ibi WebFOCUS Reviews

At Blue Cross Blue Shield where I work, we have 54 different systems. They are divided into projects. We provide queries against either Db2 or Microsoft extracted data. You can write an SQL code against a COBOL file. You can type in there, you can read and write any type of data sets, big or little, and you can merge things.

We're supporting millions of cases. People can go to our website and find every one of their queries. Every doctor visit, what happened at the visit, and that type of stuff. We also provide information for providers. We've also created things for groups and companies that are nationwide and have their own plan, with their logo and reports, so their HR people can access the information. 

Previously, I set up a series of WebFOCUS HTML pages that would run a job and query when you clicked on them. I worked at a university, and we could get any historical data about how many people were in a major for the last 10 years by gender, race, sex, or whatever. We could generate close to 800 different reports just with one prompted page. 

The solution has what is called a mainframe product. It runs on any operating system: Windows, Linux, whatever. Their history goes back to the 60s. While they were on the mainframe they basically invented a core language, or their own scripting language. That language has been used since the 60s and is in all of their products, so if you get to a command line prompt, you can do pretty much anything. Tools like Tableau, Crystal, SAP, and BusinessObjects don't have this scripting language, so they expect you to do everything through SQL. A lot of the tools out there are GUI or ETL-based, but you can do all of that within this core language. 

The solution can read and write 500 different types of outputs. You can read and output an XML file. You can write output takes in Excel or CSV files and you can write out to databases. All of that is built in.

Another thing they do that's a little bit unique is that you can read a file and then put out a hold file, which is a temporary file in its own binary format. When you're doing very complex inner and outer joins on SQL, you don't know if the data is right or if your filtering is correct. In WebFOCUS, you can go off to table A, do something, put it out to a temporary or permanent file, then go to table B, do a bunch of stuff, put out a file, and then join the two hold files. You can join up to 32 different files simultaneously in one run, which is a unique feature that I haven't seen in any other tool.

They have a scheduling product called ReportCaster that is rock solid. It works, and it can do load balancing, so if you have tons of schedules on the first week of the month, it can kick off multiple clients to run simultaneously and off they go.  If you're into a mainframe product, they're unique. You may not think they can run TCP/IP on a mainframe, but they do.

It is a versatile tool. Now, since they got bought out by TIBCO, there's more of a push on the GUI front end and analytics. 

I use it for supplying and developing business intelligence (BI) solutions, data management and reporting applications, and for the development of complete web-based applications. It's a versatile and very powerful toolset that covers a lot of ground. 

We focus on empowering businesses to unlock their data to support productivity, efficiency, managing risks, and informed decision-making. WebFOCUS is ideal for that. It provides a scalable data and analytics software platform.

We use it for all sorts of applications - data analysis, data capture, reporting applications. Most of our clients have intricate needs, and that's why they went with WebFOCUS. Simpler tools just wouldn't suffice.

I work for an insurance company, and we are currently managing four major projects. These projects are distinct solutions designed to serve both internal and external purposes. Internally, they cater to our marketing department by helping them assess potential sales opportunities and evaluate ways to offer more cost-effective insurance options to customers. We also have projects focused on financial analysis, where we scrutinize the costs associated with incentives provided by insurance companies to doctors, healthcare providers, and facilities for encouraging individuals to undergo preventive health measures like blood tests and check-ups. The goal of these internal projects is to gain a better understanding of whether we should continue offering these incentives and, if so, how we can optimize them.

Our primary focus is on handling large amounts of summary data, and in that regard, WebFOCUS serves us well. Having used it extensively for many years, I've witnessed its evolution and what it can achieve.

The simply intuitive end user experience, as well as the data animation/visualization features of Information Builders Incorporated’s (IBI's) Business Intelligence (BI) system (a la Hans Rosling, of TED Talks) are a high priority for us.

Additionally, the drag and drop functionality that IBI does better than any of its competition takes away a lot of the custom graph and report work previously delegated to the folks in IT or in Finance. Leaders using IBI can quite easily do it themselves. This is a big win for both IT and it's end users because better graphs and more well thought out reports are the result, along with more time for the IT leaders to focus on their primary area of expertise, IT systems.

We searched high and low for the above-mentioned functionality in a product that was available to us on-premise (this is a must for us, because we simply can’t afford to use a SaaS/cloud-based solution due to the security/risk factors inherent in the oil industry), and looked at Domo, Qlikview, Tableau, SAP, Birst, SiSense, among many others before we stumbled onto the Information Builders’ BI solution at one of their lunch and learn events, in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The Maryland State Department of Education will be using WebFOCUS to analyze financial data including State appropriation levels and financial performance in educational institutions throughout the State of Maryland. Later, WebFOCUS will be used to predict student actions and school performance among other reporting areas.

Information Builders allows decision makers to harness the power of data to make strategic decisions that will advance the goals and objectives of the organization. WebFOCUS offers the ability to obtain data in real-time and in a format that can be customized for the intended audience with tremendous ease.

We provide disability data MI to our agency. Our environment setup with version 8 is under one server for all environments (DEV, VAL, Analysis & Production). We are currently converting our applications from 7.6.02 to 8.2

Our BI Tools group have determined that we will be using WebFOCUS for most of our MI. So, now we have uniformed most of the applications into WebFOCUS.

We have a BI respository and I use the software from a reporting and analysis perspective.

WebFOCUS has improved reporting and is still a work in progress. We are currently working on converting MS Excel files into a data mart for greater efficiencies.

Our hearing offices use WebFOCUS reports to manage SSA OHO daily workload. We also use it to do ad-hoc reports.

WebFOCUS helped SSA OHO manage our daily workload, get cases out quickly and help American people to get their disability claim processed on time.