"We had an order of magnitude leap in productivity with the launch of our knowledge management and BI system. The system will be a major factor in the development of new consulting reports."

Ray Washmera, President

Solution Area
	Business Intelligence Reporting

Software
	Microsoft SQL Server 2000
	Microsoft Office 2003 Integration
	.NET custom applications

CASE STUDY: McKeany Flavell

Knowledge Management system sugars the pill of data gathering analysis and presentation

Business Problem:
McKeany-Flavell specializes in commodities, particularly related to sugar. Their consulting and reporting services provide critical data to major sugar purchasers, such as food/beverage manufacturers. Large quantities of data were historically captured manually from different sources and stored in Excel and Powerpoint. It was very hard to re-use and maintain this data or even, in some cases, locate it in the first place. In addition, the same set of data was frequently needed in several reports requiring the client to update the data in many places. The client also has a unique reporting requirement to maintain a professional look and feel for presentations of data. Many of the reports are used at industry events and must uphold the client's professional image as a data provider.

Solution:
Guidance created the McKeany-Flavell Knowledge Management System, which has two main parts: A portal solution for industry information and completed reports in the area of commodities production, trends and futures; a database, data extraction and reporting system to scrape data from government and other sources, store it in SQL server and allow standard tables, charts and graphs in either Excel or Power Point to be generated automatically. Ultimately, the system is intended to act as a source of knowledge for the whole organization as they sell consulting and reporting services to major clients.

Benefits:
	Report data no longer needs to be manually keyed into spreadsheets
	Report tables/charts can be updated through Office which pulls data directly from SQL Server
	Complex trend reports are faster to produce
	Historical reports can be filed in SharePoint for future reference
	New report products can be designed and support increasing the capacity of creating value-added reports

Customer Profile: McKeany-Flavell, US brokerage and consulting firm in the area of sugar, sweeteners, edible oils, nutmeats and fruit concentrates, supports major food manufacturers and others with brokerage and operations management and with commodity intelligence through research projects, ad hoc studies and published reports.

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