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The Ingenuity Media Group, a part of The Martin Agency, heavily relies on measurement capabilities to gauge how external audiences perceive their clients’ online advertising and interactive media, the overall success of campaigns and, most importantly, quickly identify and correct any issues with a campaign. Speed, accuracy and flexibility are vital to the creation of useful reports, and how they are presented helps showcase the Ingenuity Media Group’s work by quickly identifying which brands and campaigns are effective or, alternately, what changes need to be made to increase their effectiveness. However, producing these analyses with Ingenuity Media Group’s traditional processes was an extremely time-consuming task. Analysts were forced to spend hours processing data and converting it into visual form, creating an Excel document, converting to PDF before finally sending the information to the client. Preparing weekly, bi-weekly or monthly reports took hours.

First Choice Power, a Texas-based electric company, was struggling with the challenge of pulling together a centralized data warehouse from multiple large transaction-based data systems. The company was looking for a reporting software package that could sit on top of this data warehouse and provide meaningful insights to the executive team. The transactional-based data systems where they housed all their data were not designed for reporting, making it difficult to produce meaningful reports for the executive team. The company was also looking for a solution that could help them understand customer behavior patterns and make strategic business decisions.

Before the implementation of Tableau, OptumHealth was struggling with managing and making sense of data from various sources. The company had different silos of reporting teams, data sources, and separate spreadsheets. This made it difficult to get a holistic view of operations and address customer issues promptly. The company was also facing challenges in tracking its various distribution partners and independent brokers. The spreadsheets used for this purpose were unmanageable and not very useful, providing little value to the sales team.

The Epidemiology Department at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center- School of Public Health collaborates with hospitals and other providers around the state to meet the requirements of a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The grant funds the school’s Louisiana Breast and Cervical Health Program (LBCHP) to fulfill its mission to ensure that uninsured and underinsured Louisiana women have access to and receive high-quality screening and diagnostic services for the early detection of cancer. The challenge was to identify outliers for quality control and to improve program performance.

The Danish Olympic Committee was struggling with data accessibility and analysis. They had a lot of reporting and 'gatekeepers', but the data was not easily accessible to athletic consultants. These consultants work with about 61 different federations for various sports, and the federations needed to work with the committee. The committee had 26 Tableau Desktop users, but they were facing problems with spreading their data. They were also working on cube data, which presented its own set of challenges. The committee started with a small group of around eight people working on and testing Tableau, and now it's being used by many federations. They have 70 staff members, so 26 is actually a lot. The main goal from the beginning has been to sustain the work between the consultants and the federations.

The University of California, Irvine Medical Center was struggling with the challenge of understanding and presenting their vast amounts of data to the community. They had spreadsheets, Access databases, and were on the path to a data warehouse, but they lacked a tool that could effectively visualize this data. They needed a solution that could work within their current environment and also in the future. The IT department did not want to be the report writers and wanted a self-service model where the people who knew the data could develop their own visualizations and reports.

Norbridge, a management consulting firm, competes against larger firms for the same client opportunities. They rely on fact-based analysis and deep domain expertise to set them apart. However, while their analysts are comfortable with raw pivot table output from Microsoft Excel, most of their clients are not. Their projects often require weeks or even months of data collection, cleaning, and analysis, interspersed with client workshops for joint evaluation and interpretation of the findings. They were looking for a way to respond to analytical opportunities that could rapidly and convincingly connect clients to the key insights in their data. The primary criteria in evaluating analysis applications were: it had to run efficiently on stand-alone laptops, it had to be intuitive so that new analysts could learn the basics quickly, and it had to effectively output visual images to Microsoft PowerPoint.

Irish Life, a market leader in Ireland for life, pension, and investment plans, was facing the challenge of managing its business amidst a worldwide economic recession. The company needed a way to gain fast insight into the business to help business owners understand patterns and trends. They needed a solution that could provide visualizations and trend lines across finance, HR, sales, and customer service. The company was also looking for a way to distribute information to regional sales managers and across the company.

Predicta, an online marketing intelligence services company, was facing a challenge with its product development and customer service. The company's developers were spending a significant amount of time creating filters, drill-downs, graphs, and other capabilities into the company’s product interfaces. This was diverting a large share of developmental resources from creating new features. Additionally, Predicta’s current analytical capabilities required technical knowledge, causing customer questions to be directed to IT instead of the analysts, further impacting IT’s productivity. Predicta recognized that it needed to improve reporting capabilities to enhance the customer experience and make the best use of resources.

Creighton University was facing challenges in analyzing their data to identify potential markets for prospective students and track the performance of their counselors. They were also required to provide analytic data to their president and board related to applications, admittance, and enrolling students. They needed to monitor their competitors and understand various factors related to the admission process. Before implementing Tableau, they were using SQL servers and Microsoft Access to extract and report data. However, this process was cumbersome and did not provide the level of detail and flexibility they needed. They lacked a data warehouse, leading to consistency issues and difficulties in tracking changes from one year to the next.

Cars.com, a leading online car shopping platform, wanted to provide its salespeople with easy-to-access information about how their customers’ ads performed on the site. They also wanted to share similar information directly with its advertisers and internal business users. The company’s data warehouse and business intelligence team gathers and interprets site visitor data from the 11 million monthly visitors. Based on traffic volume, there is a significant amount of data stored in its 12-terabyte Teradata warehouse appliance. The company faced challenges in efficiently analyzing and visualizing this data for multiple audiences. Additionally, Cars.com best practices require that the more than 600-person sales team be able to do all of its work from within the cloud-based Salesforce solution.

ManpowerGroup, one of the largest HR companies in the world, realized that it held a great deal of valuable data. However, it was not leveraging this information to drive competitive advantages for itself or its clients. The company needed to develop data-driven business review documents that could be used to drive strategic conversations. However, users asking the IT team to script and run reports from the Cognos Enterprise business intelligence solution faced a long queue. If the resulting document answered the wrong question, or users developed new questions after seeing the results, the process had to be repeated. This approach produced inconsistent answers to a question depending upon who you asked. These homegrown solutions also carried the risk of errors. Manpower has offices in more than 80 locations across the globe. While North American data is housed in a data warehouse, data from other locations could be provided in a number of different formats. Blending information from these disparate data sources into a cohesive customer presentation was a long, manual process.

SIGMA Marketing Insights, a marketing services company, was facing challenges with its analytics turnaround time. The data management and discovery process was time-consuming, often taking weeks for large and complicated data sets. Additionally, the company struggled to communicate its findings in an easy-to-digest format, often resorting to sending flat files or creating lengthy PowerPoint presentations. Customers also expressed a desire for self-service business analytics, which SIGMA was unable to accommodate effectively. The company realized that providing customers with self-service analytics could not only speed up the process but also foster ongoing conversations with its customers.

Zulily, a daily deals site for moms, babies, and children, was facing challenges in managing its rapidly growing data. The company's Senior Director of Technical Operations, Don Allen, was tasked with supporting and managing Zulily’s growth through technology. The company's unique business model, which involves launching up to 5,000 SKUs every day, each live for only three days, posed significant analytics and reporting challenges. The company needed a solution that was flexible, fast, and scalable. The Manager of Business Intelligence (BI) for Zulily, Aaron Duke, and Zulily BI Developer Alex Rainey were often pulled away from higher-value work to spend days designing and running reports for internal users. They needed a solution that would empower users while ensuring the integrity of Zulily’s databases.

Dun & Bradstreet, a global company with over 6,000 employees and 4 million customers, was looking for a way to visualize their data to provide new offerings to their clients. They initially used Tableau to acquire a major client who wished to visualize their data. However, they soon discovered that they could also visualize their own data using Tableau, creating a synergy between client data and company data. The challenge was to dig deeper into the data and extract valuable insights that could be beneficial for their clients.

Swedbank, a leading bank in Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, was facing challenges in analyzing its business performance and making data-driven decisions. The bank was using traditional tools like Excel and PowerPoint for data analysis and presentation, which were not efficient and interactive. The bank needed a solution that could speed up the analysis process, provide interactive visualizations, and facilitate collaborative problem-solving. The bank was also looking for a tool that could blend data from different sources and provide new insights during discussions.

Nokia, a leading global supplier of mobile phones, telecom networks, and related customer services, was struggling with the vast amount of data they had. They needed a way to analyze and understand this data to guide their product development and understand their customer base better. The data was locked up in various databases, and the tools they had at their disposal, such as Excel and PowerPoint, were not sufficient for the task. They needed a tool that could handle large data sets and provide insights quickly and efficiently.

Sveriges Television (SVT), the largest television channel in Sweden, was facing challenges in analyzing television viewing behavior in Sweden. The Audience Research team at SVT was tasked with monitoring television-viewing behavior to make better decisions on how to air programs. They were using Excel for their analysis, which was time-consuming and lacked the ability to perform in-depth analytics due to the manual work involved. They were also struggling to communicate their insights effectively with the executives who make programming decisions. The team needed a solution that could accelerate their analyses and improve their communication with the executives.

Millard Public Schools, a school district in Omaha, Nebraska, was facing the challenge of effectively utilizing student data to improve educational outcomes. The district had a wealth of data on its students, but it was difficult to analyze and interpret this data in a meaningful way. The data was scattered across multiple spreadsheets and it was time-consuming to merge and analyze it. The district needed a solution that could help them visualize and understand the data quickly and easily, enabling them to make timely decisions that could positively impact their students.

Granja Regina, a Brazilian agriculture and food products company, was struggling with gaining performance insight across its divisions. The company's ERP system, TopManager, connected with Microsoft SQL Server and PostgreSQL databases, and additional information was maintained in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. However, the reporting capabilities of TopManager were not satisfactory. The manual process of generating reports was slow, tedious, and placed a heavy burden on IT resources. This process also diverted skilled analysts from more strategic work. The company's CIO, Bertolini, had security concerns about sensitive company data being distributed in a spreadsheet. In addition to databases and Excel spreadsheets, Granja Regina had data stored in third-party solutions, such as its human resources and agribusiness software.

IsCool Entertainment, a leading European social gaming provider, was facing challenges in understanding gamers’ preferences, behaviour, and needs. The company was using open source integration tools and commercial BI visualization software for decision-making. However, with the increase in user-generated actions and revenues, the company needed a more agile big data analytics solution. The company also needed a flexible approach to data visualization and presentation. The existing QlikView tool was not efficient as it required scripting for every report, causing delays in findings.

The immunovirology division of the CEA in Fontenayaux-Roses was facing a challenge in gaining a rapid visual understanding of its investigations. The organization’s mission is to explore and develop vaccine treatment strategies for chronic and emerging viral infections. However, the research groups relied on different and fragmented silos of research data. This led to the team devoting unnecessary time to compiling the data reporting—as opposed to actually analysing the data and experimenting with models to combat viruses. Antonio Cosma, a research scientist responsible of the FlowCyTech core of the CEA’s division of immuno-virology explains, “Our research was held up in the slow lane because we had to collect the data, and then prepare and adapt the spread sheets. After that, we then devoted hours to creating visually appealing graphs and bar charts to show the results.”

Schuberg Philis, a company that provides mission-critical computer IT systems and guarantees uptime to enterprise customers in the Netherlands, was looking for a way to support their service management processes with real-time information. They needed a tool that could handle different data sets, from KPIs and incident management to system performance. The company was using a variety of different products for reporting, from internal systems to Excel and traditional reporting systems. However, they found these methods to be time-consuming and repetitive, and they were looking for a way to take their reporting to the next level.

Valyoo, an e-commerce company based in New Delhi, India, was facing a challenge with its reporting efficiency. The company, which operates four different online shopping sites, was experiencing rapid growth and needed a way to keep up with increased reporting demands without having to hire additional staff. The analytics team was using Microsoft Access and Excel to meet reporting needs, but the demand was quickly outstripping what the team could produce using these tools. For a typical request, the team would pull data out of the Microsoft SQL Server database and then create pivot tables in Excel. This process was time-consuming and inefficient, with the team spending approximately four hours per day building these repeated reports with fresh data. The company needed a solution that could improve this process and help managers make decisions faster.

Fraud is a significant problem in financial services, with fraudsters constantly changing their tactics. Fraud detection is a balance between enabling spending, stopping fraud, and closing the loop with customers. However, new data sources from mobile apps and third-party providers can help improve fraud detection, but the increase in data size and variety creates new issues for fraud and risk management teams. These teams are already struggling with rules and statistical modeling systems and limited resources. Fraud cost US financial institutions almost $10 billion in 2018 and is a key issue for regulators. Customer acquisition and retention, however, is top of mind for many bank executives with new competitors from fintech startups to technology companies jumping into payments. Fraud and resulting customer churn can significantly impact profitability, customer trust, and regulatory compliance.

The municipality of Båstad in Sweden was facing a challenge with its outdated IT infrastructure. The town's IT services were provided by a small team of eight, and the infrastructure was based on a mix of HP ProLiant servers and HP EVA and IBM Storwize v7000 SAN storage systems, all deployed in a single data center. This setup was vulnerable to disruptions in the event of power outages or major catastrophes such as floods or fires. The town decided to take advantage of a government disaster preparedness initiative to upgrade its aging IT systems and ensure business continuity and disaster recovery for its critical IT services.

Technisch Handelsbureau Rensa, a medium-sized enterprise in the wholesale distribution industry, was facing challenges with their existing infrastructure. They had purchased HPE SimpliVity Hyperconverged Infrastructure as a result of a capacity purchase/upgrade of existing infrastructure that led to an overall platform review. Prior to deploying HPE SimpliVity Hyperconverged Infrastructure, the company found the management of multiple solutions and vendors to be manageable, but not ideal. They were looking for a solution that could consolidate their data center and modernize their infrastructure.

The City of Mesquite was facing a challenge with the management of multiple solutions and vendors. Although it was manageable, it was not ideal. The city was in the process of a capacity purchase and upgrade of existing infrastructure, which led to an overall platform review. This situation prompted the city to consider HPE SimpliVity Hyperconverged Infrastructure as a solution to their challenges.

Wausau Coated Products, a mid-sized manufacturing firm, was looking to simplify its IT infrastructure while maintaining 24×7 uptime requirements. The company needed to improve its disaster recovery, business continuity, and backup capabilities, and reduce operational costs. The IT environment at Wausau is sophisticated, with the team custom writing all of their ERP and accounting software in-house. Given the ERP system's role in running the operations of the business, downtime could not be tolerated. The company was also looking for a solution that was simple to manage, enabled significant operational cost savings, scaled in simple, low-cost increments, maintained high performance under system load, enabled rapid clones, and provided 24/7 support.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), a top-ranked national engineering and technical university, faced an information technology challenge of rolling out a set of new applications based on requests from the university's broad community of faculty, staff, and students. The university's IT Hosting team was looking to create 'Infrastructure as a Service' for the wide set of application requests coming from the student body, faculty, and staff at WPI. Critical requirements like 'always on' availability, agile deployment models, and ease of use and maintainability were foundational requirements to the IT team. The existing infrastructure was running on complex, expensive racks of legacy servers with networked storage provided by a Dell SAN, but the configuration was becoming expensive and difficult to scale and maintain, making it challenging to meet the new application demands. This new application initiative was of concern to the IT team because of the time it would take to expand and maintain the legacy systems, which lacked easy, horizontal scalability, integrated data efficiency, automation, and unified management. They foresaw wasted operations time managing the legacy systems that could be spent more productively on other, higher value IT initiatives.