process was both time-consuming and ineffective in figuring out where potential improvements could be made.

MicronNexus GmbH, a leading provider of interfaces to both local and global car rental suppliers, was facing a challenge in understanding and managing the health of their main investment - the cars. They were dealing with automotive dealerships and renters spread over a large area, and it was vital for them to keep a firm understanding of the health of their cars. They were using a number reporting system in the form of spreadsheets, but the numbers were unclear and it was difficult for them to find out what their figures were versus where they should be.

323 Technology Solutions, a leading-edge technology company, specializes in business intelligence products that support dispatch, logistics, and operations for companies in the construction and manufacturing industry. The company's key challenge was to provide clients with customized technology solutions. They sought to offer IT guidance and services to help keep their clients competitive in their respective sectors. The company initially sold Dundas as a standalone product, but they realized the need to integrate all their solutions into one platform for efficiency and better service delivery.

McKinstry Company, a full-service design, build, operate and maintain firm, was looking for a tool that would allow their clients to track their energy use by building and distribute the information in a digestible format. Their clients include municipalities, counties, school board districts, and universities. The company had explored developing their own tool to visualize the data but found they were building them ‘from scratch’ for each client, which was not efficient or scalable.

Telco Services Australia (TSA), one of Australia’s largest national providers of outsourced sales and marketing support, was facing a challenge with its reporting structure. The company, which handles about 500,000 transactions per month, was using a static reporting structure that involved compiling and downloading spreadsheets into a 'report console'. This method only provided a snapshot in time and had to be repeated daily, making it inefficient and time-consuming. The company needed a solution that would provide real-time, accessible, and meaningful data displays that could be used to improve productivity and earnings.

Saudi Telecom Company (STC), one of the largest telecommunications providers in the Middle East, was struggling with managing and interpreting the vast amount of data generated from its daily operations. With over 160 million customers contacting STC daily for various services, the company had to monitor all this information in a data centre featuring a soccer-field-sized wall of monitors displaying network statistics, service analytics, and customer calls. The challenge was to prioritize and contextualize this data for better understanding and decision-making. The executives lacked the ability to see key performance indicators and had to rely on technical teams for status reports, which often arrived too late, leading to reactive problem-solving rather than proactive prevention.

Multiband Corporation, a large and diverse company in the telecom industry, faced a significant challenge in measuring performance metrics in real-time. As the largest DIRECTV master system operator in the Multiple Dwelling Unit (MDU) market in the US, Multiband's compensation was based on their service performance. Therefore, it was crucial for them to measure the right metrics in the right way to ensure profitability. They needed to know how customers were ranking them on several metrics, including customer satisfaction surveys, the number of repair calls, and how many visits were needed to resolve a matter. However, they lacked real-time, accessible data to do so. Furthermore, given the company's size and diversity, acting as one team with one vision was a significant challenge.

Sun Healthcare Group (SHG) is a leading U.S. healthcare provider, delivering healthcare products and services to thousands of people every day. The healthcare industry has been plagued by rising costs, reduced reimbursements, and regulatory changes. This requires creative solutions to not only maintain the focus on patient care but to uncover the efficiencies needed to remain competitive and profitable in this environment. Prior to dashboards, information exchange processes at SHG were very manual and decentralized. For instance, getting daily numbers such as the customer base or admissions would require a regional employee to call each center and have them compile and email the metrics manually each day. These numbers would then roll up to divisional and finally to corporate stakeholders. The more serious problem was the lack of an enterprise wide, single version of the truth. Different stakeholders would generate their own reports with different conclusions.

SizweAfrica Business Consulting's clients are involved in supply chain activities. With the rising cost of gas, maintenance, and operations, there has been an increased focus on optimizing revenue streams. The concept of data visualization is fairly new, and many companies are still using outdated methods of tracking their performance. This has led to a reactive business model where companies are often unaware of the profitability of their accounts and routes. The challenge was to change this reactive model to a proactive one using data visualization.

Family HealthCare Network (FHCN) was facing challenges with their existing visualization capabilities and data accessibility. They wanted to improve data transparency throughout their network and enhance organization-wide performance in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Uniform Data System (UDS) reporting. The UDS is a core set of information appropriate for reviewing the operation and performance of health centers. The data collected is reviewed annually to ensure compliance with legislative and regulatory requirements, help report general Health Center Program accomplishments, and continually improve health center operations and performance. The UDS report is required of Health Center Program grantees by organizations such as FHCN, which is a Migrant Health Center. FHCN required a BI solution that provided more visibility, to help realize the vastness of their data, and to ensure that federal goals were met. They also needed a solution that bestowed their users the right tools to improve performance.

Absorb Software, a provider of Learning Management Systems (LMS), identified the need to provide their LMS administrators more direct access to their data. As their client base grew, they found an increasing demand for enhanced customization to the reporting functionality. Absorb Software’s clients wanted the ability to gather actionable insights from the LMS, to bring-to-life their own specific reporting design and functionality. They had requested unique data layouts as well as greater interactivity within their reporting environment, to better consume and analyze their data. With a growing client-base in a diverse range of industries, and a highly flexible software with a wide range of workflows, the challenge of building generic reports that cover all of their clients’ unique needs demanded an expansion beyond Absorb’s already rich suite of standard reporting options.

SAVYVA recognized that in dealing with transfer pricing analysis, the many complexities, processes and massive quantities of data needed to be better managed and made more actionable. While SAVYVA had the business domain expertise and the need to create a new solution to tackle these issues, they grappled with the decision of building it from scratch, versus creating a unique solution on top of a strong foundation. SAVYVA was clear on what they were looking for in a partner. They’d had extensive experience with different BI providers who dealt in multi-dimensional analysis, and were always dissatisfied in their functionalities. While the tools they’d evaluated were quick and efficient with respect to advanced calculations, they lacked the extensibility and permissibility SAVYVA sought, to truly be combined and used with the functionalities they desired. SAVYVA found that many BI tools were, to put it bluntly, expensive, and desired a solution that was affordable and still able to fulfil their criteria. Not only did they wish to fully utilize a solution that possessed quantitative analysis capabilities (via a data model set up and in-memory analysis), SAVYVA wanted a solution that would allow them to inject and embed their own components into it.

Rental One, a premier equipment rental company, was struggling with an enormous Excel spreadsheet that tracked key performance indicators (KPIs) for financial data company-wide. The spreadsheet was becoming increasingly cumbersome as it accumulated data and expanded. The process was partially automated, but the majority of content was added manually. As the number of variables and quantity of content increased, the spreadsheet continued to grow, becoming more unwieldy. At the end of each month, additional consolidations were prepared to provide an executive review of business performance. However, the Excel spreadsheet was producing incorrect results, and different users reached different conclusions based on how the spreadsheet was interpreted and which data stacks they ran. The Excel-based system was grinding to a halt and impacting multiple facets of the business.

Center6, a leading data and information services provider, has been helping North America’s fastest growing homebuilders and developers optimize their operations through visual analytics, dashboards, and mobile reporting. However, their customers wanted to do more with the product and expressed a need for visually stunning reports that provide the views and interactivity required to gain critical business insights. More importantly, their customers had requested Center6 provide an end-to-end solution so they could remain within a single application, ultimately ensuring a superior, more seamless user experience. In order to meet the demands of their customers, Center6 began researching various BI, analytics, and data visualization vendors such as Tableau, QlikView, Microstrategy, and Microsoft Power BI.

Medidata, a Value-Added-Reseller (VAR) of Dundas Data Visualization, specializes in ERP software development for local Portuguese Governments. They were facing demands from their clients for software that allowed them to better analyze and interact with the valuable data produced from the ERP software they were using. Medidata felt it necessary to add a Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics solution to their portfolio of software products. By providing a BI and analytics solution, Medidata’s clients would be able to make better and more informed decisions in order to improve their efficiencies and productivity, redefine their processes as necessary, and increase or decrease resources if needed. In addition to their external needs, Medidata wanted a BI and analytics solution that would detect issues regarding data quality within their own internally used software.

InfoCloud’s customers wanted a flexible Business Intelligence solution with a competitive price-point and enterprise capabilities that were able to minimize their total cost of ownership, while still allowing for rapid return on investment. A lofty demand, made more difficult by the desire to have a solution that could provide a unique experience, tailored to each user, without restrictions. Through deep analysis, InfoCloud discovered a top business challenge their customers faced, was a lack of flexibility in their current solutions. InfoCloud felt it imperative to provide a solution that allowed their customers to design their own dashboards without limitations so they can run their business exactly as they envision.

IT Weapons, a Canadian leader in secure cloud solutions and managed IT services, was facing a challenge with their client reporting process. The company was generating quarterly reports for clients using a semi-manual process that was time-consuming and labor-intensive. This process was costing the company the equivalent of one full-time employee per year. The static nature of these reports limited the clients' ability to plan effectively. The data in the reports aged quickly, but the effort required to generate the reports limited the frequency at which they could be produced. IT Weapons needed to find a Business Intelligence (BI) solution that could automate their entire process and create dashboards that clients could access at any time.

The Visual Analytics Group within Siemens was tasked with providing actionable reporting solutions to the entire Siemens organization across different departments and lines of business. They needed to maintain a balance between governance and self-service capabilities. Siemens needed one framework that could be used for their multiple use cases at scale, such as customer satisfaction surveys, logistics processes, financial reporting and more. They needed to provide users with the self- service capabilities they needed to easily access approved data for analysis and decision making, all while maintaining their users’ focus on the metrics that matter the most and ease of use. Additionally, the solution needed to easily integrate into existing Siemens systems for a seamless user experience.

Viamedia operates in over 70 markets across 35 states, and services their entire operation, regardless of function, from their corporate headquarters in Kentucky. As such, their Sales team is heavily dispersed throughout the country. Consequently, as Viamedia grew their operation, it became increasingly difficult for their Sales managers to correctly identify market performance, and even more difficult to obtain real, accurate data and effectively manage their teams via standardized guidelines. Viamedia recognized that in order to maintain their success, it was imperative they had access to an internal application that would empower management to ask the right questions at the right times, and enable them to understand how each market (individually and as a whole) was performing compared to goal presently, and at subsequent periods of time. Moreover, Viamedia coveted an application that would provide management with the tools necessary to deliver consistent and relevant coaching, and would help their Sales teams grow professionally, financially, and personally, and would improve their overall performance. Ultimately, Viamedia required an application that would allow them to identify potential performance deficiencies, and ensure key metrics were achieved by helping them make accurate decisions, backed by data.

Yulista Holding, LLC, an Alaska Native Corporation (ANC) performing rapid response aerospace and defense solutions, was heavily reliant on Excel for their reporting needs. They consolidated valuable data regarding revenues, gross margins, incomes, donations, resource management, etc., across their family of nine companies, all of which was aggregated, tracked, and reported on using Excel. However, creating reports was a highly manual and time-consuming task. Accessing those reports was equally as arduous, and deriving meaningful, up-to-date insights was very difficult with the use of Excel. There were also concerns of errors being made due to the manual data entry. As a result, they began looking for a full end-to-end BI solution with greater functionality and automation capabilities than Excel could provide.

E-Tabs, a software company that develops and delivers highly customizable data visualization and report automation software and services, needed to expand its services to meet the unique needs of its clients in the market research industry. The company required a solution that could handle industry-specific functions such as statistical hypothesis/significance testing and low-base suppression, and prepare dashboards and reports that best support specific market research analysis. The challenge was to find a dashboarding vendor that could provide a solution as bespoke and responsive as E-Tabs itself. The company needed an analytics solution that their experienced data visualization team could take advantage of, to ensure their clients are empowered to deliver dashboards and reports that inform, engage and ultimately allow them to focus on their research.

In 2014, BH Management made the decision to proceed with a software vendor specializing in data analytics solutions specifically for the multi-family real estate industry. Their primary objective was to find and implement an analytics platform that would measure financial and operational performance, and more precisely, allow them to perform year-over-year net operating income comparisons. With these goals met, it then pressed to further customize the solution they’d implemented. BH Management maintained an abundance of disparate data that needed to be aggregated. To ensure this was done in a manner that was most meaningful to them, they needed additional software that could be modified to a great extent. They recognized the need for software with depth and versatility that could be tailored with the features they most coveted. BH Management had no other option but to begin looking for a new Business Intelligence (BI) platform. This time around, they knew they needed a BI platform that allowed for virtually limitless customization in creating data visualizations and would meet any design requirements they threw at it.