Transcript

But how does Business Intelligence play out in the real world?

On this page, case studies and examples from both U-M and the business world show how the benefits of BI can be applied to challenges across many business models.

Psychology Department, LSA

The Department of Psychology tracked and stored administrative data in multiple disparate systems (including M-Pathways) across many area administrative offices, which made it very difficult to generate accurate department-wide reports. In response, the department implemented the Psychology Department Information System (PDIS), a single, easy-to-use, Web-based, operational BI solution that it now uses for course planning and scheduling, enrollment tracking and reporting, faculty performance reports, faculty HR administration, research financial information, and graduate student funding management. The course scheduling functionality alone has saved hundreds of hours of administrative time for the department. Listen to a presentation about this project.

close

M-Reports

M-Reports is an online reporting environment that transparently provides data from multiple sources, guides analysis on those data areas, and requires no user training. The tool’s drill-to-detail functionality eliminates the need to run subsequent reports in order to examine details for anomalies and outliers. M-Reports was one of the first projects on campus to use Microsoft .NET technology and the Microsoft Business Intelligence toolset to create a dimensional model of data that allows for instant information retrieval — a vast improvement from the time it used to take to run a single report.

close

Zurich North America

Zurich, a $6.2 billion insurance and risk management corporation, used BI to deploy an extranet that gave customers direct online access to their information. The company estimates it has saved up to $400,000 per year in printing and shipping costs because it no longer needs to send out paper reports. The total three-year ROI for their BI deployment was 249 percent.

close

Medical School

M-Dash, short for Michigan-Dashboard, pulls together a wide variety of data about the Medical School and turns it into easy-to-understand and useful charts, graphs and projections. The school uses the tool to evaluate numerous aspects of unit and school productivity, which helps to forecast future needs, such as when a new research building may be required. M-Dash received national attention in Academic Medicine and Business Week and locally in the Ann Arbor Business Review. Download a PowerPoint presentation about this project.

close

Ben & Jerry’s

BI allows the U.S. ice cream maker to track, understand and manage information on the thousands of consumer responses it receives on its products and promotional activities. Through daily customer feedback analysis, Ben & Jerry’s is able to identify trends and modify its marketing campaigns and products to suit consumer demand.

close

College of Engineering

The College of Engineering created a tool for scholarship matching that combines enterprise and local engineering data to match student qualifications for scholarships with donor stipulations, automating the matching of more than 600 scholarships. Previously, it often took several days for this to be accomplished. The tool also allows administrative staff to run potential scholarship matches for all students at once, saving time and reducing the need for reshuffling matches later. Many of the Engineering features were incorporated into a new M-Pathways application that has been implemented by several units on campus. View screenshots of the scholarship match interface and a sample report.

close

Pharmacy Services, University of Michigan Health System

Pharmacy Services became eligible for a federal program called the 340B Program, which allows institutions that provide for a disproportionate share of the indigent or poor patients to purchase drugs at a significant savings. However, complex government rules made it too difficult to take full advantage of the program. The group developed a BI solution that examines overall drug usage, identifies the percentage eligible for discount, and then interacts with the wholesaler to determine the appropriate pricing. Pharmacy Services has saved over $10 million a year using the system, which also manages virtual inventory and coordinates drug purchases.

close

Volkswagen Finance

Based on their socio-economic profiles, Volkswagen thought the customers of a particular Audi vehicle model would want long lease terms and fairly large upfront payments. Instead, BI analysis revealed that the Audi customers actually wanted shorter leases and to finance a large part of the purchase. Based on that insight, the company introduced a new lease program, which saw immediate success and resulted in over $2 million in new revenue.

close


Click Next Slide to advance this module


Copyright © 2008 The Regents of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA