Business Intelligence Services

CACS builds robust business intelligence solutions for the fast-paced and ever-changing global marketplace. We leverage extensive information technology and business experience to provide customers with answers for their critical tactical and strategic questions. Our  solutions are designed with flexibility in mind. Businesses of today need the ability to pick and choose interoperable components that can be easily implemented into their environments. The modular nature of these solutions allows them to be loosely coupled with each other and your enterprise applications, while maintaining a rich feature-set.

Interoperable Business Intelligence Platform

CACS creates an Interoperable Business Intelligence Platform that is the foundation for a quality BI implementation. The platform architecture is designed with the needs of the enterprise in mind: security, scalability, extensibility and manageability. By providing a common platform that is based on industry standards and techniques, IMPACT! solutions are easily implemented into enterprise environments and comply with the needs of IT and business users alike.

Components

The IBI Platform's base components provide the backbone for all data exchange, storage and access. The Repository Components maintain all the data required for analytics. The Facilitating Components provide the means for data exchange and access.

Repository Components	Facilitating Components
Operational Data Store Metadata	Data Marts ETML Engine
Data Warehouse Security Module	Workflow Module
	Management Module

Reporting Applications

CACS provides a wide range of reporting tools that can support an array of information needs and extend an organization’s insight of customer behaviors and operational status.
Current State Operational Reporting Tools
Operational Reporting provides a surface level view of information and is useful for tactical operational decisions. These tools are good at answering questions such as "Who purchased an auto insurance policy in the last 3 years?" We can sub-divide operational reporting into two areas traditionally known as Ad-hoc and Query & Reporting. The Query & Reporting tools generally provide information derived from SQL queries that are preconfigured by a vendor or IT department, and can be characterized as static and parameterized. Ad-hoc reports, while also based on SQL queries, differ in that they are configured by a business analyst on an as-needed basis. These reports can be characterized as user-centric.

OLAP Reporting Tools

OLAP Reporting is capable of providing an additional level of sophisticated analysis above that of Operational Reporting. OLAP Reporting applications use the multi-dimensional characteristics of Data Marts to provide more diverse capabilities to assist with business functions such as enterprise budgeting and financial reporting, demand planning, and market analysis. OLAP tools are good at drilling down into the detail to answer questions such as "what is the average income of auto insurance buyers by year and region?" The characteristics of Data Marts allow the flexible traversing of data by enabling the easy retrieval of summarized data, "slicing & dicing" data into separate marts based on business unit or operational function, and simplifying the reporting process through user interfaces that are more flexible than writing SQL-based queries.

Trend & Prediction Tools

Trend and Prediction tools take the sophistication of OLAP Reporting to yet another level via the use of various Data Mining (DM) techniques including classification, clustering, decision tree and associations. DM tools can answer questions such as "Who will buy auto insurance in the next six months and why?" While OLAP Reporting could potentially detect some patterns in the company data, it is, by definition, based on a slice of information. By contrast, DM algorithms directly analyze all data, eliminating the loss of data, and finding patterns that would otherwise be unseen. These "hidden" patterns are not only useful for understanding trends and behaviors, but can be used for predicting the outcome of business decisions.

Context Enhancements

There are a number of enhancements that can be included in a BI solution to provide additional context to the data in an organization's repositories. Here are some examples:

Demographics

Increase your understanding of your customers by including demographics data in your BI applications. CACS enhances your BI applications via information feeds with data such as age, ancestry, commute to work, education, employment and occupation, home value, household and family components, households, housing units and tenure, families, income, labor force status, marital status, place of work, population, race (census and OMB definitions), sex, and vehicles per household.

Psychographics

Find out more than what your customers are buying, but what they would like to buy. Psychographics marketing research provides a completely different level of view into your customers' behaviors.

Climate Data

Many products are sold due to changes in the local climate. Companies use climatology information to show when demand spikes are due to temporary fluctuations in weather patterns rather than longer term trends, avoiding overstocking and money lost in the supply chain.

Industry Information

"As IT managers consider which technologies to invest in this year, they should exercise caution with supply chain and customer relationship management (CRM) projects but expect high yields from business intelligence (BI) efforts. "

COMPUTERWORLD

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"Vice presidents of sales and chief financial officers are seeking competitive advantage and greater results from data warehousing and business intelligence solutions in ERP environments. Research findings indicate data warehousing and business intelligence solutions are key in achieving growth."

The Data Warehouse Institute & Braun Consulting

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"A lot of companies have discovered a simple, low-cost way to deliver a sizable boost in sales: give people real-time business intelligence. A recent survey revealed that 42 percent of companies said they expect to see revenues actually increase when end users are given access to timely data."

DM Review

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"The use and acquisition of information is a key part of the way any business makes money. (Business Intelligence) ... technologies provide greater insight into how this information can be better used and more effectively acquired. "

Idea Group