The City of Richardson has won a 2012 Best of BI (Business Intelligence) Editor’s Choice Award in Computerworld Magazine’s inaugural business intelligence awards competition. Richardson was the only city nationwide to earn the prestigious honor, which recognizes 10 organizations in the public or private sector that are using business intelligence and predictive analytics to gain valuable operational insights from their existing data. Computerworld is the leading source of technology news and information for IT influencers worldwide.
The award will be presented to City leaders during Computerworld’s BI & Analytics Perspectives Conference in Phoenix, Ariz., Sept. 9-11, 2012. The City of Richardson’s Deputy CIO for Application & Development Eric Matthews, who helped deploy the City’s award-winning BI application, will also be a featured speaker at the conference. His panel discussion will elaborate on the City’s innovative use of essential technologies to integrate, enrich and transform data into relevant, timely and usable information that helps cut costs, reduce risk, achieve compliance and improve organizational performance.
“The City of Richardson is incredibly proud to be honored as a ‘Best of Business Intelligence’ award winner in recognition of our commitment to high-tech innovation and service excellence,” said Richardson Mayor Bob Townsend. “Richardson has a long-standing global reputation for technological innovation by its corporate citizens, and this award validates that our City departments are also forward-thinking in their smart deployment of technological resources to better serve the community.”
As noted in the Computerworld profile featuring the award winners, six years ago Richardson scrapped its outdated reporting systems in favor of Information Builders’ WebFocus application. The WebFocus system is agile, straightforward and user-friendly, and has improved operations in every city department while delivering an outstanding return on investment.
City leaders have found that the WebFocus application saves time in data retrieval while also producing valuable business information and analytics that wouldn’t otherwise be available. For example, through use of the application, Richardson’s Water Department can access and analyze data geographically; the Code Department produces reports in minutes, rather than days; the Police Department can compile monthly crime reports in minutes instead of days; police officers can access active reports from smartphones and drill down in the data to gain valuable insights while on the scene of an incident; the Fire Department can track emergency data to determine if existing ambulance resources are sufficient to meet the community’s needs; and City Council members are able to access and study a broad cross-section of collected data, in order to determine where funds should be allocated to best serve the citizenry.
To access the Computerworld article featuring Richardson’s award-winning BI initiative, see: http://bit.ly/ONMr0N.
Press release from City of Richardson