Poudre Valley Health System (PVHS) Receives Ventana Research Leadership Award for Excellence in Business Intelligence From Information Builders

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - October 8, 2008) - Information Builders, the independent leader in operational business intelligence (BI) systems, today announced its customer Poudre Valley Health System (PVHS) was awarded the Ventana Research Leadership Award in the Business Intelligence category. PVHS provides a regional network with healthcare services and employs more than 3,000 healthcare professionals. With WebFOCUS, PVHS was able to replace several reporting tools with a standard BI solution and deliver real-time data about hospital costs, patient safety, bed occupancy, infection rates, and other variables to help directors, supervisors, and other users analyze market trends and keep a tight reign on costs.

"With WebFOCUS, we were finally able to turn data into information, transform that information into knowledge, and use that knowledge to instigate positive change," said Russ Branzell, CIO of Poudre Valley Health Systems. "We are honored to be recognized for our work and are dedicated to continue incorporating new technologies into our system to make services more affordable and effective for patients."

Implementing WebFOCUS at PVHS resulted in a significant boost in staff productivity and cost cutting throughout the facility. Because PVHS replaced several reporting tools with WebFOCUS, they are now able to selectively deliver real-time data without showering recipients with irrelevant information. BI dashboards and automatically scheduled reports keep managers and directors apprised of critical organizational metrics. For example, authorized users of WebFOCUS can quickly assess Cost per Unit of Service, a complex calculation that compares patient volume, current expenses, and monthly budget projections. When a director notes a variance in the scorecard, he can now drill down into related data to analyze and address where the variance occurred and what caused it. Today, managers can go to one place for clinical, financial, and operational reports.

In addition, PVHS typically knows its market share at a single point in time, but with WebFOCUS, managers can now understand the market as a whole. WebFOCUS ReportCaster helps the team share and distribute market data. PVHS can use it to distribute relevant information by email, freeing people from having to log in to the system and look for it themselves. They can easily send reports to people in HR, accounting, or any other department in the organization; and those people, in turn, can mine the data and generate ad hoc reports within a secure Web-based environment.

"The Ventana Research Leadership Award in BI recognizes the organization that has most successfully deployed BI technology to advance business and IT management and to improve performance through the use of analytics," said Mark Smith, CEO and EVP, Ventana Research. "The PVHS organization exemplifies this award and the understanding that successful performance management requires both a team effort and effective leadership."

"Hospitals and medical clinics, like PVHS, depend on precise information to control costs and to ensure that patients get the quality care they need," said Gerald Cohen, CEO and founder of Information Builders. "PVHS has succeeded in defining the key metrics that will help the organization continue to grow and be profitable and wholly deserve this prestigious recognition."

About Ventana Research

Ventana Research is the leading benchmark research and advisory services firm. We provide expert guidance to help organizations manage and optimize performance -- to become not only more efficient but more effective. Our unparalleled insights and best practices guidance are based on our rigorous, research-based benchmarking of people, processes, information and technology across business and IT functions worldwide. The combination we offer of benchmark research, thorough market coverage and in-depth knowledge of hundreds of technology providers means we can deliver business and technology education and expertise to our clients where and when you need them. Ventana Research provides the most comprehensive analyst coverage in the industry; more than 2.5 million business and IT professionals around the world benefit from Ventana Research's insights. To learn how our benchmark research and assessment and advisory services can improve your organization's performance, visit www.ventanaresearch.com.

About Poudre Valley Health System

PVHS is a locally owned, private, not-for-profit organization that provides care to residents of Northern Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming. With two hospitals -- PVH and MCR -- PVHS offers a full spectrum of healthcare services, including emergency/urgent care, intensive care, medical/surgical care, maternal/child care, oncology care, and orthopedic care. PVHS' unique clinical focus areas include: 1) Colorado's third largest cardiac center; 2) the only Level IIIa neonatal intensive care unit between Denver and Billings, Montana; 3) Level II and III trauma centers; and 4) a bariatriac surgery Center of Excellence.

About Information Builders

As a leading independent business intelligence (BI) company for the past 30 years, Information Builders has provided innovative solutions to more than 12,000 customers, including most of the Fortune 100 and numerous U.S. federal government agencies. The company's flagship WebFOCUS product is the world's most widely used BI platform. Superior architecture and intuitive nature enables WebFOCUS to address the needs of everyone in the extended global enterprise -- executive, analytical, operational, and beyond. It provides the agility to adapt to changing business conditions with the security, scalability, and flexibility to support dozens to millions of users.

Unique to the company is the integration expertise it brings to the BI market. Information Builders iWay Software suite solves complex integration problems with pre-built components that require minimal custom programming. The award-winning combination of WebFOCUS and iWay give Information Builders customers the ability to embrace the company motto: "Everyone Makes Decisions."

Information Builders is committed to customer service excellence with a Professional Services division that specializes in building custom applications using WebFOCUS and iWay Software. Headquartered in New York City with 90 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,450 people and has more than 350 business partners.

Contact Information: Press Contacts Kathleen Moran Information Builders (917) 339-6313 Jennifer Moebius Emerge PR (617) 729-3183