Hologic is a leading developer, manufacturer
and supplier of premium diagnostic and medical
imaging systems dedicated to serving the healthcare
needs of women, and a leading developer of state-of-the-art
digital imaging technology for general radiography
and mammography applications. Hologic’s core
business units are focused on osteoporosis assessment,
mammography and breast biopsy, direct-to-digital
x-ray for general radiography applications and
mini C-arm imaging for orthopedic applications.
Cytyc, a division of Hologic,
first contacted Creative Computing, Inc. (CCI)
in 2006 to help them accelerate user adoption
of their Cognos Series 7 BI environment. At
the time Cytyc had about a half dozen users
who could create and run reports against their
departmental data. John Vermilyea, Manager of
Business Intelligence, was hired to grow information
delivery from a tactical IT function into a
fully mature, strategic system. “We needed a
way to put the power of self-service reporting
into the hands of our sales operations team,
so every report request wasn’t bogged down in
a long queue of IS project requests.” John recognized
the Cognos technology offered an enormous potential
for improving and accelerating business decisions.
He created an attack plan and CCI sent Mary
Smith to help Cytyc leverage this power and
drive user acceptance.
As a result of multiple acquisitions, the existing
environment was structured such that each product
line had its own reporting database, and reports
were limited to a single product line at a time.
The data infrastructure had to be overhauled
into a comprehensive datamart which would enable
cross product reporting. A user-friendly data
model was deployed that enabled non-IS personnel
to get answers – fast. Four hundred field sales
users continued to receive PDF versions of reports
which were burst on a daily basis and e-mailed
to their Treo’s and Blackberries, but with an
important difference: When a user has a question
about data on any of their reports, he or she
could now call their Sales Operations contact,
who had the capability to research and act to
correct the problem (training, data entry, or
otherwise) without the need to involve IS to
help “troubleshoot” root cause.
The new Consolidated Datamart was built by Cytyc
and allowed the users greater access to a wider
range of data. Reports could be built against
any line of business for any period of time.
In addition, users were enabled to run or create
their own reports when they needed them. This
was a far less maintenance and resource intensive
approach which saved both time and money.
As the environment was undergoing a significant
redesign it was decided to migrate to Cognos
8. The plan was to launch this new interface
broadly within Cytyc.
Once migrated to Cognos 8 the new datamart was
ready to deploy. For the first time Cytyc could
create reports across all product lines. This
ability allowed Cytyc to view their company
as a whole enterprise rather than a series of
related entities. Reports were designed and
created to support the Executive team, distributed
fresh in customized dashboards every Monday
morning on their BlackBerries. The Field Sales
organization was next. Their reports were created
and accounts set up which allowed them to access,
run and even write their own reports within
the Cognos Connection Portal.
Soon Customer Support had their own series of
reports too. When a customer asks “Where’s my
shipment?”, a customer service rep can run a
report that will show all the shipments to a
given customer in the past 45 days, with a hyperlink
to the FedEx website that shows when the shipment
left the Cytyc facility, where it is now, and
who signed for it. No more picking up the phone
to call Shipping – this customer question can
now be answered while they’re still on the phone.
Training was held for users to learn how to
interact within the new environment. Each Friday
afternoon was set aside for Consolidated Sales
Reporting Open Houses. This was an opportunity
for anyone who had a question or needed help
with any reporting issue to sit with Mary and
other members of the BI team and together resolve
their problems.
Finally, Cytyc decided to use Cognos 8 to report
off their existing Enterprise Planning environment.
Mary set about creating the necessary models
and packages to enable this new, rich reporting
interface. Finance was now on board with Cognos
reporting as well.
During 2007 Cytyc was acquired by Hologic, and
suddenly the Consolidated Data Mart faced its
first significant design hurdle: how to convert
hundreds of reports from a Gregorian calendar
(Q1 = Jan. 1st – March 31st ) to Hologic’s fiscal
calendar (Q1 = Sep. 30th – Dec. 29th). The data
mart was constructed using Cognos’ ETL solution,
Data Manager. CCI sent Mike Sherman to help
modify the ETL code to use a Fiscal Calendar
Strategy instead of a Gregorian Calendar Strategy,
and the changes were deployed less than 1 quarter
after the acquisition was closed.
— "I've been so impressed by the way Hologic
has really leveraged the entire Cognos tool
set. From the design and development of
the datamart, to batch reporting, to the
distribution of dashboards on PDA's, straight
through to the office of finance, they're
absolutely maximizing the value of their
Cognos investment. It's been great fun being
a part of it!" — said Mary Smith.
The success of the Cognos Performance Management
system at Cytyc and the concept of self-service
was so appealing to Hologic that it has spurred
efforts to forge a long-term strategy to enable
similar functionality for the combined company.
John Vermilyea summed it up like this:
— “Going forward, we have tremendous challenges
to overcome, with Cytyc’s ERP system and
other enterprise applications all being
migrated onto Hologic’s Oracle e-Business
Suite. I’m confident that with the feature
set of Cognos products and the talent of
Creative Computing professionals, we will
realize even greater benefits and economies
of scale for the combined company, which
now services over 3,500 employees internationally."
—
About Cytyc and Hologic
Cytyc is a wholly-owned subsidiary of
Hologic, a leading developer, manufacturer
and supplier of premium diagnostic and
medical imaging systems dedicated to serving
the healthcare needs of women, and a leading
developer of state-of-the-art digital
imaging technology for general radiography
and mammography applications. Hologic’s core
business units are focused on osteoporosis assessment,
mammography and breast biopsy, direct-to-digital
x-ray for general radiography applications and
mini C-arm imaging for orthopedic applications.
Hologic is made up of individuals from varying
backgrounds who share a common goal - the desire
to extend women's lives through the development
of technologically superior diagnostic imaging
systems that will facilitate the early detection
of breast cancer and osteoporosis. They are
proud of the work they do every day to preserve
and extend the lives of countless women throughout
the world.
About Creative Computing, Inc.
Headquartered just outside Providence, RI, CCI
has been designing, developing and deploying
custom Data Warehouse and Performance Management
systems for its customers since 1991. Customer’s
numbers over 400 in New England, and spans a
wide array of industries. Clients include firms
like Johnson & Johnson, General Motors, General
Electric, Staples, Gortons, Travelers Insurance,
TJX, and Brown University. CCI’s expertise has
grown to cover complementary areas such as Predictive
Analytics and Enterprise Data Integration. CCI
offers its customers the software, consulting,
and training they need to deliver successful,
high-impact solutions to make better business
decisions, improve operational performance,
and drive bottom and top line results. By partnering
with technology leaders like Cognos, SAS, MicroSoft
and others we offer our customers best of breed
solutions based on proven technologies, backed
by established firms.
