Case Studies

To comply with increasing customer and marketplace demand for quick access to ethics and reporting data, the client came to Northridge seeking a full-featured business intelligence reporting portal to achieve a distinct competitive advantage. The business intelligence reporting portal would integrate with the client’s existing customer portal site, providing the client’s customers with access to a catalog of reports, including multiple options for viewing their compliance incidents. In addition, the client required the business intelligence reporting portal to provide each end-customer’s key managers with ad-hoc custom reporting functionality. To address security concerns, the reporting portal would insulate distinct customer data from exposure to unauthorized access, including separating the data of each customer from other customers, while also supporting single sign-on with the primary customer portal. Following development, the reporting portal would be supported by internal IT staff.

The Northridge Business Intelligence (BI) consulting team recommended Microsoft SQL Server as the platform for the reporting portal solution. Also, the client was already familiar with SQL Server as it was their primary application database platform, allowing for easy adoption for internal IT support staff.

First, the Northridge team implemented a Data Warehouse and an Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) process, built on SQL Server and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), to provide central storage of data and a high-performance base for reporting on information from the client’s intricate data structures. Northridge then implemented SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) to serve Data Warehouse information to the client’s customers over the internet, and implemented custom SQL Reporting Services authentication to allow the platform to integrate seamlessly with the client’s existing customer portal. This custom SQL Reporting Services authentication passes each user’s credentials through to the actual reports, allowing for information to be secured within any given report. In addition, Northridge implemented the SQL Report Builder component of SQL Reporting Services, providing key client customer personnel with ad-hoc reporting capability while leveraging the authentication of the existing client customer portal to ensure seamless data security.

The solution implementation was a success on a variety of levels. The client gained a functional, elegant, and market-leading platform for customer data delivery, which provided a compelling selling point and retention “stickiness” for its offerings. The solution platform on Microsoft SQL Server was also a significant financial success, having replaced a legacy platform at a fraction of the original platform’s total implementation cost, with total cost of ownership estimated at 30% of the outgoing system. Finally, once implemented, the client’s internal IT staff was able to easily provide ongoing support for maintenance and expansion.