Client Profile:
The human capital consulting unit of a global financial services company had 2001 revenues of $628 million and 4,300 employees in 80 offices in the U.S. Their Health and Welfare Services group helps companies evaluate, manage, redesign and create effective health and welfare programs.

Challenge:
Many companies are rethinking their healthcare strategies in light of the dramatic growth in managed care programs. Yet, it's a real challenge to determine which program is best. Selecting a health plan requires an assessment of cost, access, quality of care, and member satisfaction.

Peart-Hannon's client maintains a data repository to provide comparable data on a variety of managed healthcare programs. The repository is the source of reports used to help companies evaluate managed care programs.

Unfortunately, the preparation of reports had been very time consuming -- usually it took a month to produce reports -- and the reports themselves had no drill-down capability, preventing detailed analysis of key information. These problems had a negative impact on customer satisfaction and their ability to win new consulting contracts.

Peart-Hannon's client was given ninety days to rectify the situation. Subsequently, they decided to use Crystal Decisions' Crystal Enterprise Server to streamline the production and deepen the functionality of reports. However, their technical staff had no experience with Crystal Enterprise Server. It soon became apparent that they would not meet their deadline without the help of an expert with Crystal Enterprise Server.

Solution:
Peart-Hannon proposed a two-pronged solution. Peart-Hannon should jump-start the delivery of reports while training in-house technical staff to design and deliver reports as well. The goals were to meet the short-term deadline and help the in-house staff to become self-sufficient.

Approach:
Peart-Hannon analyzed the client's current design plan and modified it with Peart-Hannon's proven methodology. Peart-Hannon handled the design and development of the more complex reports -- jump-starting the process -- while encouraging the in-house staff to apply the methodology to less complicated reports. With Peart-Hannon on-site, in-house staff received continuous and immediate feedback on their progress.

Armed with this knowledge, Peart-Hannon suggested an enterprise database solution to provide data access across the entire organization. Along with the enterprise database, Peart-Hannon also develop web based applications that utilize the latest technologies from Microsoft and Crystal Decisions to provide field managers with the capabilities to perform web based reporting, that analyzes daily performance by dealer, region and nationally.

Results:
Peart-Hannon helped their client meet their objective -- heading-off potential customer service problems. Also, the client's technical staff has become self-sufficient -- they're now able to meet future report requirements on their own.