US Army Achieves 146% ROI Using IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Solution

November 19, 2008

Armament Research Development and Engineering Center improves employee productivity with quick return on investment

BOSTON – November 19, 2008 – Nucleus Research analysts examined the deployment of IBM Cognos 8 BI version 8.3 at the United States Army’s Armament Research Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) and found the company achieved a 146% return on investment (ROI) in less than 19 months.

ARDEC is the US Army’s principal research, developer and sustainer of current and future armament and munitions systems. It is responsible for the development, production, field support and demilitarization of munitions, weapons, fire-control systems and related equipment used by US soldiers. Looking to cut costs and boost productivity, ARDEC explored enhancing business intelligence for more efficient operations.

With the latest version of IBM Cognos 8 BI software, the US Army has improved how it uses business intelligence to boost productivity of analysts and its finance staff. ARDEC has standardized report creation for new efficiencies and now has a program for best practice propagation across the organization.

“Implementing IBM Cognos’ business intelligence reporting solution on top of SAP and other data sources has dramatically improved ARDEC’s ability to view and analyze more relevant, accurate, validated information. As a result, ARDEC can make more effective strategic business decisions about engineering programs that ultimately help get weapons in the hands of soldiers more quickly” said Barbara Kovalsky, Chief Financial Business Intelligence and Corporate Financial Operations, ARDEC.

“ARDEC achieved high ROI by putting BI into the hands of as many people as possible, while letting them create and fine-tune their own BI tools. Those who consume information are more productive because they have the data they need, and those who had been building reports have moved onto more important tasks” said David O’Connell, Senior Analyst, Nucleus Research.

The full case study is available at NucleusResearch.com All Nucleus Research ROI case studies are independent assessments, evaluating the costs and benefits from the IT deployment.

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