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Dresdner Bank Banks on WebFOCUS for Automated Reporting

Dresdner Bank is a global institution that enjoys tremendous opportunities but also faces staggering challenges. For instance, financial market regulations around the world require the bank to file regular reports about its investments. The SEC wants to know whether Dresdner can exert influence on publicly traded companies by exercising its right to dispose of those companies’ shares, in order to monitor market movements and share concentrations. It is also necessary to report to countries in Europe and Asia, whose legislative requirements differ.

Dresdner Bank decided it needed a system to centrally collate all reportable data on a daily basis, and then distribute applicable data to each of the employees responsible for reporting in the various countries where the Bank does business. So Dresdner Bank turned to Information Builders and its WebFOCUS business intelligence solution, and to iWay Software for its enterprise application integration expertise. The WebFOCUS/iWay solution supports distributed data input and maintenance, and outputs customized reports using Dresdner’s corporate intranet.

“Previously we fulfilled all our obligations, but it was a long, laborious process,” says Mathias Krause, director at Dresdner Bank. “The time was right for a new, comprehensive solution.”

For example, staff at the various international sites had been forwarding data to Frankfurt in very different formats: reports on shareholdings came in via e-mail, fax, or Excel tables and were collated and arranged semi-manually at the main office using a PC database. Staff in Frankfurt then had used e-mail to send the reportable data to their colleagues at the regional level – a very time-consuming and error-prone process.

In just a few short months, Dresdner Bank completely redesigned its reporting system and launched the International Shareholding Reporting System (Internationales Meldewesen Anteilsbesitz – or IMA). The bank discovered that WebFOCUS and iWay together comprised the only solution that could satisfy the bank’s complex requirements. “Information Builders impressed us with more than just their performance and price,” explains Krause. “We were particularly pleased by the speed and ease with which the data was taken from the various servers.

“We now have exactly what we need,” he concludes, “a globally serviceable solution that’s easy to use, simplifies employees’ jobs and gives managers rapid insight into key business processes and transactions.”

Zurich Financial Services Australia Ups Service, Cuts Costs With WebFOCUS Self-Service Reporting

This leading insurance firm, part of the worldwide Zurich Group, is using Information Builders’ WebFOCUS software to revolutionize the way it administers and delivers fleet risk management services. In just three months Zurich Financial Services Australia developed a claims-reporting and fleet-analysis tool, named Z Fleet Navigator (ZFN), that gives insurance brokers and their 1,400 fleet-management clients direct, real-time access to complete motor claims histories. ZFN also provides a secure portal through which brokers and their clients can obtain up-to-date claims information, analyze trends and implement risk management strategies.

“Z Fleet Navigator eliminated the need for Zurich staff to spend hours creating reports in response to broker requests,” said Corporate National Portfolio Manager Kim Pagotto. “We used to operate a manual system under which staff took around four hours to extract, print, and mail a single report.”

“We chose Information Builders both for its superior technology and the company’s proven ability to guarantee delivery,” said IS Project Manager for Z Fleet Navigator Phillip Coleman.

Zurich Financial Services Australia’s brokers have been quick to embrace the WebFOCUS application. Roger Davey, a senior account executive with Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group, said he was very impressed with the new offering. “Z Fleet Navigator enables me to access detailed claims information for my clients via the Internet when I need it,” he said. “Moreover, the reports detail this information in a format that allows for meaningful analysis and are of a standard that can be presented directly to clients.”

When Performance Counts

Information Builders recently announced a new performance management offering and stated that several of the company’s customers have successfully deployed WebFOCUS for performance management initiatives. Incorporating dashboards, performance metrics, management methodologies, and financial reporting, these deployments are extending Information Builders’ footprint within many of its enterprise customers.

The newly certified WebFOCUS Balanced Scorecard (BSC) illustrates Information Builders’ commitment to extend the performance management capabilities of WebFOCUS. The company has passed rigorous certification testing and is now officially Balanced Scorecard Collaborative Certified.

Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, Inc. (BSCol) is an education, training, advisory, research, and development organization that facilitates the worldwide awareness, use, enhancement, and integrity of the Balanced Scorecard as a value-added management process. Founded and led by the creators of the Balanced Scorecard concept, Drs. Robert Kaplan and David Norton, BSCol provides to organizations and individuals a global center of Balanced Scorecard excellence and expertise. (BSCol’s Web site is www.bscol.com.)

Information Builders customers also are benefiting from the recently released data visualization functionality delivered through WebFOCUS Visual Discovery, which provides powerful, real-time analysis from virtually any data source. This enables users at all levels to easily perform intuitive, highly interactive, graphical analysis using a wide variety of advanced visualization mechanisms and components.

While most solutions are focused on presenting performance results catered to a small, typically financial audience, Information Builders’ WebFOCUS performance management solutions are able to deploy performance metrics easily across the enterprise to large numbers of users.

WebFOCUS-propelled performance management initiatives include Cadence Network Inc. for its strategic forecasting across a broad user base; Milton Hershey School, whose real-time system yields smarter spending decisions; Mount Sinai NYU Health, with its intelligent executive self-service dashboards; and PNC Financial Services Group, who successfully deployed performance metrics in its call center.

You Asked for It, You Got It…Integrated BI

Information Builders’ ETL Manager and newly announced integration capabilities strengthen the company’s fully integrated business intelligence suite. ETL Manager is a powerful and comprehensive set of fully automated tools designed to simplify the creation, maintenance, and expansion of data warehouses, data marts, and operational data stores. ETL Manager comes out of the box with standard transformations, connectivity to many sources, and an easy-to-use interface that enables fast and flexible end-to-end ETL process creation. This product makes access and migration of virtually all enterprise data seamless, since it employs industry-leading adapter technology from Information Builders’ subsidiary iWay Software.

Recent acquisitions in the BI market validate the demands customers have for a single vendor to offer a complete, integrated business intelligence solution. As other companies in the market look to acquire tools and solutions to meet these requirements, Information Builders is the only vendor that provides a comprehensive BI and data management platform, which includes Information Builders’ ETL Manager, Metadata Manager, and Resource Analyzer and Governor.

Organizations like NASA’s Shuttle Processing Directorate at the Kennedy Space Center, Moneris, ArvinMeritor, and the United States Air Force (see USAF story in this issue), are currently using Information Builders’ BI and data management solutions across their enterprise.

InfoResponse Online Product Announcements and Advisories

Registered users of the Information Builders technical support web site may sign up to receive e-mail announcements about product enhancements, issues affecting implementation and product use, and about our services.

Subscribers to the notification service, called InfoResponse Online Product Announcements and Advisories, receive e-mail alerts on the following:

	InfoResponse Online – announcements about the site, including new features, improvements and outage notifications
	Product Advisories – important news and advisories on one or more of the following Information Builders family of products: FOCUS, iWay, and WebFOCUS

To take advantage of this service, select the “targeted e-mail advisories” link under “Product Announcements” on techsupport.informationbuilders.com and choose one or more of the above topics. Change your selections at any time in the future by selecting “Resources” from the top navigation bar on any page at the technical support site and then “Profile Management/Advisory Signup.” If you’re not a registered user of InfoResponse Online, go to the site and select “Create a new account.” If you have any questions, contact Michelle Sykes-Jackson at michele_sykes-jackson@ibi.com.