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The process of accessing critical information was extremely cumbersome for DFW as they had a large amount of data on multiple platforms. Previously, over 50% of the staff’s time was spent compiling, transferring, and inputting data. Then many hours were required to proofread the data to make sure that it was accurate and that the manually created spreadsheet had all the correct formulas in each of the cells. The DFW IT department worked with MicroStrategy to create a uniform data warehouse. With the new database, the probability of human error due to manual data entry has been eliminated, as the data is updating automatically.

CIHI faced the challenge of providing accurate and comprehensive cost estimates for various hospital services across Canada. The organization needed a solution that could offer detailed cost information by jurisdiction and patient age group, while excluding physician fees, which are typically paid directly by the jurisdiction. This was essential to help healthcare providers and policymakers understand the financial aspects of healthcare services and make informed decisions.

SPS Commerce faced the challenge of efficiently onboarding new clients and providing them with access to new capabilities and data streams. Additionally, they needed to enable their customers to create and share content securely. The company also aimed to help suppliers analyze demand data across a network of retailers to deliver accurate forecasts and react quickly to market changes. Another challenge was to streamline the planning process between retailers and suppliers to avoid inventory overages or stock outs.

Allscripts offers several subscription-based SaaS products that provide healthcare organizations and professionals with key compliance information related to the meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs), population health, and physician performance. The company was seeking to standardize and enhance the analytical and reporting capabilities offered in these products so they could deliver more effective, timely insights to users. After evaluating several vendors, Allscripts chose MicroStrategy for the quality of their self-service reporting and analytics tools, sophisticated platform security, and ability to generate dynamic SQL. To accomplish their goals, they have launched five MicroStrategy projects, including two pre-configured interactive reports and three self-service applications.

3M faced the challenge of efficiently analyzing health insurance data to better understand the healthcare needs of insured populations. They needed a solution that could identify patients at risk of needing expensive treatments and provide proactive services to reduce future health problems. Additionally, 3M required a platform that could support a large multitenant environment with low administrative overhead, automate administrative tasks, and allow multiple tenants to share content while accessing personalized data securely.

Technological advancement, growing data production, and new consumer demands create challenges for organizations—and when these companies are as complex and established as TAP, the challenges get more complicated. TAP needed to ensure high data quality, agile business processes, and user autonomy, as well as utilize technological trends like big data, IoT, and machine learning. An analysis of the company’s BI infrastructure and business processes identified the need for a unified strategy capable of responding to the analytical needs of various departments. Silos from individual teams restricted data governance and created isolated reports that were not useful company wide. Previous BI initiatives were enacted “without total commitment of all business areas and [were] very focused on each business information silo,” said Rui Monteiro, BICC Manager at TAP.

Fanatics collects a tremendous volume and variety of data. In addition to the data generated from handling over 30 million orders per year, the company collects web traffic and clickstream data from over 250 million annual website visits. They also source data from social media analytics, real-time event results, and news when making business decisions. Fanatics’ legacy reporting system was based in Excel. They faced issues with scalability, usability, and adoption, and sought to implement a modern analytics platform capable of supporting self-service data discovery. Their goal was to empower more business users to make data-driven decisions and more effectively operationalize real-time data via a cloud platform.

Started in 2011, Vivint Solar was a small start-up organization that needed a robust sales team to generate revenue and establish a strong customer base. They hired a team of analysts to support sales operations. These analysts, spread across the organization, relied on Excel to extract insights, wrangle data, and produce reports. This legacy solution worked well in Vivint’s early years when it had less data to handle. “As the company grew and our volume of customers grew, [this Excel-based solution] didn’t scale,” said Jed Rampton, Data Architect, Vivint Solar. Soon, their Excel sheets took hours to calculate and their teams spent more time debating whose numbers were correct than making a decision. Vivint needed a fast and flexible analytics platform that could scale with their rapidly growing business.

Scout24 lacked a company-wide self-service BI tool, making it difficult to aggregate their data and make decisions based on accurate reports. They used a core database for data storage, but it soon became too costly to maintain, creating a bottleneck as their volume of data grew.

To re-evaluate and improve upon its operations, DCHS launched a program to visualize an ideal day in the life of a patient or staff member. It quickly became apparent that data transparency, communication tools, and real-time reporting were critical to improving population care and running an efficient organization. A solution was needed that would bring together complex data sources held on multiple platforms to provide transparent, appropriate analytics for executives and team members. DCHS chose MicroStrategy as their standard, making it the single portal for all users to access information.

House of Fraser had a large, complex reporting environment that required running more than 18,000 reports daily. The company relied heavily on simple grid reports for data analysis, which often resulted in wasted time, printing costs, and inaccurate or conflicting data. The nGenBI initiative aimed to simplify, visualize, and modernize their analytics environment to provide users with actionable insights. Prior to 2017, analytics at House of Fraser was restricted to large volumes of grid reports that were often printed and physically brought to meetings. This approach frequently resulted in wasted time and inaccurate or conflicting data. The nGenBI initiative sought to bring House of Fraser’s BI and analytics efforts into the 21st century. Their goal was to simplify their environment, make greater use of visualizations for analysis, and modernize their approach to analytics in order to provide users with actionable insight.

AllScient faced the challenge of increasing user adoption and enterprise penetration for their customers. Poor implementations often led to struggles in delivering and justifying continued purchases of licenses. The company needed to instill top-down best practices and processes, refactor architectures as needed, and drive increased user engagement to breed cultures of analytics program success. Additionally, they aimed to identify new applications, user groups, and opportunities to increase account penetration and growth.

To manage an extensive list of titles effectively, HMH needs full visibility into all aspects of the publishing lifecycle. From monitoring publicity, to tracking sales and stock levels of key customers, to overseeing warehouse inventory, decision-makers require access to critical information in order to meet demand for popular titles. Also, the time and costs associated with reprinting and shipping are high, so staying aware of demand while monitoring supply levels is key to achieving the full sales potential of a given title. There are many challenges to tracking sales activities while simultaneously monitoring the publication, production, and reprints of book titles. Editors, Sales Managers, and Executives need easy access to up-to-date information about every customer, title, author, and product line.

Kinross faced significant challenges in obtaining timely and accurate data for effective business decision-making. The existing systems were cumbersome, requiring extensive manual effort to maintain and often delivering outdated information. This inefficiency led to a lack of confidence in data quality and delayed decision-making processes. The company needed a more robust and efficient Business Intelligence (BI) solution that could provide real-time data access and improve overall operational efficiency. After evaluating various BI vendors, Kinross identified the need for a platform that offered speed, ease of use, mobile functionality, and cost-effectiveness. The goal was to find a solution that could streamline data collection and analysis, enabling better decision-making and reducing the time spent on manual data compilation.

Herbalife recognized the value of extending the use of MicroStrategy to its mobile global workforce. The goal was to give decision-makers fast, mobile access to sales data via an easy-to-use interface, and updated sales numbers on a near real-time basis. With this insight, the management team would have the ability to use an iPad app to pinpoint business areas that the company needed to improve upon—either through better promotions, reward programs, or customer and distributor-focused events—using the iPad. Prior to MicroStrategy Mobile, Herbalife updated its back-end data every eight hours, and executives had access to sales numbers only from the prior day’s sales activity. This delay hindered their ability to make timely decisions and respond to market changes effectively.

The general insurance industry is highly attractive due to its large market size and potential for significant profits through efficient and innovative underwriting and distribution. However, the industry faces significant challenges due to inefficiencies such as multiple hand-offs, duplication, manual processes, errors, rework, and incompatible systems. These inefficiencies result in overheads absorbing 34% of all premiums, meaning more than one-third of a commercial customer’s premium is consumed in cost rather than risk transfer. This leads to low or no profitability and poor customer service. The industry players need to improve service levels and reduce costs to avoid being replaced by alternatives, as these inefficiencies are too significant for customers to ignore.

Internal monitoring and distribution of Swift data extracted from the application provides value for the analysts needing accessibility and analysis ability. The data, representing the competitive situation of the banking sector, arrives too late for the needs of the market. The monthly information only becomes available three weeks after the closure of the period. UniCredit needed a system that offered quick response and analysis ability fit for the ever-changing market conditions. The previous solution allowed sending massive reports and querying the system accurately but lacked the ability to surf through data, aggregate information immediately, and obtain significant KPI trends.

Monitoring the Bank’s business was of paramount importance for its 11-member Board of Directors (BOD) and seven regional co-ordinators. The management needed insights into the Bank’s financial and operational performance to improve its competitive edge and to ensure regulatory compliance. The business users wanted to know how the Bank was performing at any given time, as well as having the flexibility to review the reports on the go. However, not having access to real-time information to analyse its operations was one of the biggest challenges for the Bank’s management. The finance department relied on traditional consolidation and reporting tools, often depending on manual query of the Bank’s disparate databases to extract the necessary information. The process was time-consuming in order to create a ‘cockpit view’ dashboard, and the management would be reviewing outdated reports. The Bank thus recognised the need for a more sophisticated Business Intelligence (BI) solution that would meet the demands of its BOD and senior executives.

Huntington National Bank faced significant IT capital constraints and relied on a small IT department of three people. Business intelligence was managed through Excel reports, which required a week per month to produce. Changes in procedures often necessitated reworking previous reports. The bank lacked funds for a more extensive BI operation and had a limited IT budget. Strict data security rules and regulatory requirements further complicated the situation. The bank was burdened with legacy systems and had no means of presenting background data on the fly. Additionally, there were numerous rogue Access databases on individual desktops, leading to inconsistent data sources and unrelated dashboards.

AEGON Hungary faced several challenges in its reporting landscape. The company had been using a combination of SQL, Excel, and Oracle tools for insights since before 2000. By 2006, they had incorporated data mining tools from SPSS to enhance risk analysis, sales support, customer service, and product development. However, the prolonged financial crisis led to declining fees, reduced profitability, and new market players, prompting AEGON to seek ways to revitalize its business. They identified four key goals: renovating the existing management information system, improving sales support, providing better and smarter customer service, and making the core claims settling process cheaper and more efficient. The existing process for board meetings involved two weeks of manual gathering and consolidation of data into static PowerPoint presentations, which lacked real analytics and required Excel support for further insights.

The client was experiencing significant challenges across people, process, and technology categories related to data management and analytics. Fiesta’s IT organization was small, with limited bandwidth and skills to implement solutions needed for business demand. Manual processes executed through tribal knowledge, lack of governance and standardization were impediments. Further, disparate data sources and tools were causing issues with users, developers and administrators.

Kindred Healthcare, a leading provider of home health services, faced a challenge in effectively illustrating the clinical outcomes of their patients in the Home Health program. With nearly 150 data components and a complex reporting structure, the process required considerable manual effort, making it difficult to quickly produce the necessary visuals. They sought to demonstrate their superior service through intuitive and interactive reports, aiming to let their results speak for themselves.

This multi-concept restaurant operator was experiencing the “spreadmart” phenomenon, with the accounting department manually creating and distributing grid-based excel reports to operations so they can manage their stores. The client wanted to create a single version of the truth for enterprise reporting, consolidate multiple reporting tools, and eliminate these massive and manually generated spreadsheets. In addition, they wanted to move from grid-based reports to visual analytics, and enable executives and field leadership with mobile access to critical information and performance dashboards.

In 2019, Amazon sought to develop and launch a new global learning platform, askalexa.com. The challenge was to leverage Amazon's well-established online reputation and influence in the offline world. The platform was intended to engage directly with retail staff, providing them with the necessary tools to guide their customers confidently in-store. The platform needed to include deep dive customer scenarios based on real-life encounters, detailed product information, quizzes, and gamified learning. The goal was to encourage online participation and generate excitement about the products being sold. Iris, the agency appointed by Amazon, was responsible for the design and build of the platform, content creation, translation, and ongoing maintenance.

TradAir, a company that provides end-to-end trading infrastructure software, was seeking a robust cloud security product to protect its mission-critical business assets. The company's solution, which leverages advanced technology services like Docker and Google Big Query, is delivered through a hybrid hosting model residing in the Amazon cloud and Equinix data center. The challenge was to find a security solution that could minimize security risk, eliminate unnecessary infrastructure exposure, and provide firewall management, policy automation, authentication, and access control. The solution also needed to be a key aspect of TradAir’s audit and compliance program, helping the company meet international financial regulations on three continents such as SOX and PCI.

Arawak Port Development (APD) is a critical enterprise for The Bahamian Government and its citizens, with all international ocean freight passing over their bulkhead at Nassau Container Port. After going public in 2012, APD needed to start producing a range of financial statements that would satisfy the quarterly and annual filing requirements of the Securities Commission of The Bahamas, provide sufficient information to external auditors, and enable the APD Board of Directors to better manage the growth of the organization. APD's CFO, Dion Bethell, also wanted to increase the level of detail in his planning, while concurrently weaning the management team away from budgeting for items that had a low likelihood of occurring. Because APD is a critical economic hub for the country of The Bahamas, there was no room for error.

Mike Wells, the Director of Software Development at Ameritas, a mutual life and health insurer with $35.6 billion in assets, was tasked with helping the company achieve competitive advantage in an increasingly digital marketplace. However, he faced a significant challenge. The majority of Wells’ software development experience was on distributed platforms; yet about 70% of his developer workforce at Ameritas was mainframe focused. Coming from a background where automation and visibility were at the forefront of every Java developer, he realized that this presented a challenge in the mainframe arena. Wells was skeptical about whether their tools and processes could provide the speed and agility Ameritas needed to thrive in a fast moving digital marketplace.

The IMT Group, a leading Midwestern P&C insurer, heavily relies on its mainframe for core applications. However, the mainframe application environment is in transition. The company's mainframe transition strategy has two key objectives. One is re-platforming select applications, a process that requires intensive analysis of current mainframe code. It requires complete and accurate identification of “dead code”—sections of applications that have lapsed into disuse over the years, but remain present in source code. The other key objective is converging mainframe and non-mainframe environments. This convergence is taking place because of how the company’s newer web- and mobile-based applications depend on back-end mainframe resources. Both of these strategic objectives require developers to have clear, complete visibility into the structure and runtime behaviors of highly complex mainframe applications that have undergone a lot of change over the years and are not always well-documented.

Physicians Mutual, an insurance company, was struggling with the management of millions of lines of complex mainframe code. The lack of documentation and tools to manage this code led to long development cycles, preventing the company from capitalizing on critical business opportunities. The complexity of the mainframe code and the absence of tools to manage it resulted in missed opportunities to capitalize on immediate business interests. The company needed a solution that would help them understand and manage their complex applications, speed up maintenance and development cycles, and attract and retain top developer talent.

Avvo, an online legal marketplace that connects consumers with lawyers and legal advice, was facing a disconnect between the pricing of sponsored advertising and the customer value it offered. The pricing was based on feeling rather than fact, making it difficult for the sales team to prove value to new prospects or implement demand-based price adjustments on existing accounts. The team needed to understand the number of impressions and clicks on sponsored advertising positions by region and legal specialty. If consumers in a particular region spent more time exploring content or clicking on ads for a particular specialty, then the value of advertising for that service in that region should be higher—and the price should be increased accordingly.