WebFOCUS Shifts Power Systems Research Into High Gear

Market Research and Forecasting Firm Selects Information Builders to Power Its Business Intelligence Engine

Power Systems Research (PSR), a global market research and forecasting company, is the leading provider of industry information and outlook tools for medium- and heavy-duty equipment manufacturers. When the producers of engines, trucks, and components, as well as fleet management and consulting companies, want timely and accurate market data, such as the number of products produced, by whom, what equipment they are installed in, and in-service population, they trust the experience and proven track record of PSR.

When providing this kind of crucial intelligence to clients, precision is key. PSR compiles its industry information through more than 20,000 telephone and onsite interviews with manufacturers and suppliers. That data is often merged with client-owned data to provide a more granular view of particular aspects of the market. But, when a Microsoft ASP.NET application proved to be ineffective for delivering consolidated data to clients in a simple, easy-to-understand way, PSR realized it needed a more flexible and intuitive means of presenting that information to provide companies with greater insight into their buyers and markets they serve.

WebFOCUS was deployed to support EngineLink™, an online reporting environment that allows PSR customers to analyze such crucial industry metrics as market share for various equipment and components, or the lifecycle status of certain products. Users have tremendous flexibility, with the ability to perform sorting, filtering, calculating, charting, and other analytic functions to manipulate data in tremendous detail, so they can get the exact answers they need. The application has been so successful, that the company recently launched PartsLink®, which tracks vehicles, engines, and components in industrial applications, and CVLink®, which provides market data about commercial vehicles.

Today, thanks to WebFOCUS, PSR offers the best forecasting tools at the lowest possible price. By providing more detailed and exact information in a user-friendly environment, the company has empowered its clients with the intelligence needed to compete more effectively and develop more successful sales strategies in an industry that has been hit hard by the recession. As a result, PSR has uncovered new business opportunities and opened up new revenue streams.

The Road to WebFOCUS

Power Systems Research has maintained a core set of data for almost thirty years. As the research company started adding data about automotive components, it looked for creative ways to expand data management capabilities.

"A lot of our customers are component suppliers. They don't want to see the market by engine types or size, but need to filter the market from the perspective of the particular product they are offering," explains Dan Pinault, director of client services at Power Systems Research. "To address this need, we began to look for ways to merge our data with customer-owned component data."

Power Systems Research was previously using a Microsoft ASP.NET application. But things got much more complicated when the company began to merge customer data, in varied and frequently dissimilar formats, and in some cases, this data couldn't be shared outside of a customer's firewall.

"We also needed to include more analytical capabilities in our presentation layer," continues Pinault. "These issues are what started us on the quest for a new business intelligence product. We needed BI tools that could complement our existing infrastructure. That's where WebFOCUS came in."

Other leading BI tools had potential for Power Systems, but were priced beyond the company's budget. When Pinault saw a demonstration of WebFOCUS, it got his motor running. "As I watched the WebFOCUS Business Intelligence Dashboard demo, I realized that it was exactly the type of intelligence application we had been trying to build for the past three years, but this BI environment is complete, tested, and proven. Information Builders had affordable terms for us, so the decision was easy." The cost effective nature of the product allows Power Systems Research to provide its customers with the best possible forecasting tools at the lowest possible price.

Driving Profitable Returns With BI

Today, WebFOCUS is opening up new revenue streams by enabling Power Systems Research to create new data sets and analysis capabilities, such as market share for various engine and equipment components.

"WebFOCUS generates valuable market data that we can package in a very usable environment that requires no client-side tools," says Pinault. "While it provides value in terms of a reduced price to our customers, it is also boosting our revenue by allowing us to develop new categories of products."

For a Dutch transmission manufacturer, PSR created a WebFOCUS dashboard that merges engine specifications with vehicle registration data, which enables salespeople to identify aftermarket opportunities. The representatives can analyze the data by engine type, vehicle type, and territory, and use WebFOCUS Active Reports to package that information to share with prospects in a controlled environment. For example, the sales rep might create a password-protected report that can be accessed for only 30 days, then send it as a dynamic PDF file that includes an active payload of sample data for analysis.

"Previously, we explored Microsoft Digital Rights Management for this task, but it was just too clumsy," says Pinault.

Active Reports consist of data and interactive capabilities bound together in a single file. They are easily distributed to disconnected users, who can then perform common analytic functions, such as sorting, filtering, calculating, and charting. This unique method of distributing information enables customers to uphold security constraints by selecting a subset of data while the primary database remains locked behind a firewall. Power Systems Research especially likes being able to distribute this active content via standard PDF files.

On another front, WebFOCUS is improving Power Systems' PartsLink® product, which tracks vehicles, engines, and components throughout their lifecycles.

"A user might ask a question like: "Out of 10,000 John Deere tractors made in 1996, how many are still in use today and where are they in their maintenance cycles?'" suggests Pinault. "This is great intelligence for parts suppliers."

As PSR revs up its BI initiatives, many customers are renewing their subscriptions to its research data and requesting more frequent updates. This market intelligence is enormously beneficial to an industry that has been hit hard by the worldwide recession in automotive and heavy equipment production.

"Factors such as how big a market is, what share each company controls, and who are the primary competitors, those are all very dynamic figures that OEMs need to know to stay nimble," explains Pinault. "That's why many of our customers are asking for more frequent data updates. WebFOCUS enables us to present current information in more useful ways."

To satisfy its customers' desire for deeper knowledge of specific industry sectors, Power Systems Research created a product called CVLink®, which includes information about commercial vehicles. Customers who subscribe to CVLink® are given a user name and password to a Web site where they can view reports and perform custom analyses.

Power Systems Research built an earlier version of CVLink® using Microsoft ASP.NET, but brought in WebFOCUS knowing it would provide many additional capabilities.

Pinault shares an example: "An oil company that was a potential customer for CVLink® asked us if we could add oil specification data to the offering. Even though WebFOCUS was still new to me, I was able to pull together a working prototype in less than two days. It not only enabled us to win that project, but the oil revenue add-on increased our revenue for this sale."

More Horsepower for Data Analysis and Reporting

It took an offshore development team about a year to complete the ASP.NET version of CVLink®, but Pinault rebuilt the entire application by himself with WebFOCUS in just three months.

"The new version includes lots of functionality that we couldn't offer in our original application, such as saving parameters, exporting reports to a library, and more," Pinault says. "This one project enabled us to recoup a fair portion of our initial investment in WebFOCUS."

Pinault does major development work using WebFOCUS Developer Studio and creates basic reports with WebFOCUS InfoAssist, a robust yet simple-to-use reporting solution for non-technical users.

"If the report is not very complex, I jump right into InfoAssist," he says. "I love that tool. It is very easy to learn. And it will be perfect for our end users as a reporting tool."

When it comes to scheduling and distributing that information, WebFOCUS ReportCaster makes it easy to keep customers informed. For example, newsletters that were previously distributed manually are now automatically sent monthly, weekly, or daily, depending upon each customer's preference. In the future, they plan to use WebFOCUS Enable for Adobe® Flex® to enhance the reporting environment with interactive graphs and charts.

"WebFOCUS gives us a platform for packaging and distributing information in more efficient ways," Pinault sums up. "Having flexible data-management capabilities helps us to establish new business opportunities and develop new revenue models for our industry. Our investment in Information Builders' BI technology is taking our business to a whole new level."