The Louisiana Department of Health was faced with the challenge of creating a data strategy that identifies and links all data elements associated with each citizen/recipient, healthcare provider, and location. The department wanted to improve data integrity, analysis, and reporting by creating standard processes for data storage, movement, cleansing, enrichment, and access. The department depends on an array of applications – legacy, custom, off-the-shelf, on-premises, and remotely hosted. Each application operates as a standalone system with its own set of business rules and data. Data sharing and reporting across systems is complex and difficult. System fragmentation drives up the cost of conducting business by reducing productivity and increasing technical maintenance efforts and activities.

The Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) was facing challenges in increasing the efficiency of fraud detection, foster care, disaster recovery, and other reporting initiatives within the state’s social services department. The department was struggling with disparate IT systems that were developed with different standards and data structures, making the administration of programs and provision of benefits difficult, slow, and resource-intensive. Additionally, the department was grappling with fraud in its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program (SNAP) and Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), which was costing the state significant amounts of money. The department also needed a more efficient way to place children in foster homes that met their needs and were close to their schools and families.

Loyola University Chicago, the nation’s largest Jesuit University, needed analytic tools that could simultaneously access Oracle, Lawson, and other data formats. They also needed to convert more than 800 financial reports created with Crystal Reports to a more modern, interactive format. The university was looking for BI tools that make it easy to sort, summarize, filter, and display data based on pre-selected variables, and to visualize that data in a variety of formats. The university's first major BI project required linking data from several sources: student data from a PeopleSoft for Education application, financial data from a Lawson Financial Management application; a Sakai grading scale application; and proprietary information from the university’s Library, Housing, and Admissions databases.

Marvin F. Poer and Company, a leading property tax advisor, was facing a challenge in responding to customer demands for easier access to information about the status of work on real estate, personal property, and administrative processes. The company wanted to go a step further by rolling out BI applications not only to internal employees, but also to customers. They wanted to create a customer-facing dashboard environment that delivers key business metrics about the status of real estate, personal property, and administrative processes.

Manitoba Hydro, a major electric power and natural gas utility in Manitoba, Canada, needed to provide extensive customer energy usage data in an interactive, visual format to assist with forecasting energy requirements. The steady increases in energy consumption due to a growing population in the province motivated the utility to acquire analytics tools so analysts could improve the accuracy of their energy forecasts. The forecasting is fundamental to many major activities at the company and it is the starting point for the corporation’s long-term decision-making. Having the data needed in an understandable, highly accessible format was essential.

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.

Medline Industries, a global manufacturer and distributor of healthcare products, faced the challenge of developing a self-service analytic environment that would provide workers with an accurate view of every aspect of the business. This included inventory management, plant capacity, labor, and finance. The company needed to streamline business processes and deliver analytics and audit tools to ensure ongoing efficiency and profitability. The challenge was to track thousands of products and dozens of distribution centers as part of a worldwide supply chain, which involved a lot of moving parts and an extraordinary amount of data.

The Ministry of Public Administration of Mexico (MPA) was facing a challenge of low quality in public works projects related to roads, schools, parks, and other public facilities. The agency needed a more comprehensive way to audit and control public works projects. They decided to create a business intelligence (BI) and data integration environment that could link several public information systems, create a consolidated and trusted source of project information, and present results on demand through interactive reports and dashboards. The goal was to improve the services and facilities available to citizens.

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.

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).

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.

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.

OEC Group, a global leader in the logistics and supply-chain industry, needed to expand its basic EDI integration infrastructure to include many types of electronic messages and formats including Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, e-mail, Fax, XML, JSON, Excel, and other structured and unstructured data formats, as well as paper documents of all types. Prior to implementing iWay, developers at OEC Group hard-coded individual interfaces for each customer and supplier. This was laborious and expensive to develop new integrations. The company also needed to comply with the Canadian e-manifest program, which requires all carriers, freight forwarders, and importers to send advance commercial information about their shipments electronically to the Canada Border Services Agency. The data has to be processed before a shipment is ever loaded onto boats or planes, meaning the documents must be present at the port of departure before the government will allow goods to be loaded.

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.

Orange County, Florida, faced the challenge of collecting, analyzing, and disseminating data from multiple sources to ensure efficiency in government processes and provide essential government information to the public. The county aimed to reduce the cost of providing government services. The county's IT environment had to manage a wide range of services, from managing the region’s 911 fire and rescue call system to implementing security systems at the Department of Corrections. The county's 911 service alone processes approximately 1.5 million calls each year. Government offices handle more than two billion e-mail messages and 33,000 public records requests each year. The county also had to manage information systems for public safety, criminal justice, and public works as well as for an immense convention center, a thriving life science research park, and one of the largest radio systems in the country.

Palm Coast Data (PCD) was looking to fine-tune its analytics for calls, orders, shipping, and inventory, as well as expand its analytic tools to include e-commerce dashboards. The company wanted to extend a variety of existing reporting packages with modern BI technology. PCD had acquired FulCircle, a multi-channel solutions provider, which included an application called SmartSuite based on Information Builders’ WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) and analytics technology. PCD wanted to enhance the SmartSuite environment and extend WebFOCUS into other product areas. The company aimed to create analytic dashboards that enable customers to more precisely track their fulfillment and e-commerce activities.

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.

Rosnet, a provider of SaaS-based restaurant management solutions, faced the challenge of helping restaurant operators improve profitability and drive internal efficiencies. They needed to provide accurate data to analyze food costs, labor costs, and many essential service metrics. The company aimed to create a customizable, self-service BI portal that delivers analytics and insights for internal and client use. The challenge was to ensure that the IT team no longer had to spend time creating, modifying, and customizing reports for clients and that restaurants could easily access metrics on operational efficiency and profitability.

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.

Securex, a Belgium-based provider of social-services management, helps small and medium-sized companies with payroll, HR, and other social-management tasks. The complex structure of Belgium’s legal and social services makes it difficult for companies to keep up-to-date with continually changing personnel and payroll requirements. Large organizations typically employ in-house specialists to stay on top of the changes. But for smaller enterprises and independent contractors, maintaining compliance with government payroll regulations involves navigating through a bureaucratic maze. This difficulty supplies a burgeoning market for Securex, a provider of social-services management based in Belgium that helps small and medium-sized companies. Securex currently has 26,000 clients, and 73 percent of its customer base consists of companies with fewer than five workers.

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.

Spokane Teachers Credit Union (STCU) was facing a challenge of losing members through the natural process of attrition. The existing reporting system was not capable of delivering the insights the credit union needed to deliver targeted, relevant offers to its members. The credit union was using Pitney Bowes' Sagent business intelligence (BI) product for 14 years, but the product was being sunsetted. This situation presented an opportunity for STCU to implement a new BI and analytics platform. The credit union sought an easy-to-use analytics platform that could enrich their reporting and formatting, data security, scalability, and data visualization. It also needed to have strong self-service capabilities to meet the needs of more than 25 power users and 500 business users.