Lumber Company Chooses WebFOCUS for Business Intelligence

Published: October 10, 2006

by Dan Burger

When the IT department at Star Lumber and Supply, a supplier of home construction and improvement materials, got "the call" from senior management, the plan had already been set in motion. The executives and the operations staff knew what they wanted: up-to-date metrics that show the contribution each department made to the company's success. The emphasis was on "up to date."

In order to make business decisions based on a track record of company performance, Star Lumber and Supply's chief financial officer required timely and detailed analytic reports. It was decided that the best approach to delivering up-to-date metrics was with a single application that could report and analyze data from various departments.

Ultimately, the decision was made to purchase an off-the-shelf enterprise business intelligence product called WebFOCUS from Information Builders. The software, which is used in a portal environment, provides insight into individual department performance and that information is used to identify and correct business planning to better meet goals.

"We have a small staff of people who really understand iSeries, and WebFOCUS helps break down some of the technical barriers," says Dave Gregory, Star Lumber's director of information technology. "Report developers still need to understand the data, but we can now put this tool in the hands of a financial analyst and begin automating many of our processes. That's a big productivity increase."

WebFOCUS is a Java application that runs natively on i5/OS and OS/400 (and many other platforms, too) and is designed for use by a range of employees, from executives and managers to analysts and power users. With WebFOCUS, users can perform a number of analytical functions, including ad hoc reporting, development and quick view of key performance indicators (KPIs), and publication of exception alerts.

"Star Lumber is a perfect example of how small- and medium-sized businesses are trying to find ways to do more with less and achieve ROI," said Gerald Cohen, CEO of Information Builders. "By using WebFOCUS as its platform for operational performance management, the company is defining, building, and automating metrics that help them track progress on a daily basis and ensure that everyone is contributing to the bottom line."

Star Lumber also has plans to use WebFOCUS to deliver invoices and statements to its top builders and re-modelers.