IFB Builds One-Click Reporting System

Snapshot

Organization Founded in 1963, International Factors Belgium (IFB) is a 19-million-euro company offering a complete array of financial services.

The Challenge To improve decision-making by providing precise and timely information to managers.

The Strategy Create a user-friendly, Web-based business intelligence environment that provides reports to uncover trends and gain insight into the business. The new system automatically delivers reports in multiple formats, simplifies access to legacy systems, and scales to support growing demand.

The Results Efficiently deliver hundreds of reports, streamlining operations and providing a foundation to build new revenue streams.

Information Builders Solution WebFOCUS, WebFOCUS ReportCaster.

WebFOCUS Improves Decision-Making for Belgian Financial Services Firm

Today's financial services companies are focused on streamlining operations and building new channels for new revenue. But the means of achieving these objectives have changed dramatically, mostly as a result of information technology. For many firms, the knowledge derived from reporting systems does not provide clear business intelligence.

International Factors Belgium (IFB) is a prime example. IFB runs what it refers to as an "industrial financial information environment," driven by careful management of 1.2 million invoices and about 700,000 payments each year. User-friendly reporting and analysis is essential for this thriving Belgian factoring and financial services company as it continues its aggressive expansion in the field of business risk management.

"In a sensitive financial business, precise and timely information is vital to the daily risk management process," explains Jean-Pierre Marissens, IT and operations manager of IFB. "There is a big cloud of information out there – the challenge is to ensure that we see things very sharply."

Breaking Through the Information Cloud

Since its founding in 1963 as the first factoring company in Belgium, IFB has grown to a 19-million-euro company. Broadening its business portfolio to include a complete array of financial services, the 100-person firm continues to be known as an organization with a reputation for high-quality commercial information consulting.

To sustain its leadership position, IFB's corporate officers sought a comprehensive business intelligence and reporting environment that could improve the efficiency and productivity of management decision-making. "We needed a reporting tool that could deliver an extensive range of information on everything from company solvency to disputed invoices," Marissens acknowledges.

Information Builders' WebFOCUS was chosen over reporting solutions from other software vendors, such as Business Objects, because it was seen as the most comprehensive Web-based reporting tool with the broadest data access capabilities. Vincent Cox, IT development manager of IFB, believed WebFOCUS could open up new possibilities for electronic report distribution while meeting the intense requirements and expectations of their high-pressure business. "We looked very closely at WebFOCUS and asked ourselves if it met our high expectations," he recalls. "The answer was yes. Information Builders gives us a great balance between cost-of-ownership and high-quality software."

Linking to All Kinds of Data

Vincent Cox appreciates WebFOCUS because it is easy to install and maintain. Due to its thin-client architecture, the software requires no installation on the desktop, enabling IFB to roll out a corporate-wide reporting environment to the entire organization at minimal cost.

IFB depends on a diverse IT environment anchored by a Siemens mainframe system, an Oracle database, and numerous Microsoft Windows NT servers. Thanks to its inherent ability to access dozens of computing platforms and data sources, WebFOCUS was easy to integrate with this hardware and software infrastructure. WebFOCUS was installed in a mirrored configuration on two Windows NT servers. Each night, data is extracted from the mainframe system and loaded into the Oracle database, where it can be accessed directly by WebFOCUS.

"The ability of WebFOCUS to work with many different databases and computing platforms validated our investment in Information Builders' software," Marissens reports. "With WebFOCUS, it is simple to extract data for analysis and reporting. The software communicates readily with our existing IT infrastructure, and it is an excellent tool for opening up communication between different layers of management."

Distributing Information to Managers and Staff

After the software was installed, IFB created a user friendly, Web-based reporting infrastructure that provides one-click reports for managers needing to uncover trends and gain insight into the business. Marissens says WebFOCUS is instrumental in extracting all kinds of information and distributing it to account managers, customer services reps, and credit department personnel. More than 50 users are presently using the software to generate reports in many different output formats, including PDF, Excel, and HTML.

"Our entire organization is getting information through WebFOCUS," says Marissens. "Once users see the potential for all the different types of reports that are available, they immediately want more."

Today, IFB produces and distributes about 100 reports to managers and staff members. Many of these reports are managed by WebFOCUS ReportCaster, a facility for scheduling and distributing reports generated with WebFOCUS. Control over scheduling can be concentrated in the hands of a single administrator or spread among any number of authorized users. The content, timing, frequency, format, and even the method of distributing reports can all be easily managed and customized to meet individual needs. "ReportCaster gives us exceptional control over when reports are run and how they are distributed," says Marissens.

Building Intelligence in the Supply Chain

Operating with the latest technology is an essential part of maintaining operational efficiency and, ultimately, profitability. IFB has just scratched the surface of WebFOCUS' potential, and managers see additional opportunities as the company expands. Over time, IFB plans to deploy new types of reporting solutions not only for its employees, but also externally for clients, debtors, international partners, and banks – essential players in the information supply chain.

"WebFOCUS is the kind of solution that helps us keep up to date with the real world," says Marissens. "Information Builders ensures we are constantly in touch with vital information, whenever we need it."