VeriSign Inc. delivers critical infrastructure services that make the Internet and telecommunications networks more intelligent, reliable, and secure. Every day VeriSign helps thousands of businesses and millions of consumers connect, communicate, and transact with confidence.

The Challenge:

VeriSign had implemented several operational enterprise applications but did not have a corporate business intelligence environment to support the required reporting and analysis. They chose Informatica Applications, Power Center and Powe rAnalyzer as the toolset. They needed an implementation partner who could help them rapidly implement business intelligence for the finance and sales organizations.

The Solution:

In the first phase of the project, Saama worked with the financial analysts and executives to understand their reporting and tracking requirements. Based on these, the data warehouse was architect and developed. The data warehouse design called for some changes to Informatica’s Oracle 11i business adapter, and new ones needed to be developed to extract financial forecasts from Hyperion Pillar, and recruitment data from Webhire.

Saama designed and delivered dashboards that not only help monitor the metrics, but provided drill down paths to comprehensive reports and source data that enabled analysts to get to the root of a problem. For example, a special module developed by Saama provided departmental expense reports that compared actual expenses to targets. and department managers could drill down to individual invoices and purchase orders. Another module tracked VeriSign’s capital spending, comparing actual spending to approved budgets by project and organization.

Saama then worked with the sales operations and sales finance groups to provide business intelligence relating to the sales pipeline of VeriSign’s security systems business unit. Saama analyzed the Siebel eSales source database to determine what information was needed in the warehouse and then built a business adapter using Power Center. The reports emphasized trends in the pipeline, allowing analysts to follow sales trends and compare the current quarter with prior quarters.

The Benefits:

VeriSign’s analysts were pleased to have a single, easy to use BI application that combined all their information in one place. The BI applications provided increased visibility of financial and sales data, including expenses, capital spending and sales pipeline. The custom dashboards built by Saama provided each group of users with all the information they needed on a single web page, and the report links and drill downs allowed further analysis as needed. Of particular benefit was the ability of the warehouse to hold historical information and provide reports that showed trends over time.