Building a Reporting Community at Brotherhood Mutual

• 分析与建模 - 实时分析
• 应用基础设施与中间件 - 数据交换与集成

• 商业运营

• 质量预测分析
• 实时定位系统 (RTLS)

Brotherhood Mutual, an insurance company that works exclusively with churches and related ministries, was facing the challenge of devising a cohesive enterprise reporting strategy without going through a lengthy data warehouse development effort. The company was running its business on an IBM iSeries platform and depended on Lotus Notes for many of its workflow and Web applications. However, the platform's RPG-based reporting tools were not sufficient for the company's needs. Business users had to wait for a data warehouse to be completed before they could start using the reporting tools, and they could only access dated information that was periodically staged to the warehouse. This approach also put a heavy burden on the IT group, which had to conduct massive database development projects.

Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Company, founded in 1917, is one of the nation’s leading insurers of churches and related ministries. The company is based in Fort Wayne, Indiana and operates on an IBM iSeries platform, relying on Lotus Notes for many of its workflow and Web applications. The company was seeking a way to improve its reporting processes, which were largely based on Excel and hard copy reports. The company wanted to create an organization-wide reporting foundation that was accessible to all types of workers, without having to go through a lengthy data warehouse development effort.

Brotherhood Mutual adopted Information Builders WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) platform as its enterprise reporting standard. This allowed the company to create reports directly from production systems, providing business users with real-time data. The company hired Information Builders Professional Services to develop the fundamental aspects of the data access and reporting environment. The first WebFOCUS project involved overhauling an Excel-based time-tracking system used by customer service personnel. Using WebFOCUS and Lotus Notes, the team created a time tracking system that allows customer service reps to log their time as transactions take place. The new system streamlined all time-tracking activities and saved many hours for both reps and administrators. The company also developed a new application that lets users display and analyze data through WebFOCUS dashboards.

• Better workflow procedures for entering, retrieving, and managing information.
• A new set of GUI dashboards for displaying and analyzing data.
• A performance management framework for tracking productivity and adjusting workloads.

• Each customer service rep saved four to five hours per month on creating activity reports.
• The IT department saved a solid week of work rolling up the spreadsheets at the end of each year.