Navy reaps savings with biz tool

The Naval Undersea Warfare Center at Newport, R.I., has saved as much as

$1.5 million a year as a result of a business intelligence program that

has helped the agency eliminate unneeded paper and personnel and redundant

data entry costs, according to officials at the center.

Sylvia Ronayne, project manager for the NUWC's business intelligence

project, said her agency's deployment of Cognos Inc.'s Transformer, Impromptu,

PowerCubes and PowerPlay business tools has enabled the center to build

what it calls the Executive Business Information System.

EBIS, which employs a data warehouse containing information extracted

from various systems and external data sources, provides the ability to

immediately access, analyze, graph and download financial, personnel and

other business information electronically.

"In terms of cost avoidance, [EBIS] has kept [us] from having to hire

extra staff," Ronayne said. The center has 300 registered users of the system

and plans to "broaden its use" once Cognos releases the newest version of

Enterprise Service 6.6, Ronayne said.

Ben Plummer, vice president of Customer Services at Cognos, said the

EBIS system is a perfect example of what other federal agencies can do in

order to streamline their financial management operations.

Plummer added that the Cognos solution can be deployed in about half

the time it normally takes enterprise business intelligence solutions. Other

Cognos government customers include the Defense Finance and Accounting Service,

the Military Sealift Command, the Health Care Financing Administration,

the Army Reserves and the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Plummer

said.