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Prior to implementing MicroStrategy, Liverpool Community Health (LCH) faced significant challenges in preparing for board meetings. The process involved manually analyzing data and preparing reports in Excel, which took several weeks. Consequently, the information presented to the board was often outdated by a month. Additionally, staff had to spend several days each month printing and delivering packages to board members, sometimes even requiring courier services for timely delivery. This manual process was not only time-consuming but also costly, leading to inefficiencies in operations and decision-making.

In 2015, PPL was preparing to retire the legacy system that governed their payment and invoicing processes, as well as a suite of other internal functions. As they looked to implement a new tool, the company specified several key requirements. First and foremost, they needed an application that made it easy to validate, adjust, cancel, and approve invoices, while catching exceptions in the data that warrant further review. They also needed a solution that could generate payment details for every supplier, provide self-service capabilities for business users, and deliver reports for their Cash Operations team. In effect, PPL needed a technology solution that could facilitate a fast, effective, and auditable approval process for all payments. PPL chose MicroStrategy because it offers the scalable architecture and transactional, self-service capabilities needed to support these functions.

Managers at the regional and store level, as well as marketing and planning teams, needed a way to visualize product sales, promotions, merchandise returns, store-to-store comparisons, foot-traffic-to-buyer conversion rates, and supply chain management. An essential part of their analysis was the ability to see all of this information by store, by employee, and by product. Without this kind of reporting, Tory Burch’s employees were forced to make decisions without all of the information. They needed help, and fast.

Having instant access to information on-the-go is now a necessity for agile business leaders around the globe. Nielsen wanted to provide executives at their retail and manufacturing clients with mobile analytics to help them easily track their business and make informed decisions. The company’s requirements were complex. It was critical that the app handle a large volume of data from a variety of sources and deliver high performance to clients to promote user adoption. Nielsen wanted a single point of access for all of their clients instead of building an ETL process for hundreds of clients; this multi-tenant infrastructure needed to be secure, so clients could see only their data. Nielsen sought to automate the process as much as possible and to design a single data model to meet their clients’ needs. Finally, they wanted the app to provide users with a seamless and aesthetically appealing experience personalized to each client on iOS and Android devices, in both landscape and portrait views.

To handle expansive global commissions payment operations, Onyx’s legacy structure had three data centers in three different countries. However, Onyx soon grew out of this structure. Lacking a common backbone, the three data centers could not communicate effectively, creating different versions of the truth and slowing down IT processes. The Onyx infrastructure team decided to consolidate these data centers into two and create an AWS Cloud presence to streamline costs and take advantage of the cloud’s flexibility. They chose to move MicroStrategy to the cloud.

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.