Stanford Management Company Sees High Returns on Business Intelligence Investment From Information Builders

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - November 15, 2007) - Information Builders, the leader in production business intelligence (BI) systems, today announced that Stanford Management Company (SMC) has successfully implemented WebFOCUS as its reporting standard to help streamline operations and get a more complete view of its data.

SMC manages more than $18 billion in endowments and investments for Stanford University, Stanford Hospital & Clinics, and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. It is a nonprofit organization that operates as a division of the university with oversight by a board of directors appointed by the university's board of trustees. The company was suffering from an inability to integrate and report on data across all its systems. The process for extracting and analyzing data required multiple steps to access data from disparate sources. The company also wanted the data to be uploaded and stored in a data mart.

SMC needed a solution that could help integrate all the data sources on the back-end and ensure that users were receiving reports with accurate data in a timely and efficient manner. The company selected WebFOCUS for its ease of use, scalability, and data integration strengths. It went right to work implementing WebFOCUS for all its reporting and analysis needs, resulting in three immediate takeaways for the users.

"Professional endowment portfolio management is critical to ensure strategic cohesion between an institutional mission, its funding requirements, and the desired endowment performance," said Gene Wong, director of performance and management information systems at SMC. "Academic endowments are a highly competitive market, and we needed a way to ensure that all of our managers, trustees, and partners had a way to access and analyze information in a streamlined, timely manner. WebFOCUS helped us to create a reporting structure that gives us the answers we need, when we need them."

SMC has used WebFOCUS to develop a number of systems, some of which provide up-to-date variances in investment valuations, which make the reconciliation process much simpler and also offers an audit trail to SMC valuations. The company developed another system, which integrates Stanford's cash ledger system, displays real-time cash activity, and reconciles to its custodian on a nightly basis. At an executive level, the company has also created reports using WebFOCUS, which provides quarterly returns on the endowment and gives the board of directors and CEO insight into the performance of the overall portfolio.

The Stanford Investment Pool generated a phenomenal 23 percent return for the 12 months ending June 30. "Besides our top-notch managers and investment team, we fundamentally re-engineered our back-end process flow from our custodian Melon/BONY," said Wong. "The Information Builders tools are so powerful and flexible that they allowed us to implement an entirely new business model in less than six months. The greater access to pre-analyzed data contributed to better management and control of the overall return. The team at Information Builders walked us though the process from the beginning; I highly recommend the company as a BI partner."

"Stanford University is one of the most well respected and well funded universities in the world," said Gerald Cohen, CEO and founder, Information Builders. "Running an endowment as large as the one SMC administers, involves managing the process and flow of information across many systems and groups. By implementing a business intelligence solution, the company can help meet the challenge of not only managing the endowment, but also maximizing the returns."

About Stanford Management Company

The Stanford Management Company (SMC) was established in 1991 to manage Stanford's financial and real estate assets. SMC is a division of the University with oversight by a Board of Directors appointed by the University Board of Trustees. The SMC board consists of investment and real estate professionals, the University President, Chief Financial Officer, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and the CEO of SMC.

The board approves SMC asset allocation targets, oversees the hiring of external asset managers, and evaluates the performance of SMC investments and professionals. SMC oversees approximately $18.0 billion of endowment and trust assets, expendable funds, and commercial real estate investments.

About Information Builders

Information Builders' award-winning combination of business intelligence and enterprise integration software has been providing innovative solutions to more than 12,000 customers for the past 30 years. WebFOCUS is the world's most widely utilized business intelligence platform. It provides the security, scalability, and flexibility needed at every level of global extended enterprises. Its simplicity helps create executive, analytical, and operational applications that reach dozens to millions of users. Information Builders subsidiary iWay Software provides state of the art, multi-purpose integration engines that address all SOA, application, data, and information management requirements. Its integration adapters have been adopted by the leading software platform providers. Together, these products give Information Builders' customers the ability to live up to the company motto: "Your business. No barriers."

Information Builders' award-winning technology has successfully provided quality software and superior services for 31 years to more than 12,000 customers, including most of the Fortune 100 and U.S. federal government agencies. Headquartered in New York City with 90 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,600 people and has over 350 business partners. For more information visit www.informationbuilders.com.

Contact Information: Press Contacts: Kathleen Moran Information Builders (917) 339-6313 Samantha Smith EmergePR (617) 729-3178