Bunn-O-Matic Perks Up BI Capabilities

Bunn-O-Matic replaced its Cognos ReportNet system with Information Builders' WebFOCUS business intelligence platform to refresh its reporting capabilities.

Beverage Equipment Manufacturer Replaces Cognos ReportNet With WebFOCUS to Refresh Reporting Operations

To keep its staff better informed, Bunn-O-Matic Corporation, an Illinois-based beverage equipment manufacturer, implemented a new business intelligence (BI) platform that delivers data throughout the organization. That BI platform, based on Information Builders WebFOCUS, enables the company to use an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to run its lean-manufacturing production, sale, and distribution operations.

WebFOCUS was chosen for its ability to produce parameter-driven reports – allowing users to be more self-sufficient – and the ability to replace several tools which Bunn-O-Matic had been using for reporting purposes, including Cognos ReportNet.

The Right Blend of Power and Flexibility

When Bunn-O-Matic's IT team was looking for a product to enhance its management reporting capabilities, it was impressed by the scope, power, and flexibility of the WebFOCUS platform. The company purchased WebFOCUS and enlisted Information Builders Professional Services to train a few key developers.

WebFOCUS is a comprehensive and fully integrated enterprise business intelligence (BI) platform whose architecture, integration, and simplicity permeate every level of the global organization – executive, analytical, and operational – and make any data available, accessible, and meaningful to every person or application who needs it, when and how they need it.

The team quickly replicated some essential reports and then set out to create brand-new reporting capabilities by combining data stored in disparate DB2 and SQL Server databases. Since their ERP data in DB2 was on an AS/400 iSeries computer and their service-systems data was in Microsoft SQL Server on a Windows server, combining data into unified reports had been nearly impossible with their old reporting system. WebFOCUS and the iWay DB2/400 Adapter from Information Builders subsidiary iWay Software made it possible to join information from these dissimilar data-storage systems.

One of the most decisive breakthroughs involved WebFOCUS Active Reports, which combines data and interactive capabilities in a single file. Accessible via a user's desktop or mobile computer, this tool enables Bunn-O-Matic's sales staff to run reports and perform their own sorting, filtering, configuring, and charting of data – without the need for intervention from the IT team.

Bunn-O-Matic uses iWay DataMigrator to pull data out of the ERP system and convert it into a useful reporting format every night. The sales team receives up-to-date sales statistics each morning. Embedded access restrictions keep them from viewing each other's information.

iWay DataMigrator is a powerful and comprehensive set of fully automated tools designed to dramatically simplify data integration, including the creation, maintenance, and expansion of data warehouses, data marts, and operational data stores. With its intuitive, easy-to-use interface, DataMigrator enables fast, flexible end-to-end extract, transform, and load (ETL) process creation involving heterogeneous data structures across disparate computing platforms.

WebFOCUS enforces segregation of the data without limiting the visibility of critical information. Parameterized reports meet the unique needs of a variety of users, even though they are all running the same basic reports.

Using WebFOCUS ReportCaser, Bunn-O-Matic can e-mail reports to its customers as well as internal users. Reports are set to run on schedules, so recipients know when to expect them daily, weekly, or monthly; some reports go out as frequently as two or three times a day.

The Sweet Aroma of Success

Nearly 100 staff members are currently using WebFOCUS. The implementation of this pervasive business intelligence platform is putting fact-based insights directly into the hands of people who need it, when they need it.