Industry News

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Web-based docs make the rounds for ISP

PSINet Europe, overseas base of the U.S. Internet service provider, is taking to the Web to give hundreds of users better access to important business documents. PSINet (www.psinet.com) has been using a home-grown document management system, which offered Web access but no indexing, version control or search capabilities.

"Documents and content were scattered on different PCs in many locations," said Jonathan Rodin, PSINet’s manager of quality assurance and business development. "The result was that nobody knew where to find a particular document that they needed."

PSINet looked at and rejected client-server replacements; the per-client pricing models were prohibitive, and the systems would have been difficult to manage in PSINet’s dispersed environment.

"We are growing at such a fast rate, it became critical for us to quickly control the accessing and sharing of information throughout our European organization," said Rodin.

With the help of Aufirex (www. aufirex.com), a European integrator, PSINet is rolling out IntraNet Solutions’ (www.intranetsol.com) Intra.doc to 250 users, providing Web-based access to thousands of business documents from various operational departments and among offices in several countries. Now, PSINet users will be able to more efficiently access, manage and share ISO 9000 quality compliance documents on internal policies, training documentation and customer-related marketing documents.

FINANCIAL

Citigroup analysts evolve to Web-based data analysis

Financial analysts in Citigroup’s (www.citigroup.com) Global Consumer Businesses division will soon analyze and distribute data via the Web, improving business intelligence performance and saving money.

Citigroup previously relied on skilled operators to generate expense data and business unit performance reports via dumb terminals hooked to a 12-year-old, Y2K non-compliant system. Reports were then distributed to analysts on paper.

Citigroup is installing Viador’s (www. viador.com) E-Portal suite, a thin-client system that incorporates search and analysis capabilities and integration with Citigroup’s other data systems. Now, Citigroup analysts can drill down through data to assess business unit productivity and efficiency to support better decision making and more accurate forecasting. That information can be distributed immediately as Viador reports or exported as Microsoft Excel (www.microsoft.com) or Adobe PDF (www.adobe.com) documents.