Information Builders, the enterprise business intelligence (BI) standard of choice for organizations around the world, announced that Velsicol Chemical Corporation has selected WebFOCUS as its enterprise BI standard for reporting and information delivery. Velsicol plans to use the new software to enhance its SAP R/3 enterprise resource planning environment (ERP), generating reports for sales, distribution, quality management, production planning, human resources, financials, materials management, and plant maintenance.
Velsicol Chemical Corporation is a global expert in the plastic additives and specialty chemicals industry. The company is known around the world for its innovative technology, quality products, and exceptional level of service. In order to maintain its leadership position, Velsicol needed a reporting tool that could work seamlessly with its SAP R/3 ERP software. IT pros at the company evaluated BI products from several technology vendors. With the exception of WebFOCUS, all of the other tools had implementation issues that the vendors could not resolve. The main problems involved obtaining field descriptions from the SAP tables and using SAP security rules.
"We favored WebFOCUS because it works well with the SAP environment and has comprehensive security, data access, and drill-down and parameterized-reporting capabilities," said Lee Goodrich, senior business systems analyst, Velsicol Chemical Corp. "Additionally, Information Builders had the best pricing and they agreed to develop a proof of concept to demonstrate they could meet our reporting needs."
"While Velsicol Chemical is a mid-sized company, it has many of the same reporting needs of much larger firms," said Gerald Cohen, president and CEO of Information Builders. "As they invest more heavily in enterprise resource planning software, BI technology will enable them to fully leverage their enterprise software assets."
Velsicol used another third-party reporting tool before adopting WebFOCUS. Though most users found this tool adequate for generating standard reports, it had a limited set of drill-down capabilities and more rigid rules for entering parameters. For example, users could change field limits and sort orders, but if they needed to add additional information or fields they had to engage a developer. This reporting solution became prohibitively expensive as usage expanded, since the BI vendor required Velsicol to purchase a license for every user that views information.
WebFOCUS, by contrast, not only includes extremely flexible parameterized reporting options, but Information Builders does not charge for end users who simply run standard reports. These more generous licensing terms will allow Velsicol to affordably roll out the new software to executives, plant managers, production managers, plant accountants, department managers, maintenance managers, quality managers, and many other key users throughout the organization. Power users will be able to create new reports and modify existing ones without assistance from the IT department. Velsicol plans to supply both standard and ad hoc reporting services via domain-specific dashboards, and may eventually integrate these reports with the SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW). WebFOCUS can directly access all BW objects.
"We're adopting WebFOCUS as our BI standard and we plan to roll it out throughout the business," Goodrich confirmed. "Ultimately, we believe WebFOCUS will be as pervasive as the SAP software itself, as we enhance reporting and information management activities throughout the enterprise."
About Velsicol Chemical
Velsicol Chemical Corporation is the global expert in performance plasticizers, food additives, and industrial intermediates. The company is best known around the world for its innovative technology, quality products, and exceptional level of service provided through an extensive global manufacturing and service network. Headquartered in suburban Chicago, Ill., Velsicol operates manufacturing facilities in Memphis, Tenn., Chestertown, Md., Chattanooga, Tenn., and Kohtla Jarve, Estonia. For more information about Velsicol, please visit http://www.velsicol.com.
About Information Builders
Information Builders is the leader in enterprise business intelligence and real-time operational reporting. The company's WebFOCUS product -- the industry's most scalable, secure, and flexible -- is able to meet all the reporting needs of the extended enterprise, ranging from analysts to power users to the widest deployments for hundreds of thousands of users. Additionally, WebFOCUS' empowerment of organizations seeking to leverage all their data -- by accessing it all from legacy to data warehouse -- is unmatched.
Information Builders' award-winning technology has successfully provided quality software and superior services for over 31 years to more than 12,000 customers, including most of the Fortune 100 and U.S. federal government agencies. Headquartered in New York City with 90 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,600 people and has over 350 business partners.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/755602/velsicol_chemical_selects_information_builders_as_its_business_intelligence_standard/index.html?source=r_science
