With fifteen companies representing 8 separate industries, flexible Web reporting was not only key, but crucial to keeping Bosselman Energy employees performing their jobs at top levels. But, they faced a couple of reporting challenges: They had no web developers on staff and needed to create reports over a massive datamart (with over 15 million records). Read this case study to learn how they solved both issues with m-Power.
Results
Gave users quick and easy access to crucial data from their datamart
Delivered the solution using their in-house staff, without the need for developers
Can now develop web reports in minutes
After the requirements are gathered an application is usually generated in a few hours or even minutes. This allows users to make changes as needed, and has the added bonus of creating flexibility in the design process, providing our users with a more efficient decision tool.
Full Case Study
Who is Bosselman Energy?
Bosselman Energy, Inc. is focused on marketing and delivering petroleum products with outstanding service to their customers throughout the Midwest.
The Challenges
Bosselman's IT department had 12 on staff, but no full-time developers and only one business analyst in-house. The remaining staff have their hands full with end-user support and hardware/software maintenance for over 50 locations as far west as New Mexico and as far east as Kentucky.
"Our situation wasn't very good," says Galbraith, "We were using tools that were not enterprise-wide or enterprise-level tools, and ran on the client-side. Because our data files are large, it required extra logic to cut them up, and then we had to build separate programs to read different dimension-based facts. It was very cumbersome."
Additionally, the POS system covering these fifteen companies and eight industries ran separately from JD Edwards. The data was only combined when it hit general ledger.
Solution
Galbraith and his team used m-Power to create an intranet of applications to allow users to access and analyze crucial data in a powerful large-scale datamart.
By using m-Power, these complex applications were all built in-house without the need for a traditional developer staff.
Value
In fact, Galbraith says that m-Power is so fast that it usually takes longer to gather reporting requirements than to create the report itself.
"After the requirements are gathered an application is usually generated in a few hours or even minutes. This allows users to make changes as needed, and has the added bonus of creating flexibility in the design process, providing our users with a more efficient decision tool."
The additional benefit too, is now the applications are easy to maintain, which means Galbraith and his team can focus more on developing new ways to improve their business processes rather than maintaining software.
"While it is difficult to assign specific measurements to improving information delivery, before m-Power, the users simply did not have access to the information in a flexible or timely manner.
Our objectives included getting Web-based reports out to as many users as possible in a cost-effective manner. We have succeeded in meeting that objective. We can expect to see more and more returns from our people getting more information faster and subsequently making better decisions," said Galbraith.
To learn more about Bosselman Energy, you can visit their Web site at: http://www.bosselmanenergy.com/