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About Covad Communications
Covad is a leading nationwide provider of integrated voice and data communications. The company offers DSL, Voice Over IP, T1, Web hosting, managed security, IP and dial-up, and bundled voice and data services directly through Covad's network and through Internet Service Providers, value-added resellers, telecommunications carriers and affinity groups to small and medium-sized businesses and home users. Covad broadband services are currently available across the nation in 44 states and 235 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and can be purchased by more than 57 million homes and businesses, which represent over 50 percent of all US homes and businesses.
Challenges
Covad's rapidly growing business called for faster and more accurate
reporting of daily results. Their previous system only provided
three views of data and was inflexible to the requests of users and changing
business requirements. The daily reports used to manage Covad's
sales and operations were generated in a dormant HTML format and did
not provide the required functionality or flexibility to meet the needs
of their rapidly changing business. When mandatory report changes were
required, it often took several days to perform. Additionally, once reports
were run, users no longer had access to previous versions so analysis
was very difficult. The human intervention required for daily production
and delivery was an intensive and time-consuming process.
Covad needed to provide users with interactive reports and drill-down capability to meet a wide variety of reporting needs. Users demanded different views based on different timeframes showing their specific areas of responsibility and operations. Additionally, Covad needed to view daily details down to the salesperson level to better understand and manage their sales activities.
Solutions
Using Hyperion Essbase, Hyperion Reports, and Hyperion Analyzer, Covad now delivers fully automated daily activity reports to sales, marketing, operations, and executive management. Covad's management can monitor dashboards to view daily activity by salesperson - a level of detail not previously available. Sales has benefited from better analysis tools, for example, they can now view their top-ten / bottom-ten resellers instead of wading through an entire report to find data. Operations also has better analysis tools and are now immediately able to see "spikes" and "dips" in performance.
To eliminate the need for manual intervention, TopDown automated the entire process by creating scripting and batch scheduling routines for the following processes:
Synchronization of database structures Daily updates of meta data Integration of data from the data warehouse to Hyperion Essbase Performing database calculations Generating and delivering reports Application backups
As a result, Covad has confidence that their critical business information will be delivered in a consistent and timely manner.
Results
Working with TopDown Consulting, Covad achieved enhanced
reporting capabilities throughout their organization. Sales,
marketing, operations, and executive management now have
a new window of visibility into their products, customers,
and partners. TopDown also implemented "lights-out" processing
resulting in increased data integrity, reduced maintenance,
and more value to Covad's internal customers.
Project successes include:
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Increased flexibility and customized reporting have provided
new insights into critical business information
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People spend less time creating reports and more time
analyzing data, taking better advantage of their skills
and providing more value to the company
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Direct access to reports has improved confidence in the
numbers because people can verify and analyze results themselves
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Users are not limited to canned reports, and are more
productive when they can easily focus on the exact information
they need
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More than one person can now make report changes, increasing
the knowledge of the finance team and eliminating the risk
of a bottleneck during key reporting periods
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Changes can happen upon demand, enabling people to take
action without delay
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Historical comparisons are now available so users can
quickly identify and analyze trends
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People always have a current view of data, so their decisions
are based on the most up-to-date information
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Automating manual processes has reduced the risk of human
error, increasing accuracy and auditability of data
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