JasperSoft Case Study

Software provider saves time, cuts costs, and enhances its offerings.
The Company
Cincom Systems, Inc. is a privately held software and services company based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Well-known across the industry for innovation and dependability, the companyone of the most experienced software companies in the worlddelivers and supports software and solutions to simplify complex business processes. Today, Cincom has empowered thousands of its customers across six continents to transform their businesses and outperform the competition by providing ways to increase revenue, control cost, minimize risk, and achieve rapid ROI. Pre-dating Microsoft by more than a decade, Cincom is no stranger to the software businessand is the only software company in the world to achieve 21 straight years with more than $100 million in revenue. Cincom Founder Tom Nies is currently the longest actively serving CEO in the computer industry. Whats important about all this history? When Cincom makes a technology decision, it does so with great careand, almost universally, with substantive success.
CUSTOMER

Cincom Systems, Inc.

INDUSTRY Software SOLUTION Replaced closed technology with JasperReports, JasperStudio, and JasperServer Professional RESULTS Reduced licensing and other costs, improved flexibility, simplified ongoing maintenance FIND OUT MORE JasperSoft and its suite of BI products jaspersoft.com JasperSoft open source community jasperforge.org Cincom Synchrony www.cincom.com/synchrony info@cincom.com 1-800-224-6266

Challenge
Cincom is the provider of Synchrony, a contact center and customer experience management software solution. Synchrony has received numerous product awards over the past few years, including the 2007 Frost & Sullivan North American Product Differentiation Innovation Award and the prestigious 2007 Product of the Year Award from the customer care industrys leading publication, Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine. The software, acquired by Cincom in 2003, included third-party reporting and analytics functionality to provide access to operational data and business intelligence on call center agent activity and customer interactions. Though this third-party solution came from a world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, Cincom faced several important issues with the reporting technology as the company began planning a new Synchrony release. First, while the existing solution met functionality requirements, it presented significant licensing costscosts which had to be passed on to Cincom customers, either in higher pricing or in the need to sacrifice other functionality improvements. Next, the existing technology posed integration and upgrade problems that could not be easily overcome, making the cost and time required to advance the products reporting and analytic capabilities prohibitiveall at a time when Cincom was trying to streamline processes while delivering more value to its customers. Finally, the company wanted to gain additional efficiencies by standardizing on a single reporting and analytics technology platform across all of its software offerings; and that single platform naturally needed to be flexible, easily extendable, and cost-effective.

It took less time to convert to JasperSoft than it would have taken to upgrade to the new version of the existing reporting solution
Theresa Van Laeken Product Manager

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The Synchrony team at Cincom began looking for reporting and analytics technology alternatives that would help hold down licensing and other costs, speed integration and enhancement, and integrate seamlessly with both Synchrony and other Cincom offeringsall while delivering best-in-class business intelligence capabilities. Cincom chose JasperSoft over Pentaho for its superior range of reporting and analytics features, as well as a determination that integration and deployment would be simpler and faster. Cincom created a large number of standard Synchrony reports to supply with the application. Synchrony customers can schedule, request, share and customize these reports using the JasperReports and JasperServer report management functions, which have now been embedded into Synchrony Central, the solutions user interface for call center managers and supervisors. End users who need to drill down for more detail can do so within the Synchrony application, thanks to embedded JasperAnalysis functionality. Cincom developers use JasperSofts iReport graphical design tool to create customized reports for Synchrony clients when neededand Synchrony customers have the option of designing their own reports by downloading the open source version of iReport.

Options
Surveying other Cincom units, the Synchrony team found software teams employing reporting and analytics solutions from both Microsoft and JasperSoft, in addition to the existing Synchrony reporting solution. The team ruled out the Microsoft solution because it required the use of the Microsoft SQL Server database, and many Synchrony customers had established Oracle database environments. The team also evaluated other open source solutions including the Pentaho Open BI Suite.

Solution
The Synchrony team chose JasperSoft for a variety of reasons. The software met every functional requirement for reporting, drill-down analytics, easy end-user report definition, and performance. And JasperSofts hybrid commercial/open source software model meant significantly lower costs. JasperSoft was also the best architectural fit for eventual integration across the Cincom product lineand it was already in use at Cincom. We had another internal group that had already integrated a Cincom product with JasperSoft with a high degree of success, says Theresa Van Laeken, Cincom product manager. They had found it very effective and easy to integrate and use. JasperSoft's open-source, model gave it both cost and maintainability advantages. We can debug reports quicklyand if theres a problem reported from a customer, we dont have to rely on another groups support staff to fix it, explains Jason Ertel, technical product manager at Cincom. Since we have complete insight to whats happening under the covers in our product, we can quickly locate and fix any software problems. Also, if were struggling with laying out a report in a certain way during development, its easy to look up the source code and find the problem, adds Ertel.

Results
After choosing JasperSoft, the Synchrony team was quickly able to deliver compelling reporting and analytics at a lower price point for its call center customers. The technology was easy to integrate, and allows for fast, easy troubleshooting and customization. In fact, migrating Synchrony to JasperSoft saved Cincom substantial engineering time. And call center customers who want to do more advanced reporting and analysis can often do so without the additional costs that would have been involved using the previous reporting solution. It took less time to convert to JasperSoft than it would have taken to upgrade to the new version of the existing reporting solution, says Van Laeken. We were even able to refocus some resources to other critical product areas that otherwise would have been dedicated to the analytics component. Cincom also sees great advantages in JasperSofts flexible design capabilities. The JasperSoft graphical report designeriReportmakes it easy for our customers to customize their reports if the standard reports we provide lack any information they want, says Ertel.

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To date, Cincom has integrated the Open Source Edition of the JasperSoft Business Intelligence Suite, but plans to migrate to the Professional Edition in the near future. This move will allow the company to more transparently embed JasperSoft technology within the Synchrony runtime and installation processes, support additional databases, and take advantage of an array of other, advanced capabilities offered with the Professional Editionwhile continuing to enjoy all the engineering and support advantages of open source. Notable among the additional embedded features is the JasperServer Dashboard feature, which lets users view snapshot data in real time. Once embedded in Synchrony, this functionality will enable call center agents to review their own performance metrics and compare their performance with other team members. Having this critical information on hand and summarized in a way thats easy to digest is invaluable for our call center customers, Van Laeken adds. This helps our customer be more productive, save money, and identify problem call center agents more rapidly.

About JasperSoft
The JasperSoft Business Intelligence (BI) suite spans the continuum of BI requirements, providing robust production reporting, interactive reporting, data analysis, and data integration capabilities. Available as stand-alone products, or in an integrated end-to-end BI suite, the modules use common metadata and shared services such as security, repository, and scheduling. JasperSoft integrates seamlessly into existing applications and IT infrastructure such as authentication directories, authorization directories, and external scheduling systems, allowing customers to fully leverage existing IT investments. JasperSoft: Provides integrated or stand-alone reporting and analysis. Enables analytic and operational data integration. Delivers cost-effective deployment in workgroups and small businesses. Is a secure and enterprise ready solution. Leverages existing IT infrastructure. Deploys quickly for fast ROI. Seamlessly embeds in business and IT applications. Is completely modular so you can build value incrementally.

JasperSoft Office Headquarters 303 Second Street, Suite 450 North San Francisco, CA 94107 1-888-399-2199 phone: 415.348.2380 fax: 415.281.1987 JasperSoft EMEA Office Ground Floor Block K, Eastpoint 5027 D3 Dublin Republic of Ireland jaspersoft.com

2008 JasperSoft Corporation. All rights reserved. JasperSoft, the JasperSoft logo, JasperSoft Business Intelligence Suite, JasperAnalysis, JasperServer, JasperETL, JasperReports, JasperStudio, iReport, Jasper4Salesforce, and Jasper4 products are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of JasperSoft Corporation in the United States and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other company and product names are or may be trade names or trademarks of their respective owners.