U Virginia and San Jacinto College Streamline BI Work with Information Builders WebFocus

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 09/15/08

The University of Virginia School of Medicine and San Jacinto College have gone public with their adoption in the last year of Information Builders' business intelligence tool, WebFocus.

The U Virginia Department of Medicine successfully implemented the WebFocus BI platform, merging financial reports, faculty remuneration plans, statistics, data tracking, and clinical billing reports. About 300 users now use WebFocus to bridge two accounting systems and satisfy a diverse set of reporting requirements, including the ability to integrate the new reports with Microsoft Excel. WebFocus improved the efficiency of employees throughout the organization, with direct savings of more than $150,000 per year, the school said in a statement.

"We needed a reporting environment that was easy to use and could handle the needs of our physicians, as well as our clinical and department administrators," said Elizabeth Wildman, vice chair and COO for the Department of Medicine. "With WebFocus, we now have a single reporting tool to take care of our most acute business needs."

San Jacinto College in Harris County, TX, with 25,000 students, needed to automate the process of extracting data from the Banner enterprise resource planning system and disseminating that information through a self-service, parameter-driven reporting environment. The school deployed WebFocus with three modules and 15 different sets of templates in eight weeks.

WebFocus enabled users to access and analyze data through a Web-based system. The reporting tool visually represents information via secure, role-specific dashboards, and integrates the reporting environment with existing tools such as Microsoft Excel and Adobe Acrobat. Faculty and staff members can drill down into the information on their own. The school reported that WebFocus eliminated paper-based reports, freed IT personnel from fielding custom report requests, and provided faster access to information.

Other campuses using WebFocus include Tarleton State University in Stephenville, TX; Friends University in Wichita, KS; and the University of North Texas in Denton, TX.