A cure for better customer insight
Picis implements FastTrack BI for unleashing vital CRM data
Author: Marc Haberland
Success for a market leader like Picis, a worldwide provider of information
systems for surgery, emergency department and intensive care units across the
hospital enterprise, is based on an in-depth understanding of their customers, the marketplace and best-in-class internal processes. (Download the complete story here.)
With the implementation of the market-leading Customer Relationship Management
(CRM) system by Siebel, Picis hoped to bring together the key information to
achieve a more comprehensive view of their customers. By providing their sales,
marketing, and client operations teams with the necessary CRM tool and processes, the company built a solid foundation for the collection and management of
customer interaction data. However like many organizations, Picis faced a huge
challenge – unleashing the customer intelligence contained within their CRM
system.
The Project
With all the data available in their CRM system, but limited capability to tap
into this fertile source of information, Picis engaged ClearPeaks – an
experienced leader in the delivery of customer intelligence solutions.
The objective: Provide all relevant Picis business units with an easy-to-use yet comprehensive dashboarding, reporting and analysis capability across all
levels of the organization; and allow for automated refresh and delivery of the
vital customer intelligence.
The Approach
The ClearPeaks Enterprise Intelligence Framework, a foundation for requirements
analysis and business process mapping, served as an excellent starting point to
identify the requirements of the various departments ranging from customer
services, client managers to the sales and marketing team (see figure 1).
The ClearPeaks team performed an in-depth analysis with the different Picis
end-user groups to understand the various layers of dashboards and reports
required to cover all aspects from performance management to the operational
reporting needs, the bread-and-butter of the Siebel end-users.
Figure 1 - ClearPeaks Enterprise Intelligence Framework
“With ClearPeaks’ FastTrack BI solution we are now able to better analyze our data, segment our customers, measure the ROI of our marketing initiatives and provide an automated and rolled-up sales forecast.” Kevin P., Picis
With a clear understanding of Picis’ overall requirements, ClearPeaks identified
the most suitable and cost-effective business intelligence (BI) solution for
Picis. The vital components of the proposed BI Framework included the following:
• Business Objects® 6.5 – The world’s leading BI solution by Business
Objects
• FastTrack BI™ for Siebel CRM – ClearPeaks’ comprehensive end-user
reporting environment for Siebel CRM, which is cost-effective and rapid
to deploy
• ReportMessenger™ – ClearPeaks’ automated solution for delivering
up-to-the-minute business intelligence
• ReportPacks™ – ClearPeaks’ dashboard & reporting solutions for rapid
implementations
• Custom Dashboards and Reporting – Custom-designed dashboards and
reports.
Basis for a solid BI foundation at Picis was the industry leading Business
Objects’ enterprise reporting solution. BusinessObjects Enterprise is a BI
platform that powers the management and the secure deployment of specialized
end-user tools for reporting, query and analysis, performance management, and
analytic applications on a proven, scalable, and open architecture.
Creating a solid BI Infrastructure
The required Business Objects components with their respective development,
integration and production environments were set up on the BI server after
successful deployment of a Microsoft® SQL Server™ environment that hosts the mirror of the Siebel production database. To allow for automated report refresh
and delivery, ClearPeaks’ ReportMessenger was also implemented on the BI server.
In parallel to the infrastructure setup, the ClearPeaks development team
initiated the adaptation of its unique FastTrack BI for Siebel CRM, a
comprehensive end-user reporting environment to Picis’ Siebel CRM customization.
With over 1,500 objects, 500 filters and eight contexts, this Business
Objects-based universe covers virtually all fields of the business areas within
the Siebel CRM environment: Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, Campaigns,
Activities, Service Requests and Products. Within a two-week time period,
ClearPeaks added the additional required objects and filters identified in the
discovery phase to FastTrack BI. The team was now ready for the next phase –
turning data into information via meaningful dashboards and reports.
Visualization of the rich business data
With ClearPeaks’ pre-built ReportPacks as a basis and the BI infrastructure in
place, the team set out to develop the initial core reports Picis required to
effectively manage their business.
Services Dashboard (Balanced Scorecard)
This comprehensive, html-based dashboard provides the Picis senior executive
team with the key performance metrics for the management of the client
operations organization. Starting from a top-level quarterly or monthly view,
the dashboard allows users to drill down through the organizational and product
hierarchies and also view the various metrics by company location.
The easy-to-use navigation through hyperlinks, as well as the ability to review the metrics from previous months or quarters makes this dashboard an
indispensable management tool (see figure 2).
Figure 2 - Client Operations Scorecard - Easy-to-use HTML drill down
“ClearPeaks assisted us with the creation of a number of reports and our first functional dashboards, but more importantly they gave us the skills and knowledge to create these on our own,” says David S.
Services Turnaround Time and Services Backlog Reports
The key objective of the Services Turnaround Time and Services Backlog Reports
was to have an accurate and actionable view of the key parameters turn-around
time (TAT) and backlog for the Picis client operations organization. Both
dashboards built with BusinessObjects full client are html reports, which
combine graphical and tabular elements and provide the capability to drill down
by various dimension hierarchies (organization, location, and product). The
reports are used by the executive team, as well as the client services team
managers to support their decision making, enhance team performance, pinpoint
areas for improvement and identify headcount requirements (see figure 3). 
Figure 3 - Services Backlog Report - Graphical components with HTML drill down
Pipeline, Forecast and Data Quality Report for Sales
Picis’ sales executives and their managers required a completely different
approach.
As frontline employees with the majority of their time spent out of the office,
Picis sales preferred a reporting solution that would push their pipeline and
forecast reports to their e-mail inbox.
The set of five key reports within a Microsoft® Excel® workbook are built with
Business Objects full client and automatically refreshed and delivered via
ClearPeaks’ ReportMessenger.
The sales data contained within the report rolls up through the hierarchical
layers – every recipient sees only the data they see in the Siebel CRM
environment, ensuring full data security at all times. With their vital
sales-related information conveniently provided in Microsoft Excel, updated and
delivered once a week or available at any time on demand, Picis’ sales executives
were able to automate the historically manual forecasting process and as a
result save valuable time (see Figure 4).
Figure 4 - Sales Report - The pipeling summary provides a roll-up of sales pipeline data
Pervasive BI - FastTrack BI at the fingertips of Picis’ employees
To further leverage the potential of FastTrack BI, ClearPeaks provided a
hands-on training to a core set of users at Picis. After a short period of time
these users were able to benefit from FastTrack BI and ReportMessenger to
extract, analyze, report and deliver the information contained within their CRM
system throughout the organization.
The status today
Today, Picis uses FastTrack BI for Siebel CRM to access data from all business
areas of the Siebel CRM application. With this information at their fingertips,
Picis has enhanced data quality and compliance, turned their CRM data into
actions, meaningful customer insight, and further improved their closed loop
sales and marketing process.
ClearPeaks continues to deliver BI services to Picis through a support and maintenance agreement that was signed as the result of the successful
implementation of FastTrack BI and ReportMessenger.
“FastTrack BI and ReportMessenger have quickly become invaluable tools for Picis. I wouldn’t even venture a guess at the number of hours that we save across the organization on a monthly basis. No longer do we have staff building, compiling and emailing the same reports each month,”
David S., vice president and general manager of Picis’ enterprise solutions division.
Other brands and product names mentioned in this ClearPeaks Success Story may
be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies and are
hereby acknowledged.
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