Since 2009, Center6, a leading data and information services provider, has helped North America’s fastest growing homebuilders and developers make smarter, more informed decisions to optimize their entire operations through visual analytics, dashboards, and mobile reporting. By virtue of their intuitive data analysis reporting suite, informXL, Center6 combats complex business problems faced by homebuilders today. This ensures they’re able to better manage their business-critical data.
Center6 began by guiding builders through the complexities of ERP software selections, implementations, and system conversion, later identifying the growth of builder data and the lack of dedicated intelligence solutions for the industry, and as such, focused on data analytics for homebuilders. They now provide their customers with better data insight via business intelligence and analytics software so they can make the best decisions for their specific businesses.
Prior to Center6, founder Blayne Parrish recognized how challenging it was to get data out of large ERPs. Center6 was formed, under the premise of changing the way homebuilders work with ERP data, making it much easier. In 2013, Center6 launched informXL Datamart, which took homebuilder ERP data and made it available in an optimized SQL database. This decision was driven by their desire to make it easier for their customers to get the ERP data and do things above and beyond just exporting it to Excel.
Their Needs
Center6’s customers lauded the product, but wanted to do more with it, and expressed a need for visually stunning reports that provide the views and interactivity required to gain critical business insights. More importantly, their customer’s had requested Center6 provide an end-to-end solution so they could remain within a single application, ultimately ensuring a superior, more seamless user experience.
Their Solution
In order to meet the demands of their customers, Center6 began researching various BI, analytics and data visualization vendors such as Tableau, QlikView, Microstrategy, and Microsoft Power BI. They were searching for a solution that could be leveraged within their data environment to augment their customer’s ability to access key insights. They needed a solution that went beyond the ability to white-label obvious elements, and would give them the option to expand its existing functionality and deliver to their external customers’ exact requirements, without being dependent on the software vendor.
Many of the vendors they viewed, contained a lot of legacy technology that was cumbersome and difficult to manipulate. In order to battle today’s complex business challenges through visual analytics, dashboards and mobile reporting, they needed a solution that would enhance their existing technology infrastructure. When Center6 came across Dundas, it was readily apparent that Dundas BI was the product of choice.
“As soon as we came across Dundas BI, it was very clear that this was the product we wanted to work with, and Dundas made it very clear that they wanted to work with us as a partner”
– Blayne Parrish, Founder, Center6
As such, Center6 white-labeled Dundas BI, and branded it as informXL Dashboard. This enabled Center6 to enhance their existing products’ analytics layer by embedding Dundas BI within it.
Why Center6 Chose Dundas BI
Center6 enjoyed Dundas BI’s capability to connect directly to a variety of data sources such as Salesforce, Google Analytics, and AVID in real time, as well as to be able to create custom functionality such as special notes collection using injected JavaScript.
Center6 heavily utilized Dundas BI’s unique layers designer to create detailed help overlays, for custom information display about specific dashboards, upon hover. This same functionality allowed them to implement pop-up notes into their dashboards to further explain analysis.
Dundas BI’s powerful drill-down/up capabilities were incredibly effective at allowing Center6’s customers to identify which phases of their developments were causing delays, as well as providing them access to other granular, detail-leveled reporting.
Dundas BI’s massive out-of-the-box capabilities, combined with its modern and agile platform, assured a quicker time-to-market delivery for Center6. This not only powered fast self-service, but also allowed Center6 to integrate and embed Dundas BI into their existing applications. Furthermore, Dundas BI’s responsive, flexible web technology, combined with its open APIs, allowed Center6 to meet the design requirements of their users.
"I'll never fully exploit the capabilities of the software – it's simply too massive"
Kris Brady
Center6
"This product is extremely flexible and very robust. From a BI and visualization standpoint, what you can do with it is limitless"
Blayne Parrish
Founder
Center6
"In hindsight, choosing any product other than Dundas BI would have been the wrong choice"
Kris Brady
Center6
"We were looking at a number of technology options and Dundas stood out from the rest of the pack thanks to platform extensive capabilities..."
Blayne Parrish
Founder
Center6
Final Statements
If you’d like more information on how Center6 delivers smart data analysis technology to homebuilders across North America with Dundas BI, as well as their implementation strategies, you can view our co-hosted webinar.
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