PSI is a leader in environmental consulting, geotechnical engineering, and construction testing services. PSI implemented Datawatch|ES Report Portal to store and distribute reports and data online to its 140-plus offices in North America. The implementation will result in excess of $800,000 in cost savings and income annually, with even more E-business benefits still anticipated.

 

PSI reaps rapid E-Business benefits, cost savings windfall with Datawatch|ES Report Portal

Professional Service Industries (PSI) of Lombard, IL is one of the largest consulting engineering and testing firms in North America, providing a wide variety of consulting and testing services for construction and facility-related projects. PSI serves its customers through its workforce of thousands of employees in over 140 offices. PSI's corporate logo states the company provides "Information To Build On." When PSI needed easily accessible and actionable information to build its own business, PSI turned to Datawatch|ES Report Portal by Datawatch.

THE PROBLEM: REPORTS & DATA NEEDED NATIONWIDE...NOW

PSI's field offices independently manage and perform mission-critical services, while the company's corporate headquarters provides centralized functions such as accounting, project management, and personnel time tracking. But providing reports and data from these systems to PSI's far-flung field offices proved to be a very expensive, cumbersome task. "Our 140-plus offices are located across 42 states and Canada," explains Jim Gries, Senior Information Management Consultant for PSI. "Previously, we were physically printing and manually splitting literally boxes of paper reports for our offices. The data was very difficult to work with in any meaningful fashion. The cost just to ship the paper reports was in excess of $600,000 annually. It was simply unacceptable."

"At the same time, it was also not cost or resource-effective to deploy a vast number of new 'seats' for each office to directly access our Lawson ERP system or Time Site web time tracking system across the country. The software licenses and annual maintenance, new hardware, additional network build-outs and nationwide training costs would have easily run deep into six figures as well. Something different and innovative had to be done."

THE SOLUTION: DATAWATCH|ES REPORT PORTAL

Gries observed a live demo of Datawatch's Datawatch|ES Report Portal at the Lawson CUE 2000 annual user conference and realized Report Portal would provide a truly compelling fit at PSI. "The buy decision happened quite quickly," says Marshall Hammack, Chief Financial Officer for PSI. "Instead of printing reports, we now run a long list of critical reports directly to Datawatch|ES Report Portal. This includes many reports from our Lawson ERP system, such as general ledgers, receivables, payables, and reports from Lawson's 'Activity Management' project management module, plus reports from our other systems, particularly from our Time Site web-based time tracking system."

"Datawatch|ES Report Portal archives and indexes these reports in a 'report warehouse,' which each office can access via web browsers," Hammack continues. "Best of all, each branch can access only their own report sections, automating the report distribution process. I suppose you could have timed Report Portal's ROI with a stopwatch!"

TRANSFORMS REPORTS INTO DATA... AUTOMATICALLY

PSI's windfall savings in paper report printing and shipping costs was actually just the beginning of the substantial E-Business benefits PSI would reap from its Datawatch|ES Report Portal investment.

"Datawatch|ES Report Portal's ability to automatically transform report-based information into live online data solved another key challenge for us at PSI," says Gries. "We want our offices to run as independent businesses, but in order for office management to do so effectively, they need to have easy access to not just the reports, but also the data itself. Datawatch|ES Report Portal provides this data, automatically parsed and extracted from the reports, along with calculated fields, summarized data views, and more. Our offices are realizing a new level of business intelligence they simply did not have before."

E-BUSINESS BENEFIT: FASTER COLLECTIONS

"Thanks to Datawatch|ES Report Portal, we are now also able to provide the field offices with 'fresh' reports and data much more frequently," adds Hammack. "For example, we now produce updated Lawson A/R aging reports to the offices via Datawatch|ES Report Portal on a weekly basis. We can analyze which customers over time are remaining current, which ones are starting to trend unfavorably, and more. This information allows local office management to proactively manage accounts before collection problems develop, and help our central cash collections department receive payments on time. So far, our DSO's (Days Sales Outstanding) have dropped by four days, resulting in additional interest income of over $200,000 per year."

E-BUSINESS BENEFIT: IMPROVED MARGINS

Datawatch|ES Report Portal also enabled PSI to effectively share mission-critical project management data with its offices. "Prior to Datawatch|ES Report Portal, we simply could not send project reports to the field offices at all," Hammack explains. "For example, we manage over 50,000 separate projects across the company annually. As a result, our Lawson Activity Management reports are so vast, it simply made no sense to print them. Unless local offices kept their own manual records, there was no way to effectively keep track of project costs on a timely basis."

"But now, we simply run our Lawson Activity Management reports to Datawatch|ES Report Portal on a weekly basis. This frequency is important, because our average project life is short — about two months on average. Datawatch|ES Report Portal allows us to provide the offices with the reports and data they urgently need, on a regular basis."

"Our projects are being managed much better as a result," says Hammack. "In fact, we anticipate that PSI will realize notably improved gross margins as a direct result of implementing Datawatch|ES Report Portal. Our offices are making smart, proactive business decisions thanks to the fast, easily accessed reports and data they are getting from Datawatch|ES Report Portal. It's also important to note that over sixty District Managers and VP's, who virtually live on the road, are able to access Datawatch|ES Report Portal via the web from their hotel or any office. They too now have the information they need at their fingertips anytime, anywhere."

INFORMATION TO BUILD YOUR BUSINESS

The impact of Datawatch|ES Report Portal is clear across virtually all of PSI's business activities, from dramatically improved project margins and cash collections, to massive savings of paper report-related costs, and more. Gries and Hammack regard PSI's decision to invest in Datawatch|ES Report Portal as one of the company's best. Best of all, the company that provides "Information To Build On" for its customers now has a rock-solid Enterprise Reporting and Business Intelligence solution to build its own success even further than ever. "We have a tiger by the tail in Datawatch|ES Report Portal," concludes Gries. "Our office and executive management realize they have an exciting, powerful new business tool at their disposal, and they are running with it!"

Download PDF