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The City of Richardson, a suburb of Dallas with over 100,000 residents and 5,000 businesses, was looking to extend its successful BI strategy by making vital data instantly accessible to different types of city workers in the field via their mobile devices. The city had previously employed Information Builders’ WebFOCUS BI platform to support activities such as accounting and budgeting, revenue management, human resources, and court docket management. The challenge was to expand its reporting and analysis capabilities to reach those employees in the field via their mobile devices.

ClaimsPro, Canada’s leading independent adjusting company, was in the midst of rapid international expansion and wanted to enhance operations through improved measurement and monitoring of key activities. However, the company’s managers were forced to rely on the IT team to build reports for them from scratch. This process was time-consuming and inefficient. The company needed a business intelligence (BI) solution that would allow non-technical users to satisfy their own information needs and provide managers with the ability to track vital metrics, such as revenue, work in progress, and quality assurance.

The Co-Operative Bank, a UK-based bank with over 3 million customer accounts, was facing a challenge in providing fast, accurate, and easy-to-read reports for distribution via email to its 19 business centres across the UK. The bank's operations are run out of these regional Corporate business centres, which manage the Bank’s core corporate customers. Therefore, it was essential for these centres to have timely access to accurate information that would affect decisions made on both individual accounts and across the wider customer base. The bank had been using Information Builders’ FOCUS product to create mainframe reports. However, the system did not provide a distribution process for the Bank- once created the reports had to be taken offline, sent to be printed and then packed and shipped to the relevant departments. This could take up to five days from running the job to end users receiving the output.

CONAGUA, Mexico’s National Water Commission, was tasked with overseeing water amounts, quality, use, and conservation. The commission needed a business intelligence (BI) platform that could transform raw data about water resources into useful information to help public decision-makers do their jobs. Initially, all information was compiled in hardcopy format, and only later transferred into digital format. The commission had statistical and geographical databases in place, but they were updated manually. Over the years the range and depth of subjects, as well as the sheer volume of information, grew exponentially, making data management and verification more of a challenge.

Coty Inc., one of the largest and most successful beauty companies in the world, embarked on a series of strategic acquisitions aimed at facilitating rapid expansion. This included the purchase of several Unilever brands, Del Labs, OPI, Philosophy, Dr. Scheller Cosmetics, and TJoy. While this activity created many new opportunities for the company, it also posed major challenges – particularly when it came to simplifying and unifying IT environments to ensure unhindered supply-chain collaboration. Coty needed to connect its environment with systems maintained by its partners, to whom the company outsources many logistics and supply-chain processes. The need for robust, enterprise-scale integration middleware first came to light when Coty acquired several popular Unilever brands. It needed to find a means of streamlining and coordinating ordering, logistics, distribution, and other mission-critical supply chain operations across both entities, so it could become a more real-time organization.

The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) was facing the challenge of consolidating justice data to create a comprehensive view of crime fighting, traffic safety, budgeting and planning, resource allocation, and other important activities that span jurisdictions. The staff was spending more than 200 hours each month collecting and compiling data from a series of siloed systems to create CompStat reports and other vital communications. They needed an easier way to integrate justice data from several internal and external sources.

Covidien UK, a leading provider of innovative healthcare products, faced the challenge of delivering daily operational business intelligence to its 300 field-based sales staff in a cost-effective manner. The company needed a solution that would allow its sales staff to interrogate data without the need for extensive training and support. The challenge was compounded by the fact that Covidien UK has over 2,000 customers and an annual turnover approaching £150 million, making the volume of data to be managed and analyzed substantial. Furthermore, the company's growth through acquisitions over the past ten years meant that new data sources needed to be integrated quickly and easily into core business reports.

Davenport University, a private, nonprofit university with 11 campuses throughout Michigan, was facing challenges in analyzing, calculating, and distributing student data from a Banner ERP system to workers with varying needs in multiple departments. The university was looking to improve student retention and reduce the time it takes to calculate financial aid awards. They needed a solution that could access, analyze, and visualize information in its Ellucian Banner ERP system, as well as report against many other internal and external data sources.

Dealertrack, the largest online credit application network in the U.S., lacked modern reporting, analytics, and data visualization capabilities in its flagship Dealer Management System (DMS). The software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution included numerous built-in reports, but customers lacked parameterized reporting options and were not able to create reports from scratch. They only had rudimentary tools for visualizing business data in charts, graphs, and dashboards. These deficiencies led Dealertrack to purchase Information Builders’ industry-leading WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) and analytics software. Dealertrack evaluated nearly a dozen BI products before selecting WebFOCUS. After a careful analysis, it determined that the WebFOCUS architecture is ideal for SaaS and cloud deployments since it is based on a highly scalable reporting server that is accessible from any web browser, with no special software required at the dealerships.

Delaware County Community College (DCCC) was focused on expanding its infrastructure and investing in its science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs. However, government appropriations to higher education institutions were becoming linked to performance, focusing on access, affordability, and outcomes. To support its growth and institutional effectiveness, maximize government funding, and ensure continued positive ratings from the Middle States Review, DCCC sought to create a culture of evidence and promote decision-making that is more data-driven. The college was using Microsoft Access-based reporting activities, which were not comprehensive enough for their needs.

Dialysis Clinic, Inc. (DCI) was facing significant challenges due to the wide diversity of its information sources. Operations related to general ledger, fixed assets, accounts payable, cash management, budgets, financial auditing, cost reports, and payroll were each supported by disparate information systems. This environment made it difficult for DCI stakeholders to track and measure important variables that offer insight and answer questions about how workers and departments spend money. For example, if DCI’s average cost per treatment increases, is it because fixed costs for drugs and nursing services are rising or because its clinics are treating fewer patients? Answering this kind of question might require accessing data from the inventory, payroll, and various medical systems – a cumbersome process that often requires IT intervention.

Disc Brakes Australia (DBA) is an Australian-owned manufacturer, designer, and global marketer of after-market and original equipment (OE) disc pads and brake rotors. For many years, DBA took orders the old fashioned way: sales representatives answered calls and manually entered the orders into an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. They had to field orders from across Australia’s five time zones and several overseas markets. It took several minutes to receive an order, create a pick list, process the order, and transmit the information to the warehouse for fulfillment. As business volume escalated, the call center was getting overloaded. DBA decided to automate the order entry process with a new e-commerce system, but they didn’t have an IT staff that could create such a system in-house. After evaluating proposals from systems integrators and application development firms, they asked Information Builders to design and build an order-entry system that could link to the ERP system via RESTful Web Services.

DuPont, a global innovator with a complex IT infrastructure, sought to renew its corporate extranet, DuPont Direct, to make it easier for B2B users to do business with them. The challenge was to improve the infrastructure for an e-commerce application that enables web users to create and place orders, check order status, make queries, and check accounts in real time, all via a secure, high-performance environment. However, integrating these complex ERP systems with e-commerce applications often leads to labor-intensive coding projects and ongoing manual updates. DuPont IT infrastructure experts reviewed various types of integration software to connect its Sun Microsystems application server environment to its SAP R/3 applications.

Elavon Inc., a leading provider of payment services, was struggling to consolidate about a dozen legacy reporting environments, many of which were acquired through mergers and acquisitions. Without corporate standards for creating reports and queries, it was hard to make optimal use of IT resources. Some of Elavon’s month-end reports generated a billion I/O operations and took more than six hours to run. The company had multiple month-end reporting processes running simultaneously, which pushed the old reporting tools past their maximum capacity and created performance issues that caused data quality problems.

Erie Insurance, a multi-line insurance provider, was looking to execute on the new CEO’s vision to make more strategic use of data to improve organizational performance. The CEO, Terrence W. Cavanaugh, wanted to enable users to better leverage the wealth of data the company maintained. His goal was to deploy a series of internal and external dashboards that would support decision-making and deliver information across all levels of the business. The challenge was to create a web-based reporting environment that would allow thousands of authorized employees to monitor approximately 75 key performance indicators (KPIs) across critical domains such as customers, finance, service productivity, human resources, and distribution.

Farm Bureau Insurance, a leading insurer in Tennessee, was faced with a significant challenge in 2011 when two devastating storms resulted in a year's worth of claims in just two months. The company's existing reporting processes were cumbersome and could not provide the real-time data, drill-down functionality, and ad hoc capabilities that managers required to effectively handle the situation. The company needed better access to data and improved reporting capabilities for a clearer view into its operational performance and financial metrics. The turmoil from these unexpected events became the driving force for Farm Bureau Insurance to gain a clearer view into its operational performance and financial metrics.

First Industrial Realty Trust, one of the largest providers of diversified industrial real estate in the U.S., faced the challenge of providing more than 175 employees with access to on-demand property management information. They needed to develop a secure BI environment that could support partners, customers, and internal staff. The company had previously implemented a business intelligence (BI) environment supported by Crystal Reports from Business Objects, but users found it difficult to export data to Microsoft Excel. To maximize employee efficiency, First Industrial decided to deploy a Web-based BI environment that could combine data from multiple systems, seamlessly integrate with Excel, and bolster reporting and analysis capabilities for end users.

First Rate Investments, a company that provides software and services to calculate rates of return on investment portfolios for investment advisors and financial institutions, faced the challenge of generating performance-return records for millions of accounts. This involved creating and storing more than one billion account-return records in about six hours, which works out to more than 40,000 returns computations per second. The company needed to process a high volume of portfolios in a short period of time, which was crucial for its expansion in Europe and Asia. Business continuity and resilience were of utmost importance to its clients, who needed assurance that First Rate could fulfill service-level agreements (SLAs) for high volumes of data.

Food For The Poor, the largest international relief and development organization in the U.S., was seeking an analytics environment that would permit instant visibility into its marketing database while enabling the staff to quickly evaluate direct mail and advertising campaigns. The organization needed to operate efficiently and quickly ramp up fundraising efforts in the wake of catastrophic events. The challenge was to analyze data to increase productivity, reduce operational costs, and improve the success of fundraising campaigns.

Ford Motor Company, one of the world’s largest automakers, needed to help its thousands of dealers quickly identify and resolve problems with warranty repair costs. The company wanted to leverage its 15 years of historical data to mine new insights about manufacturing efficiency, supplier quality, and dealer repair trends. The challenge was to use data visualization techniques to present information in a way that general managers at each dealership could easily understand and compare their warranty repair costs to other dealers.

The Georgia Department of Labor (GDOL) was tasked with helping unemployed citizens find gainful work. This involved offering training and support services to unemployed Georgia citizens, helping employers recruit qualified personnel, and tracking a wide variety of labor statistics for state and federal agencies. The department had to manage information for as many as 500,000 job seekers annually, connecting workers with employers and helping managers, analysts, legislators, and economists understand continually shifting labor trends. This generated a huge amount of data, which needed to be rolled up into portals that reveal the status of the state’s workforce. The department faced the challenge of tracking metrics related to employment services for job seekers and employers throughout the state, as well as delivering labor exchange statistics to federal and state agencies.

SWBC, a diversified financial services company, was facing a challenge due to its various distinct applications and data sources. These disconnected silos of information made it nearly impossible for the company to establish consistent customer records. They also had complex information management needs as they processed information from customers, partners, and other financial stakeholders. The company needed to combine data from a legacy accounting system and a variety of AS/400 applications to create consistent customer records. It also needed to process information related to mortgage originations, private mortgage insurance, loan payments, balance requests, and other day-to-day transactions.

Securities America, one of the largest independent general securities brokers/dealers in the U.S., faced a challenge in servicing clients quickly and effectively due to the dispersion of necessary data across multiple tools and databases. The company wanted to create a customized analytical tool that could be both flexible and easily accessible by a variety of users. The goal was to improve the overall experience for financial advisors, branch managers, and office assistants, and in so doing, allow them to provide better service to their clients – even as they obtain a deeper understanding of their business. In addition to providing new analytic capabilities, Securities America wanted to institute enterprise-wide data governance procedures to build confidence in the analytic data and its basis in day-to-day decision-making.

Megamation, a provider of SaaS-based maintenance management solutions, needed to seamlessly access data in clients’ backend financial systems, which range from small, simple applications to large, complex ERP environments. The company's flagship offering, DirectLine, required interaction with each customer’s current finance system for orders and payment authorization. While smaller customers may have very simple systems, larger companies – such as the big manufacturers and large hospitals that comprise Megamation’s client base – have typically deployed sophisticated enterprise resource planning (ERP) environments such as JD Edwards, SAP, or Oracle. The challenge was to develop a partnership that would extend the company’s flagship offering with broad-reaching data integration capabilities.

The client, a leading global footwear firm, was facing challenges in optimizing product offerings and upsells on their ecommerce site. The situation was further complicated by marketplaces that were out-pricing the brand store. The client wanted to leverage both competitive and internal data to address these issues. The client also wanted to identify promotion opportunities for not-so-popular products and recommend ideal upsells that would help promote high-margin, low-cost accessories.

The cloud market is growing at a very fast pace with an increasing number of companies shifting away from legacy IT services to cloud-based services. This is a result of the growing trend among organizations of pursuing a digital business strategy. In order to meet the increasing demand of such cloud services, several new cloud providers have been introduced. The monitoring and analyzing of cloud provider expansion strategies has become vital in order to keep pace with the rapidly growing cloud market. It is also essential to understand the strategy of the cloud providers in venturing into new geographies, expanding their service availability into new regions, initiating new job functions for new services, etc. With the rapidly growing cloud market and the number of cloud providers, it is very crucial for companies to keep track of such activities in order to maintain their position in the market.

The client, a US Telecom and Media Giant, was facing a challenge where many customers preferred to get their Modem Reset done by a customer service agent (call center) rather than through self-service channels (Web, IVR). This preference was leading to increased operating costs for the company. The client engaged Blueocean Market Intelligence’s Digital Customer Experience Solution to understand the reasons behind this preference and use this analysis to optimize self-service channels.

The client, a leading computer technology company, was looking to adopt an innovative marketing solution to sustain sales and deal with tablet cannibalization. They had data on numerous marketing channels and wanted to use this data to simulate the effects of alternative marketing plans and forecast future sales. The client aimed to establish an empirical relationship between sales and marketing and create an ideal mix of marketing channels for three geographic regions. They were faced with key questions such as how to allocate marketing spends, measure the effectiveness of the activities planned, determine the return on investment on marketing spends, and identify the most profitable marketing channels.

STEAM is a digital distribution and gaming platform developed by Valve Corporation, a multiplayer gaming and social networking services company. Steam give access to more than 10,000 game titles and connects its 125 million active users to each other. Through Steam, fans can buy, play, share, modify, and build communities around Valve products as well as titles from other independent game studios. This is in direct competition with the client’s app store that also sells popular PC games. Understanding the competition in detail, their strengths and weaknesses and user profiles will help the client develop strategies to tackle competition.

The client, a leading fast food restaurant chain, had been experiencing a decline in sales in few US metropolitan areas over a period of time and was interested in understanding these markets more thoroughly. They wanted to quantify the target opportunity through an attitudinal lens, and profile customers by their fast food consumption behavior. The attitude/ lifestyle-based segments also needed to cross over with client ready behavioral segments in order to develop specific offerings keeping past usage/behaviors in mind. They were also interested in targeting “value” segments more strategically so they were looking to build a predictive model to classify prospect customers into attitudinal segments.