Serving as the data integration backbone powering the association's enterprise-wide sales information system, PowerCenter provides LBS-BW with the consistent, redundancy-free master data necessary for fast, accurate sales reporting and improved performance management across all its sales channels.

"Informatica PowerCenter plays an essential role in the overall information architecture at LBS-BW, enabling all sales channels to be controlled quantitatively and qualitatively," said Juergen Brunner, group leader of DWH/SAP application at LBS Baden-Wuerttemberg. "We selected PowerCenter for its broad data-sourcing capabilities, superior performance, and ability to automatically detect faults and exceptions in the data to ensure data quality. These attributes, combined with its proven flexibility and scalability, ensure that PowerCenter will continue to play a pivotal role in helping us extend our current business intelligence environment."

With approximately 1.8 million contracts, a building-loan volume of approximately 43 billion euros and a balance sheet total of 9.4 billion euros, LBS-BW employs 978 back-office professionals and a fulltime field force of about 500. The association uses PowerCenter to integrate and cleanse large volumes of data across multiple disparate internal and external information sources, including third-party market research data.

The consolidated data is used by key LBS-BW business partners, including savings banks and savings bank insurance businesses throughout Baden- Wuerttemberg, which receive extensive amounts of information via the sales information system. LBS-BW regional and district field directors can also access the consolidated data via their laptops, enabling them to look up sales-relevant information and figures in table and graph form while in the field, without connecting to the company network.

"LBS Baden-Wuerttemberg underscores the challenges faced not just by financial institutions, but any enterprise that relies on large, dispersed field forces and partners hungry for insight into customers, market opportunities and sales performance," said Uwe Weimer, managing director, Central Europe, Informatica. "The first challenge is integrating the sheer volumes of disparate data and the second is ensuring that the data is accurate, consistent and available. Informatica PowerCenter enables companies to access and integrate data from virtually any business system, in any format, and deliver that data across the enterprise at any speed. It also helps make sure that the delivered data is accurate and of high quality so it can be used with confidence to drive more effective decisions and operations."