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Enhancing Public Safety Software with SAP Solutions
1. SAP OEM Partner Success Story
High Tech
INTERGRAPH CORPORATION
ENHANCING PUBLIC SAFETY SOFTWARE WITH SAP® SOLUTIONS
“We combined the application-specific
information from our systems with
the best business intelligence building
blocks and infrastructure – from
SAP.”
Steven Marz, VP of Public Safety Industry
Management, Intergraph Corporation
SAP® Solutions and Services
• SAP® BusinessObjects™ Data Integrator
software
• SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelli-
gence platform
• SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards
software
• SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence®
software
• SAP Crystal Reports® software
Why SAP
• Compatible with both Oracle and
Microsoft SQL databases
• Integrated suite that eliminated the need
to combine disparate software
• Industry’s de facto reporting software
Benefits
• Ability to extract data from application
databases to create a data warehouse
• Ease of use for customers, who can
interactively explore data and expose
relationships and trends
• Visual dashboards that make it easy to
access and view information and perform
real-time performance monitoring
Company
• Name: Intergraph Corporation
• Headquarters: Huntsville, Alabama
• Industry: High tech
• Products and services: Software
• Revenue: US$770 million
• Employees: 3,978 (December 31, 2009)
• Web site: www.intergraph.com
Challenges and Opportunities
• Empower customers to explore and gain
insight into information captured by
company’s applications
• Satisfy market demands for sophisticated
analytics
Objectives
• Enhance applications with analytics
• Take advantage of an integrated software
suite
• Increase sales by offering a complete
solution
• Offer a prepackaged, commercial,
off-the-shelf business intelligence solution
for public safety agencies
QUICK FACTS
2. As its customers created and stored
enormous volumes of data in Intergraph’s
public safety incident management
solutions, they struggled to explore and
gain insight into these information silos.
“Our solution components each had
separate reporting capabilities, and it
became untenable for our prospects
and customers to work with them this
way,” explains Steven Marz, VP of
public safety industry management for
Intergraph.
Realizing that its customers needed
more than just reporting and wanting to
maintain focus on its domain expertise,
Intergraph sought third-party software to
enhance its applications with analytics.
The company found the answer in
the SAP® BusinessObjects™ portfolio,
which enabled it to develop the
Intergraph application suite called the
Business Intelligence for Public Safety
solution.
Seizing a Market Opportunity
Prior to integrating SAP BusinessObjects
software into its offering, Intergraph
provided six homegrown reporting
applications for its incident management
solutions, which form the foundation
of the company’s emergency response
solution. This solution collects and
generates a wealth of data throughout
the course of a day, recording everything
from calls to public safety and follow-on
activities to accident reports, arrest
records, and any information associated
with an incident. Intergraph quickly
realized that its customers needed
more than reporting capabilities; they
wanted to analyze and dissect the data
for investigations, planning, and perfor-
mance management. Unfortunately, the
company’s reporting-focused applica-
tions didn’t suit those requirements.
“We saw growing customer demand
and a market opportunity for analytics
around the data produced by our soft-
ware,” says Marz.
Tapping into Integrated,
Market-Leading Software
After assessing available third-party
offerings, reviewing industry analyst
recommendations, and attending the
summit for SAP BusinessObjects part-
ners, Intergraph determined that SAP
BusinessObjects software best met its
requirements. The software is compatible
with both Oracle and Microsoft SQL
databases, which Intergraph’s applica-
tions support. Moreover, the company
was able to take advantage of an inte-
grated suite. “With SAP BusinessObjects
software, we wouldn’t have to cobble
together disparate software on our
own. Plus, SAP Crystal Reports soft-
ware was the icing on the cake since
it’s the de facto reporting tool in the
industry,” explains Marz.
Collaborating to Develop the
Optimal Offering
Intergraph’s knowledgeable software
architects collaborated with SAP con-
sultants to determine the most fitting
technologies to address its requirements
and marketplace demands. Together
they created the underlying custom
programs, database definitions, and
extraction scripts and timings required
to create a data warehouse specific to
Intergraph’s own applications. They
also specified how to reliably extract
and post ongoing transactions at
specified intervals without impacting
the performance of the applications.
The company then engaged a third-
party consultant with vast experience
managing business intelligence projects
for help in developing the solution.
During the quality assurance phase,
Intergraph worked closely with SAP to
identify and resolve any issues. After
about a year in development, Intergraph
launched a marketing campaign, followed
six months later by a market release.
When public safety agencies rely on your emergency response
systems, you need to empower them with the best possible visibility
into their data. That was the challenge facing Intergraph Corporation,
a leading global provider of engineering and geospatial software
that enables organizations across a range of industries to visualize
complex data.
3. “As an OEM, we brand the solution as our own. But the fact that
the underlying technology is from SAP is a huge part of our value
proposition.”
Delivering a Prepackaged Busi-
ness Intelligence Solution
The company’s solution uses SAP
BusinessObjects Data Integrator
software to enable two sophisticated
processes that extract data from its
application databases to create a data
warehouse. One version of the process
creates a standard data warehouse
from a shadowing system, while the
other version enables a near-real-time
data warehouse from the live system,
for dashboards that require more timely
information.
Using SAP BusinessObjects Data
Integrator and the SAP BusinessObjects
Business Intelligence platform, Intergraph
developed a semantic layer called a
reporting universe. This enables cus-
tomers to access information in the
data warehouse using common industry
terms and different workflows, without
having to understand the underlying
database structures. From a portal,
customers access this reporting universe
to perform ad hoc queries, run periodic
reports, or merely monitor high-level
information from a visual dashboard
enabled by SAP BusinessObjects
Dashboards and SAP BusinessObjects
Web Intelligence® software.
“We combined the application-specific
information from our systems with the
best business intelligence building
blocks and infrastructure – from SAP.
This combination enhances both tools
with unique value-added benefits and
provides a prepackaged, commercial,
off-the-shelf business intelligence
solution for public safety agencies,”
explains Marz.
Exploring Data and
Gaining Insights
Pulling together the silos of information
captured in Intergraph’s incident manage-
ment solutions enables customers to
interactively explore the data and
expose relationships and trends. Now
the company’s customers can generate
and present quality reports, visualize
and explore information, and perform
real-time performance monitoring using
intuitive dashboards. They can also
distribute and access information
through a secure Web portal. All of this
combined enables organizations to
mine the data hidden within complex
database structures, integrate it into
their business, and achieve operational
excellence.
Specifically, command staff – such as
police chiefs – can use business intelli-
gence capabilities to gain immediate
feedback on the performance manage-
ment of key metrics – including disasters
and violent crimes – that are in or out
of tolerance. As a result, they can
be prepared when speaking with the
media, for example. Operations and
management staff can identify trends,
such as whether certain crimes are on
the rise in specific neighborhoods or if
particular incidents are routinely occurring
in a defined area. With this insight, they
can optimize their staffing assignments
and perhaps even preempt anticipated
events.
The Business Intelligence for Public
Safety solution can also be used to
provide the public with online access to
information about crime areas, fires,
and proximity of crimes to locations of
interest, for instance. Finally, public
safety answering points can use the
solution for real-time performance
monitoring, measurement, and alerting
of call center productivity.
“With SAP software, we wouldn’t have to cobble together disparate
software on our own.”
Steven Marz, VP of Public Safety Industry Management, Intergraph Corporation
Steven Marz, VP of Public Safety Industry Management, Intergraph Corporation
