Blue Bird Corporation Utilizes Databeacon for Executive Information
Systems
REVIEWERS: Frank Burkhardt, network administrator and Ray
Shepard, executive information systems administrator at Blue Bird
Corporation.
BACKGROUND: Blue Bird Corporation is one of the world's
leading bus manufacturers, delivering thousands of school buses,
commercial buses and recreational vehicles to the market each year
the only company to produce all three products from start
to finish. Blue Bird Corporation continues to set industry standards
with its innovative design and manufacturing of school buses, commercial
buses and motor coaches. Founded in 1927, Blue Bird has nearly 3,000
employees and four plants in two countries. Blue Bird has an extensive
network of distributors and service parts facilities throughout
North America. Blue Bird is a subsidiary of Henleys Group plc.
PLATFORMS: IBM RS/6000 7025-F80 (quad 333 MHz CPUs) with
6.6GB of RAM running AIX 4.3.3 operating system.
PROBLEM SOLVED: Databeacon 5.2 allows the executive team
to perform real-time queries on data without the intervention or
assistance of the IT department. The results of these queries can
be saved on the executives' PCs in Excel, Word or PDF format and
shared with others.
PRODUCT FUNCTIONALITY: We have published several different
Databeacon cubes tailored to the needs of our various business units.
Each cube has several predefined views filtered to the needs of
the class of user. Published cubes are accessed via our secure intranet
using the browsers on users' PCs. Before the cube can be productive,
the administrator must be aware of how the target audience intends
to use the Databeacon Insight viewer so that the correct data is
available. Currently each cube is created nightly, but we are in
the process of moving to a build-on- demand format. This is not
a high priority because the data is fairly static. We will be utilizing
a DB2 database running on a different RS/6000.
STRENGTHS: Installation and setup were easy and straightforward.
Tech support was only used once during installation, and they were
very helpful. This product has been running nonstop in production
since the last restart of the RS/6000 (88 days ago as of this writing).
The ability for users to drill down through their data to details
and save the details as a spreadsheet has virtually eliminated the
request for ad hoc reports to the IT department. Only a minimal
amount of training time was required for the users to be comfortable
interacting with the data. Because users can see the source data
(by drilling down to details), they tend to trust Databeacon's output.
Documentation for the Windows environment is very good.
WEAKNESSES: Documentation is geared toward a Windows environment,
not UNIX. Category names disappear when filters are applied, causing
confusion when using predefined views. The only way to combine views
is to save them as individual Excel or Word documents and then cut
and paste into one document. Cubes are limited to a single data
source so data merging must be done before cubes are built. The
number of categories per cube depends on the amount of variability
of the data in each category and, at maximum, is limited by 128-bit
mapping. The software does not seem to recognize some older versions
of Excel or Internet Explorer.
SELECTION CRITERIA: Databeacon was chosen for its ability
to create graphs, charts and spreadsheets from a wide variety of
data types. Cost, support and ease of use and installation were
big factors in choosing this software. The ability for users to
drill down to details from a spreadsheet or chart and save those
details to Excel was a huge plus with our executive team when demonstrating
an evaluation copy.
DELIVERABLES: This product provides users with access to
data and provides the tools users need to mine that data. It has
provided the end users with the ability to create the output they
want in a form they can use without intervention from the IT department.
VENDOR SUPPORT: The support staff at Databeacon has been
prompt, courteous and extremely helpful. They go out of their way
to provide answers and solve problems in a timely manner.
DOCUMENTATION: Documentation is adequate for Windows-based
users. Users of UNIX systems will have to rely on a combination
of documentation and support
Reviewed by Frank Burkhardt, network administrator and Ray Shepard,
executive information systems administrator at Blue Bird Corporation.
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