Granville Associates, which provides Business Intelligence solutions for banks, and Applix, Inc. (NasdaqGS: APLX), the leading business analytics software solutions provider, announced that the London branch of HSH Nordbank has selected Granville's Business Intelligence Harvester to transform its management information and reporting.
Harvester is a unique, packaged Business Intelligence (BI) solution that combines a powerful Microsoft data warehouse with technology from Applix, a global leader in business analytics software.
Data will be extracted from HSH Nordbank's Midas Plus system and then transformed, loaded and reconciled into the data warehouse. From here the data is restructured and loaded into Applix's TM1 to allow bank staff to perform fast, sophisticated analysis, modelling and reporting. The intuitive user interface includes Applix's Executive Viewer (EV), which will be used to present information in an easy-to-read and attractive format, both within the branch and for the bank's head office.
The scalability and flexibility offered by EV will enable a wide range of users to leverage real-time web access to data for advanced ad-hoc analysis as well as distributed reporting. Requiring no programming or training, EV ensures users can quickly begin exploring data from any perspective, creating on-the-fly calculations and identifying exceptions.
David Forster, Head of Operations, HSH Nordbank explains, "With our plans to expand our London operation, we have a number of challenges with our reporting and management information that need to be resolved urgently. Our existing reporting capability is slow and inefficient and it is difficult to get at the information we require. We are consequently spending too much time on reconciliation and investigation and have little time for important analysis work. We also want to improve the quality of key information available to senior management - for example client profitability."
He continues, "The Granville and Applix solution will not only address our current challenges, but will also allow us to gather data from our other operational systems in the future. This data can then be maintained in the data warehouse and included in our management reporting. The capabilities of the solution were successfully demonstrated to the bank in a 'proof of concept' exercise prior to purchase. This, together with the short implementation time, means that Granville's Harvester based on Applix software was the ideal choice for HSH Nordbank."
Richard Peddar, CEO of Granville Associates, comments, "HSH Nordbank needed a solution that could solve problems that are typical of many banks with legacy transaction processing systems. These systems were generally not designed with reporting in mind and it can be a major challenge achieving transparency of the valuable data which they contain. With its data warehouse, designed using Granville's generic banking data model, Harvester provides a single reconciled source of information for all reporting and management information needs. Applix's technology, which we package with the solution, is an ideal complement to the data warehouse as it allows banks to view, analyse, model and report this information in any way needed."
The implementation of Granville Harvester at HSH Nordbank has commenced and the system is scheduled to go live in September 2007.