Coastal Credit is a nationwide auto lender servicing automotive dealers in 26 states. Their primary customer base is the secondary used car market and they purchase loans made to military and civilian consumers. The company is taking on other established lenders by offering a range of digital conveniences that empower dealers to boost profitability and help consumers simplify their financial lives. The company's strategy is to use WebFOCUS to supply analytics to dealers, customers, and employees, including data about automotive buying trends, consumer loan histories, and regional lending practices. The company's vision is to create a more comprehensive digital presence for interfacing with customers, delivering insights that make auto dealers more profitable.

CSG Systems International, a leading provider of customer care and billing solutions for the communications, entertainment, and field services industries, recognized the need for its clients to have easy, direct access to data to remain competitive and become more efficient operators. The company sought to unlock the value of its clients’ data with Information Builders’ business intelligence (BI) and analytics WebFOCUS platform. CSG Vantage BI, the company’s centralized data repository, does a great job capturing and consolidating transactions from various data sources. However, CSG sought to further unlock the value of client data using WebFOCUS to provide interactive reports, scorecards, and other visualization offerings. With the Vantage BI solution, clients tap into their data to obtain the knowledge they need to keep their businesses running smoothly.

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.

DataGen, a subsidiary of the Healthcare Association of New York State, sought to help its clients understand the cost implications of changes in financial policy in the healthcare industry. Previously, DataGen’s clients used Microsoft Excel and SharePoint to generate and deliver reports. However, as data changed, it took hours to update report templates and upload them to a SharePoint portal for DataGen’s growing client base. The Microsoft-based solution lacked scalability, adaptability, and had only rudimentary self-service analytic tools for business users.

The New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration (DRA) was facing challenges with siloed data sources which made it difficult for staff to capture, compare, and analyze taxpayer data in support of collection and auditing activities. The agency was using more than 20 disparate tax applications to administer various taxes, maintain taxpayer information, and manage licenses. The information systems were extremely diverse and weren’t well integrated. Each system had unique search capabilities and log-in requirements. Staff spent a substantial amount of time collecting and compiling information to track where revenues were coming from, monitor taxpayer activities, analyze historical trends, and conduct future planning. The collection and auditing efforts lacked coordination and it was difficult to provide information to legislators.

Diakonessenhuis, a top Dutch hospital, was facing increasing demands for information from various stakeholders including health insurers, the press, the Netherlands Healthcare Inspectorate, and patients. Internally, the hospital needed to use information to deploy staff and resources, organize departments, and account for budgetary decisions. The rising B Segment system in the nation, which allows certain healthcare costs to be negotiable, was causing more healthcare providers to invest in cost-driven management. This required real-time access to complete and accurate data from across the facility. Previously, reports were compiled centrally once a month and if a specific question was not addressed in the report, it often took days to get the answer. This led to decisions often being based on intuition, without first consulting valid information.

Diodes Inc., a Dallas-based manufacturing company, found itself with important information stored in three different enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems after a multi-year acquisition spree. This led to a lack of consistency and difficulty in creating enterprise-level reports. The company wanted to improve data quality and consistency, and also acquire better enterprise reporting tools. The company's reporting problems were only the tip of the iceberg. A larger problem loomed below the surface, in the hodgepodge of databases and software applications from Oracle, PeopleSoft, IBM, Promise, and other vendors. At the time, a majority of Diodes’ reporting was accomplished through data warehouses affiliated with these enterprise applications and ERP systems.

DST Systems, a leading provider of strategic advisory services, transformative technologies, and operations outsourcing services to the financial and healthcare industries, was seeking to enhance their analytics capabilities. The company's leadership wanted to acquire a complete BI platform and formulate a comprehensive data management strategy. The existing software solutions from IBM and Oracle were not meeting DST's business needs. As data and analytics became progressively more important to the services DST provides to its clients, senior managers needed a data management and analytics platform that could take the company to the next level. They needed a solution that could leverage its existing IT resources, applications, and security models.

As Empire Airlines grew and its operation became more complex, senior managers saw the need to acquire a software platform for business intelligence (BI), analytics, and reporting. The ideal product would be a hardware platform that could support several virtual environments, including BI and analytics, e-mail, a domain controller, and a terminal server to support workers at remote locations. The company also owns Empire Aerospace, which provides heavy maintenance services to the airline industry, and Empire Unmanned, which provides unmanned aerial surveillance and analysis services for agriculture and other industries. The company provides air cargo services in 18 states and operates an inter-island passenger service for Hawaiian Airlines. One of Empire Airlines first inquiries was with Scale Computing. Melanie Ellingson, director of IT at Empire Airlines, liked Scale’s HC3 Virtualization Platform, a “datacenterin-a-box” with server, storage and virtualization integrated into a single appliance. Best of all, the appliance included WebFOCUS Business User Edition.

Enclara Pharmacia, a Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) for the hospice and palliative care industry, was formed with the goal of minimizing the cost of palliative care drugs for end-of-life patients and addressing the clinical, financial, and regulatory challenges faced by the hospice sector. One of the major challenges was the lack of real-time data on medication costs and utilization trends. Hospice executives needed this data to manage their expenses effectively. The old reporting platform used by Enclara Pharmacia produced static reports that didn't allow hospices to analyze or visualize their data. This lack of transparency and flexibility was a significant issue. Furthermore, pharmacy expenses are one of the largest material cost drivers for hospices, making it crucial to align expenditures with a high standard of care.

Florida Atlantic University (FAU) was faced with the challenge of standardizing on a single analytic solution university-wide to facilitate reporting consistency, meet regulatory and accreditation guidelines, and improve decision-making for performance-based funding objectives. The State of Florida had adopted performance-based funding (PBF) for its public colleges and universities, replacing traditional enrollment metrics with outcome metrics such as graduation rate, employment, and student success in the classroom. FAU needed to improve and document student outcomes and measures to support its mission. The university sought to operationalize its PBF strategy and automate the complex compliance reporting scenarios necessary for performance-based funding. The university also needed to comply with Florida’s performance-based funding formulas and receive the top ranking among Florida’s public universities.

Food Lion, a major grocery retailer, was facing challenges with its mainframe-based reporting processes. The company was struggling to deliver financial information to the field in a timely manner. The hardcopy reports generated by mainframe reporting programs had to be manually bursted and stuffed into envelopes, then mailed to store managers and the operations team in the field. By the time managers received this information, it was generally more than one week old. It was also difficult to find particular bits of information, since the reports were printed in a rigid, hardcopy format. The profit and loss statements were generated by a mainframe-based reporting tool. Changes to the reports had to be requested of the IT department.

Gore Mutual Insurance Company, Canada’s oldest property and casualty insurance firm, had a diverse information landscape serving a wide range of users across the underwriting, product development, claims, finance, and broker areas. The company had many detailed reporting and data environments that were inefficient and paper-based. The data was not in any actionable format and couldn't be used in any meaningful way to get a comprehensive view of the business or to manage operations. The company relied heavily on monthly paper reports such as lists of exposures paid, claims, lawsuits, and other important information. The company's claims department extracted data from back-end systems and moved it to a data store. They created related measures, delivered as web-based reports. However, the environment was completely lacking in governance, and it only served a subset of users. Only a few super users with the appropriate skill sets could manually generate reports, so other business users had to either rely on them for information, or create their own Excel spreadsheets and pivot tables.

Haskell, a leading design-build organization in the U.S., was struggling to extract valuable data from its JD Edwards ERP system. The company found that the ERP system was only as good as the data people could get out of it. The challenge was to leverage ERP data to enhance decision-making and extend operational information into the company’s day-to-day activities. The focus was on frontline managers – delivering timely data to the people who are making tactical decisions. The company needed a toolset that would enable the IT department and business analysts to create financial and HR reports more easily. They were looking for a solution that would provide greater flexibility and ease of use, leading to a drastic reduction in the amount of outstanding IT support issues.

Hawkins, a chemical distributor, was facing challenges with its 15-year-old homegrown .NET application which was limited in its flexibility and cumbersome to use. As the company grew and added personnel in many new locations, the legacy system was becoming unmanageable. The company was constantly writing code to add new features or new users to the application. The need for an upgrade was evident, especially with the need for future technology enhancements, such as mobile access to data. The company was looking for a solution that was more efficient, intuitive, and could be leveraged by a broader base of users.

Hexagon Safety & Infrastructure, a provider of mission-critical and business-critical software solutions to governments and service providers, was facing a challenge with its data management. The company's day-to-day business runs on numerous disparate systems, including customer relationship management (CRM) applications from Salesforce.com, Siebel, multiple finance systems, and other vendors. These sources are ideal for collecting and storing data, but are challenging for business users seeking to leverage information in an actionable way. The existing systems had limited reporting capabilities, which made it difficult for the management team to gain the insights they needed into the state of the business. Hexagon needed a unified view of data from all its systems to most effectively manage its operations.

The Hillman Group, a leading manufacturer of fasteners such as nuts, bolts, screws, and washers, was aiming to improve productivity at its three manufacturing facilities and eight distribution centers. The company wanted to implement lean manufacturing initiatives, which involve scrutinizing business processes to remove waste and eliminate unnecessary effort. However, these strategies work best when information related to production, supply, and distribution can be successfully synchronized. The company was facing challenges in accessing and analyzing data from a wide variety of transaction systems, which was crucial for cutting costs and boosting efficiency throughout the organization. Additionally, Hillman previously had 14 different methods for measuring open orders, leading to inconsistencies in sales reporting and forecasts.

ICON Health and Fitness, the world’s largest manufacturer and distributor of home exercise equipment, was facing a challenge in tracking and analyzing operational performance across its various companies and business units. The company's IT department was already stretched thin managing a wide range of responsibilities, and the existing ERP system offered limited BI capabilities, making it difficult to compile historical information and perform data trending. Management wanted a business intelligence (BI) environment that could provide greater insight into key performance indicators (KPIs) across the company, especially to understand how each division was performing on a weekly, monthly, and year-to-date basis, with comparisons to previous time periods and business plans. This was crucial to ensure that the company was meeting its revenue and profitability objectives.

Indaver, a leading waste-management specialist in Europe, was facing challenges in creating high-quality, detailed financial reports for management. The company was growing rapidly and had expanded to over 30 companies, making it a major player in the waste-management market. However, as the company grew, its technology requirements evolved. It had implemented SAP R/3 as its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, but it lacked integrated reporting capabilities among its various offices. The company had outgrown Excel, and SAP reporting was deemed too cumbersome for managers to use for everyday decision support. Indaver needed an integrated Web-based solution that was powerful, yet easy to use. It was also important for the solution to provide a native interface to SAP, largely eliminating the need for a data warehouse.

Intelligence Ltd., a Japan-based HR consulting firm, was facing challenges with its sales reporting application. The existing system provided limited insight into customer accounts, and sales staff required more information to work with existing and potential employment clients. The sales representatives relied heavily on the Job Listing Reporting Tool to support their day-to-day tasks. However, the previous system provided only a fraction of the information they needed. For example, information about the benefits and results of ads was difficult to obtain, often taking several days to collect and compile. When sales reps couldn’t find the data they required, they often turned to the IT department, which would help by aggregating information from MS SQL Server databases and countless disparate Excel spreadsheets – and then display the results. This was a long and tedious process that could take up to several days.

Life sciences companies are faced with the challenge of managing and analyzing a vast base of information to effectively manage sales, marketing, and distribution activities. Many of these organizations have been trying to absorb, digest, and utilize all this information in Microsoft Excel, or to create unique reporting environments to meet their specific needs. The pharmaceutical industry experiences a deluge of information from many sources, including internal systems, third parties, and national government databases. IQVIA saw the opportunity to bring a unique set of BI capabilities to the pharmaceutical marketplace, and then to expand into other verticals as well.

Israeli Credit Insurance Company (ICIC) had to revamp its entire IT infrastructure within a short period of time due to ownership changes. As part of this effort, the company decided to replace its JavaTM-based reporting system with a BI environment. They wanted to be able to create new reports quickly in a structured yet flexible way. The challenge was to introduce a new reporting system that includes about 50 reports in just four months. They had to maintain the same functionality, response time, and look and feel as before, yet also give customers new capabilities.

Jack Nadel International (JNI) is a marketing and promotional products agency that specializes in brand identity reinforcement and maintenance. The Los Angeles-based company serves as an extension of its clients’ sales and marketing teams, combining creative and unique merchandising solutions with cutting-edge information technology to help companies achieve their marketing goals. The company was facing challenges with its existing information distribution system which was slow and paper-based. This was causing delays in providing critical information to administrators, sales personnel, and staff. Additionally, JNI was experiencing data quality issues due to the interface between their Lawson ERP system and a Web front end built in Domino. These issues were causing errors in orders and billing, leading to significant business disruptions.

Jefferson Regional Medical Center, the fourth largest hospital in Arkansas, was overwhelmed by the immense amount of information it had to manage. This included administrative data on hospital operations and various types of patient information. The challenge for clinicians and administrators was to quickly hone in on specific information. Maximizing reimbursements, analyzing payer mixes, tracking admissions trends, and monitoring staff productivity all required accurate information, delivered to the right place at the right time. However, getting information in a timely fashion was often a hit-and-miss prospect. Most of the hospital information systems offered standard reports, but it was difficult to obtain precisely what each user needed. This led to a lot of custom reporting, which dominated the available hours of the IT staff.

Jobs2Web, an interactive recruitment marketing firm, was facing the challenge of transforming operational data into meaningful metrics for its client companies. The firm needed to measure and monitor the effectiveness of job marketing campaigns and channels. With thousands of open positions at any given time, some of Jobs2Web’s clients spend millions of dollars marketing their jobs via various websites, including social media sites. Most of these clients could not adequately measure and monitor the effectiveness of their recruitment efforts. Jobs2Web saw an opportunity to give clients access to something they never had before – a way to analyze the effectiveness of its recruitment efforts. The company knew that by providing data analysis tools on top of the large amounts of transactional data it was already collecting from candidates, it could create a measurement and analysis system that went above and beyond anything currently offered in the field.

Julius Zorn, Ltd. (Juzo), a leading healthcare products manufacturer, was facing challenges in enhancing customer service through improved product quality and accelerated order delivery times. The company's success strategy was based on high-quality products, first-class personalized customer service, and strict adherence to delivery dates. However, smooth and efficient processes were essential, particularly in the case of custom-made bandages or compression clothing, which needed to be delivered quickly and reliably. Juzo could not afford a shortage of resources or other weak spots within its order processing procedures. To ensure smooth operation and adherence to delivery dates, the company needed to oversee data flow throughout the entire production cycle, from consulting and order acceptance through product delivery.

L.B. Foster, a leading manufacturer, fabricator, and distributor of high-quality transportation and construction materials, faced challenges in accessing, analyzing, and presenting information in a cohesive and timely way due to its diverse software infrastructure. This included packaged applications such as a JD Edwards World enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, a Sage SalesLogix CRM system, and more than 200 IBM Lotus Notes applications. As the company grew and its pace of business accelerated, the ability to access and analyze information became critical for company managers. For instance, production personnel were creating bills of materials by hand for shop floor operations, a process that took two to three hours every day. They had to extract data from JD Edwards, key it into Microsoft Excel, analyze it, print it, and distribute it.

LeanLogistics, a division of Brambles, delivers on-demand transportation management solutions (TMS) enabled by the industry’s largest transportation network. These tools automate planning, execution, settlement, and procurement functions for companies like Chiquita, McDonald’s, Nash Finch, and Otis Spunkmeyer. The LeanLogistics On-Demand TMS also provides unique functions such as inbound supplier management, appointment scheduling, benchmarking, and network-wide reporting, linking to an e-network of shippers, carriers, suppliers, and customers that share a single data and application environment. The on-demand software environment helps clients plan for carrier coverage, track inventory, and share information with partners. Even though LeanLogistics has always offered standard and custom reporting capabilities, savvy customers and increased industry competition led Bass and his team to seek out a more advanced business intelligence (BI) environment that would empower its clients to make the best use of their data. This, in turn, would boost customer satisfaction and give the company a solid edge in a highly competitive market.

Lipari Foods, a regional wholesale food distributor, was facing a challenge as it was consolidating its warehouse operations from five facilities to two. The construction of a new $40 million facility necessitated a system that could provide real-time visibility into warehouse operations. With over 30,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs) and 200 new items arriving every week, the company needed to optimize operations, ensure just-in-time delivery, and meet and exceed service-level agreements (SLAs). Traditional bar and pie charts couldn't provide the real-time visual analytics required. Additionally, the company wanted to improve visibility into sales activities by unifying fragmented sales data.

Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control Company, a leading developer and manufacturer of advanced missile, rocket, and space systems, faced a challenge of providing users of a variety of diverse information systems with a standard, self-service way to obtain financial and operational data. The company had various types of software applications, and many different reporting systems had evolved over time. The company attempted to achieve consistent reporting standards throughout the enterprise with a third-party client/server reporting application, but with limited success. The user interface was not satisfactory, the output from the application was not up to the mark, and the licensing costs associated with moving it to the Web were prohibitive.