California State Compensation Insurance Fund Selects Information Builders for Business Intelligence System

Market Wire, October, 2007

Information Builders, the leader in production business intelligence ( BI ) systems, today announced that California's State Compensation Insurance Fund (State Fund) has selected the company's WebFOCUS Insurance Reporting Foundation (IRF) solution for its executive decision support (EDS) initiative.

Established by the California Legislature in 1914, State Fund is a self-supporting, nonprofit enterprise that provides workers' compensation insurance to California employers at cost, with no financial obligations passed on to the public. The organization needed a better way for executives and management to view data for decision-making. State Fund knew that delivering this depth and breadth of solution would not be easy, especially for workers' compensation. The objective was to meet all the specific business needs promptly and with minimal risk. The organization engaged Gartner, Inc. to lead a rigorous search process that would identify the best fit for a prebuilt data-warehouse and reporting application specific to insurance or workers' compensation.

After a due-diligence process that lasted a year and a half, starting with eight vendors and including written proposals, proof-of-concept demonstrations, and reference checks, State Fund selected WebFOCUS IRF. State Fund made its selection on the basis of the solution's off-the-shelf and workers' compensation capabilities, as well as its fixed price, scalable nature, and ability to integrate the back-end data ensuring a consistent view of the business.

"I wasn't sure we could find an off-the-shelf solution that would provide us with the combination of prebuilt reports and customization we needed, and still be such an intuitive and easy-to-use tool," said Richard Jenkins, State Fund's EDSS project manager. "We are currently running reports from multiple, disparate systems, and we want to move to a more standard mode of reporting. Information Builders' proposal combined everything we needed into one solution: industry expertise, low risk, and a scalable architecture for long-term sustainability of the system."

Designed with and tested by insurance clients in production-application settings, WebFOCUS IRF consists of a sophisticated insurance-data model, a robust data-movement module for efficiently scheduled updating of the database, and a suite of parameterized reporting frameworks designed to empower the business to answer its own questions without requiring technical expertise. WebFOCUS provides a controlled process for accessing the full breadth of insurance-business information, from summary to the lowest level of detail, to give a single confident view of the insurer.

"State Fund had a unique set of business requirements that required a vendor who really understood its space, but could also offer a solution that didn't break the bank the way many customized, vertical applications do," said Gerald Cohen, CEO and founder of Information Builders. "Our IRF packages all the strengths of our award-winning business intelligence and data- integration offerings with our industry expertise, into one solution that State Fund can install, configure, and tailor to accomplish its specific business objectives."

About State Fund

State Fund is a self-supporting, nonprofit enterprise that provides workers' compensation insurance to California employers at cost, with no financial obligation to the public.

State Fund's focus is on promoting workplace safety and returning injured employees to work. A market of choice and the safety net for California employers needing workers' compensation insurance, State Fund has offices located throughout the state of California.

State Fund has become a model for the workers' compensation industry and other states by maintaining stability, offering coverage at cost, and providing required benefits promptly and fairly. Today's emphasis on customized loss control services, medical-cost management, and anti-fraud efforts has found a ready audience among California employers seeking the maximum value for their workers' compensation dollar.

About Information Builders

Information Builders' award-winning combination of business intelligence and enterprise integration software has been providing innovative solutions to more than 12,000 customers for the past 30 years. WebFOCUS is the world's most widely utilized business intelligence platform. It provides the security, scalability, and flexibility needed at every level of global extended enterprises. Its simplicity helps create executive, analytical, and operational applications that reach dozens to millions of users. Information Builders subsidiary iWay Software provides state-of-the-art, multi-purpose integration engines that address all SOA , application, data, and information management requirements. Its integration adapters have been adopted by the leading software platform providers. Together, these products give Information Builders' customers the ability to live up to the company motto: Your business. No barriers.