the infrastructure created to facilitate BI.

Moreover, the time to get this data has been drastically reduced, he says. Reports that previously took up to 10 hours to prepare now take just 45 seconds.

It’s not just the timeliness of reports that makes a difference, however. The level of detail and the depth of data also count big-time, which is what Szudy learned with

the EBIT reports.

Szudy’s section, which is responsible for reporting financial information on the company’s 14 generating facilities plus its combustion turbines and hydro facilities, generally uses BI to look at data and create reports. She says her staffers use a multidimensional cube to slice the data to meet their needs.

Alliant Energy executives
say that they expect such suc-

cesses to drive future expansion of BI. Kreft says he plans to add more data and more data marts “as people get more accustomed to using these tools.”

He notes that his team is specifically working on getting more data about performance, fill rate and other metrics so that the company’s supply chain area can optimize the BI application.

In addition, Kreft says, the

“they got the ben-
efit of Bi right upfront;
they’re probably a case
study of what to do.”

cOLin snOW, anaLyst, vEntana rEsEarch inc.

company wants to add dashboards in the future. n