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Inventory Financing Provider Taps WebFOCUS RStat to Predict Future Trends and Improve Decision-Making
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – June 2, 2010 – Information Builders, the independent leader in operationalbusiness intelligence ( BI) systems, today announced that Dealer Services Corporation (DSC), a national inventory financing company for independent automobile dealers, is usingWebFOCUS RStat predictive analytics to make better loan decisions.
As America's largest independent inventory finance provider for used automobiles and other diversified products sold by independent and franchise dealers, it's extremely important for DSC to monitor dealer transactions and payment patterns - mostly to avoid overextending credit. DSC needed a solution to forecast each dealer's future financing needs and ability to pay off loans based on past behavior.
"One of the biggest benefits of implementing WebFOCUS RStat was that DSC saw the automotive downturn coming well in advance, giving managers time to adjust financial reserves, tighten lending standards, and scrutinize each dealer's inventory - minimizing risk both to our company and our customers," said Chris Brady, CIO, Dealer Services. "DSC is more profitable today because we knew how much revenue we expected to generate. Now, if DSC sees factors that will cause trouble in six months, we can take action immediately."
DSC has been using WebFOCUS RStat, a fully integrated business intelligence and data-mining platform, to pull data out of transaction systems, reformat it, use the analytic tools to develop a predictive model, and then run batch analysis, resulting in more efficient and smarter decision-making. As a result of deploying WebFOCUS RStat, DSC is now able to predict when a dealer will pay down or pay off its vehicles and how many cars they will be adding to inventory, among other things. Predictions are extremely accurate and DSC's forecasts are usually within two percentage points of actual revenue.
For her innovative use of predictive analytics and business intelligence tools from Information Builders, Dealer Services' CIO, Chris Brady, was recognized by the prestigious 2010 CIO 100 Awards from CIOmagazine.
In addition to its use of WebFOCUS RStat for predictive analytics, DSC also continues to rely on Information BuildersWebFOCUS as its enterprise BI standard. The comprehensive reporting system, which replaced the company's traditional spreadsheet reporting with metric dashboards that displayed key performance graphs, improved overall enterprise-reporting accuracy while eliminating hundreds of hours of weekly labor.
"In an industry with such a high risk factor and margin for error, the ability to accurately predict future market trends and leverage that insight to your benefit is a huge competitive advantage," said Gerald Cohen, founder and CEO of Information Builders. "DSC has truly maximized its investment in our WebFOCUS BI technology; first using it to streamline reporting and then to predict future trends of critical importance to its business model."
About Dealer Services Corporation
Headquartered in Carmel, Indiana, Dealer Services Corporation (DSC) is America's largest independent inventory finance provider for used automobiles and other diversified products sold by independent dealers. DSC serves more than 10,000 dealer customers through 72 market locations across the U.S. DSC's mission is to provide quality products, financing, and services to the dealer body of North America, delivering these products with the highest level of service and integrity. For additional information on Dealer Services Corporation, visit discoverdsc.com.
About Information Builders
Information Builders' award-winning combination of business intelligence (BI) 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' iWay Software suite provides state of the art, multi-purpose, pre-built integration components that address all SOA, application, data and information management requirements. Its integration adapters have been adopted by the leading software platform providers. Information Builders also offers solutions in the performance management,business activity monitoring, and enterprise search markets. The company's comprehensive enterprise product offerings give Information Builders' customers the ability to grow and innovate according to their needs.
Information Builders' customers include most of the Fortune 100 and U.S. federal government agencies. Headquartered in New York City with 90 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,450 people and has more than 350 business partners. More information is available at http://www.informationbuilders.com.
