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DecisionSuite and WebOLAP Enable CCC Sales Force

www.infoadvan.com

PLATFORMS: DecisionSuite and WebOLAP are used for OLAP analysis with a Sybase data warehouse on a Sun platform.

BACKGROUND: CCC is a leading provider of automobile claims information, processing claims management software and communication services for the auto insurance industry. The company's services and products enable more than 300 automobile insurance company customers and more than 10,000 collision repair facility customers to improve efficiency, manage costs and increase consumer satisfaction in the management of automobile claims and restoration.

PROBLEM SOLVED: CCC sought to OLAP-enable our sales and account associates to view and analyze their vehicle valuation information via a thin client solution. The sales force needed to be able to access customer information just prior to the sales call.

STRENGTHS: The strength of DecisionSuite lies within its architecture. By design, the system scales to support the large user communities associated with Web implementations like ours at CCC. Without relying on ODBC and temporary tables, DecisionSuite leverages both the database and its OLAP engine for improved report and query performance. The centralized repository of data facilitates our ability to monitor and manage our data warehouse and securely deploy it over the Web. With WebOLAP, report prompting allows CCC to create one report and allows each Web user to customize its outcome with selections from "pick lists" based on their security.

WEAKNESSES: During the evaluation process, CCC realized that the ability to drill upon a report prompt pick list to navigate to more detailed or summarized data was critical to the application. Through discussions with Information Advantage's Web development team, the necessary enhancement was defined and it was incorporated into our delivered product with DecisionSuite 5.6.

SELECTION CRITERIA: The DecisionCenter at Information Advantage, quickly created a prototype of our application using our data. Through this hands- on workshop, we created the filters, calculations and templates for our required reports. This experience gave us a thorough understanding of DecisionSuite's architecture, capabilities and their company as a whole.

DELIVERABLES: Today, CCC has defined and published fifteen dynamic OLAP reports for vehicle validation to our 125 sales and account managers. Power users also have additional capabilities that allow them to create new reports from scratch.

VENDOR SUPPORT: Information Advantage's DecisionCenter, Education and Client Services staffs played key roles in helping us design our data model and meta data, train our technical staff and implement minor product modifications specific to our needs.

DOCUMENTATION: With a Web application, end-user documentation should be nonexistent. WebOLAP provides on-line help for users. However, because it has embraced the capabilities such as hyperlinks, bookmarking and search engine publication, little assistance was necessary. The technical documentation for the OLAP engine and Windows clients was complete and easy to use as a reference to the product.


Walt Wikman, vice president of product engineering for CCC.

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