Utah Valley University Selects Information Builders for Institutional Reporting

State-Run University Uses WebFOCUS to Maximize Efficiency, Reduce Costs, and Improve Student Services


NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - July 27, 2009) - Information Builders, an independent leader in business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced that Utah Valley University (UVU), a state-funded university that is home to 25,000 students, deployed Information Builders WebFOCUS BI platform for institutional reporting. UVU is using WebFOCUS to create an institution-wide reporting system that accommodates the needs of a variety of different departments and thousands of users.

With dozens of separate departments looking for distinct reports and thousands of new students entering the university each year, the IT department faced an ongoing challenge to deliver secure and accurate information. UVU was searching for a way to create a unified BI environment that would put intuitive reporting, based on real-time data, into the hands of key decision-makers throughout the university.

"We had several different departments demanding unique information that's relevant to their specific roles within the university," said Joe Belnap, senior director of Administrative Computing for UVU. "Many of these different data points inevitably intersect. For example, admissions information trickles down to affect everything from enrollment numbers to classroom allocation. Having one comprehensive reporting environment for all of these different areas is vital to improving efficiency campus-wide."

UVU implemented WebFOCUS to meet the university's goal of pervasive reporting. The easy-to-use WebFOCUS BI environment caters to a wide range of users -- from the executive level and IT departments to the student population and casual users. Additionally, the WebFOCUS platform easily integrates with and leverages the university's SunGard Banner ERP system and accompanying Oracle database, providing the IT team with a reporting tool that can access, analyze, and distribute information within the system.

Since purchasing WebFOCUS in the fall of 2008, many reporting projects are underway at UVU. The IT department is currently working toward the goal of enabling every department on campus to run and customize their own reports, optimizing stored information and freeing up valuable time for the IT staff. The department is also looking forward to future deployments like WebFOCUS Active Reports. This highly portable BI technology would allow the university to e-mail interactive reports to those not connected to the reporting server or even the Web. Each Active Report includes an HTML-based analytical engine so users can view, sort, and manipulate the included data through a standard Web browser, even when they are offline.

According to Belnap, the university has several reports in development that will maximize efficiency. "Reports on space utilization will examine how the different colleges within the university are using their classrooms and lecture halls so that we can match enrollment numbers to classroom sizes, ensuring that popular courses don't overflow the space allotted to them," he said. "We're relying on WebFOCUS reports to identify patterns, stay on top of trends, and make meaningful decisions based on actionable data."

"With any large university such as UVU, there are massive quantities of data, whether it be information about students, courses, or funding levels," said Gerald Cohen, CEO and founder of Information Builders "With the WebFOCUS BI platform, UVU and other universities and businesses have the ability to gather, summarize, and deliver relevant information to decision-makers on a daily basis. At UVU, the IT department saves hours of important time and users have the reports they need to make timely decisions related to the future of the university."

About Utah Valley University

Utah Valley University is a teaching institution which provides opportunity, promotes student success, and meets regional educational needs. UVU builds on a foundation of substantive scholarly and creative work to foster engaged learning. The university prepares professionally competent people of integrity who, as life-long learners and leaders, serve as stewards of a globally interdependent community.

About Information Builders

Information Builders' award-winning combination of business intelligence and enterprise integration software has been providing innovative solutions to more than 12,000 customers for the past 30 years. WebFOCUS is the world's most widely utilized business intelligence platform. It provides the security, scalability, and flexibility needed at every level of global extended enterprises. Its simplicity helps create executive, analytical, and operational applications that reach dozens to millions of users. Information Builders' iWay Software suite provides state of the art, multi-purpose, pre-built integration components that address all SOA, application, data, and information management requirements. Its integration adapters have been adopted by the leading software platform providers. Together, these products give Information Builders' customers the ability to grow and innovate according to their needs.

Information Builders' customers include most of the Fortune 100 and U.S. federal government agencies. Headquartered in New York City with 90 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,450 people and has more than 350 business partners. More information is available at http://www.informationbuilders.com.

Contact Information: Press Contacts Kathleen Moran Information Builders (917) 339-6313 Sheila Bohan Emerge PR (617) 729-3185