Physicians Mutual Creates End User Reporting Environment With Information Builders’ WebFOCUS InfoAssist

NEW YORK, NY -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 02/16/10 -- Information Builders, an independent leader in business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced that Physicians Mutual, a national health and life insurer based in Omaha, Nebraska, has adopted WebFOCUS InfoAssist to provide reporting, analysis, and information-delivery capabilities to business users. Employees at Physicians Mutual can more easily create their own reports, while the IT department enforces data quality and centrally manages the information. InfoAssist is enabling people throughout the company to more efficiently and effectively create the information they need.

"Our previous BI tools were readily usable only by a relatively small base of experienced people, but WebFOCUS InfoAssist is now allowing people to create complex reports very quickly," said Rick Olson, senior manager of data administration and business intelligence at Physicians Mutual. "We expect the number of InfoAssist users to grow as more and more people see its capability."

Physicians Mutual introduced WebFOCUS InfoAssist to several people in the accounting department for ad hoc reporting. With minimal training, these employees were soon using the browser-based reporting environment to create reports. About 20 people now use WebFOCUS InfoAssist on a daily basis to examine GL balances and to investigate and explore statutory detail. According to Greg Hopkins, vice president of corporate accounting at Physicians Mutual, the financial staff can create reports without IT assistance, generating everything from simple queries to complex reports and charts. They can easily publish reports and share them with other people in Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF formats.

"Being able to point WebFOCUS InfoAssist to our pre-defined reporting objects has been a big win for us," said Grant Christensen, vice president of corporate financial reporting at Physicians Mutual. "We can very easily look at accounting information in the general ledger in a variety of ways, such as the amount of premium by journal code, account code, line of business, journal date, type of policy, state, even down to zip code. We now have the ability to create our own reports in a secure and productive end user reporting environment."

In addition to the accounting department, the claims, and policy owner services areas are using InfoAssist to create productivity reports, and the billing department is planning to use InfoAssist to analyze late notices and billing reminders.

"Physicians Mutual is breaking down walls by extending BI to people who have been unable to use it in the past," said Gerald Cohen, president and CEO of Information Builders. "Empowering rank-and-file employees to retrieve, visualize, and share information makes the entire organization more productive."

About Physicians Mutual

Physicians Mutual Insurance Company and Physicians Life Insurance Company, a member of the Physicians Mutual family, provide a full portfolio of health and life insurance products, as well as retirement products. The companies have total assets exceeding $2.7 billion. Both Physicians Mutual and Physicians Life consistently receive high grades from independent insurance analysts. They have an A.M. Best rating of "A (Excellent)," based on financial strength. TheStreet.com Ratings gives Physicians Mutual an "A+ (Excellent)" and Physicians Life an "A (Excellent)" based on financial security. Founded in 1902, Physicians Mutual headquarters are in Omaha, Nebraska.

About Information Builders

Information Builders' award-winning combination of business intelligence 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.

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Press Contacts Kathleen Moran Information Builders (917) 339-6313  Email Contact