Seven Information Builders Customers Recognized as Laureates by the Computerworld Honors Program

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - Jun 21, 2011) - Information Builders, the independent leader in business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced that seven of its customers have been named Laureates by the Computerworld Honors Program as a result of their visionary use of BI technology. The Information Builders customers span private and public organizations across several industries and include Charlotte-Mecklenberg Police Department, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Houston Community College (HCC), Schawk, Scotiabank, Transamerica Life Insurance Company, and Yeshiva University.

Each year, members of the Chairmen's Committee, a group of 100 chairmen and CEOs of global technology companies, nominate individuals and organizations around the world whose innovative use and application of information technology promotes positive social and economic progress. The honorees incorporated Information Builders' BI technology to gain much-needed insight into critical business data, enhancing internal operations, products, and services.

"We are honored to showcase the achievements of this distinguished group of customers," said Gerald Cohen, founder and CEO of Information Builders. "The diversity of their solutions reveals the broad reach and universal applicability of BI and integration technology and the many benefits it brings when it is used in innovative ways."

This year's honorees were commemorated during the 23rd Annual Laureates Medal Ceremony and Gala Awards Evening, held today at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C.

• Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department deployed Information Builders' Law Enforcement Analytics (LEA) dashboard and predictive policing solution to proactively fight crime with intelligent, timely, and complete information. Instead of manually sifting through 13 disparate data sources to analyze crime statistics, identify trends, and model resource allocations, this LEA solution automates tedious analytical processes and provides up-to-the-minute reports to police officers in their patrol cars. Links to key performance indicators (KPIs), management dashboards, interactive-mapping capabilities, predictive analytics, and data mining tools help crime analysts spot trends and predict future outcomes, helping commanders determine when and where they should deploy police resources.
• FDIC - From January 2008 through December 2010, the FDIC was appointed as receiver of 322 failed financial institutions, with assets at inception totaling more than $625 billion. This resolution activity dramatically increased workloads and created a crushing demand for information about the organization, its operations, and receivership management. FDIC's Financial and Management Reporting (FMR) group used WebFOCUS to build dashboards that enable FDIC employees to complete their jobs faster, accelerating the resolution process and reducing losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund. Prior to the implementation of the portals, the FMR unit was manually preparing some reports and distributing them via e-mail on a weekly basis. The reports are now automated and are published on the portal daily for executives and management. In addition, prior to developing the portal, FMR was e-mailing on average more than 400 operational reports each day. Now, only 33 reports are being published to the centralized portal on a daily basis, and users can retrieve them as needed, saving many hours managing report distribution and cutting down on data redundancies and overloaded e-mail accounts.
• Houston Community College developed an academic dashboard for board members, senior staff members, and administrators that helps the college document and evaluate decisions, measure student enrollment, track student outcomes, and provide access to key financial indicators. By enabling these people to analyze data from a single source of truth in a compelling, visual way, they can make critical enrollment and financial decisions with greater insight and keep the community apprised of important developments. In today's economy, where budget cuts are increasingly common, BI technology enables the college to present its enrollment management, financial aid, and student satisfaction information to the community in a more complete and understandable way.
• Schawk helps some of the world's largest companies manage, monitor, measure, and protect branded assets, and comply with the requirements of highly regulated industries. This company used iWay Service Manager to create an XML-driven framework for receiving, normalizing, and integrating consumer readable packaging text and metadata into design and manufacturing processes. iWay automates key internal processes and workflows while fostering faster, simpler business-to-business (B2B) exchanges with clients. This includes updates to label and packaging information, such as ingredients and nutrition facts, which are now automatically converted into industry-standard XML formats and dynamically placed into electronic artwork. The iWay framework helps clients adhere to package labeling guidelines that promote consumer safety.
• Scotiabank - At a time when the financial services industry is under intense scrutiny for how it compensates sales professionals, Scotiabank is leading the industry with its focus on accountability, auditability, and fairness in its commissions, bonuses, and reporting practices. With more than 12.5 million customers in 50 countries around the world, Scotiabank offers a wide array of products including personal, commercial, corporate, and investment banking services. To streamline integration among delivery channels and across product and service lines, Scotiabank standardized on integration technology from iWay Software. For example, Scotiabank used iWay Service Manager to develop data interfaces to its Sales Builder system, which automated the sales reporting process and freed up more than 72,000 hours per year, allowing staff members to spend more time advising customers. Scotiabank's investment in these IT capabilities has an expected return of several million dollars per year on a go-forward basis. In addition to this exceptional ROI, the bank has several other gauges for measuring success of each iWay project, including a positive response from the sales staff, less time spent in development, the ability to open new business channels more quickly and a growing repository of integration assets, which means they don't have to develop new interfaces from scratch.
• Transamerica Insurance and Investment Group (TIIG) used Information Builders' WebFOCUS BI platform to build the Sales Tracking and Reporting System (STARS), a self-service reporting environment that provides up-to-date sales and commission information to more than 800 independent life insurance distributors and company sales-line employees. By leveraging STARS to make its sales force more efficient and effective, the company is ensuring that policyholders receive superior service and support from their insurance professionals. Independent distributors can better monitor and manage their business activities, while management can track overall performance across all sales channels and lines of business. This enables TIIG to develop and monitor incentive programs designed to align the interests of its sales professionals with the company's overall objectives.
• Yeshiva University - Yeshiva's administrators know that fiscal responsibility is crucial to attaining their mission of combining the best of contemporary civilization and knowledge with the ancient traditions of Jewish law and life. The more efficient they can make their information systems, the more capably they can pursue their charter. iWay's rapid integration solutions have enabled Yeshiva to maximize its research assets, simplify grant administration, control spending, automate accounts payable and procurement processes, and create highly sophisticated workflows that reduce manual effort for the administrative staff. Lowering its overhead costs helps the university to minimize fee increases, making the college more affordable for existing and prospective students.

About the Computerworld Honors Program

Founded by International Data Group (IDG) in 1988, the Computerworld Honors Program is governed by the not-for-profit Computerworld Information Technology Awards Foundation. In its 22nd year, Computerworld Honors is the longest running global program to honor individuals and organizations that use information technology to benefit society.

The technology achievements honored by this program are preserved and protected in national archives, and in more than 350 universities, museums, and research institutions throughout the world. Additional information about the program and a Global Archive of past Laureate case studies and oral histories can be found at the Computerworld Honors website: cwhonors.org.

About iWay Software

iWay Software uses a single, integrated set of next-generation graphical design tools to assemble powerful real-time components for enterprise-class business-to-business (B2B), business process automation (BPA), or enterprise information management (EIM) integration scenarios -- without writing expensive custom code. With these comprehensive solutions, organizations can build a strong, yet open and flexible technology infrastructure that maximizes agility, efficiency, and competitive advantage with measurable ROI. We deliver the fastest, most cost-effective, and simplest way to integrate and streamline business.

About Information Builders

Information Builders provides software and services that bring smarter decision-making and streamlined processes to leading organizations in business, government, and education worldwide. The company's software is installed in tens of thousands of locations, servicing millions of users. Its WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) platform delivers massively scalable information applications, analytics, and customer-facing portals to the new generation of information users to deliver game-changing business results. Its iWay Software integration platform allows enterprises to leverage all of their information resources to streamline internal and business-to-business processes while escalating the overall accessibility and integrity of information regardless of environmental complexity. Headquartered in New York City with 60 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,350 people and has established significant industry partnerships. Visit Information Builders at informationbuilders.com. For ongoing news, go to informationbuilders.com/new or follow Information Builders at @infobldrs.