As part of a company EASE initiative to streamline corporate barriers to productivity and agility, a Business Intelligence Strategy effort was launched in 2010 to perform a gap analysis on key BI barriers and inform all internal staff of the assets already available for their use. This initiative resulted in the implementation of a new MasterCard Analytics Portal site, which brings together in one central location access to MasterCard's global data warehouse and existing internal BI applications.

The new site features an improved Help function, a streamlined application access process, "Find A Tool" - a guided process to identify the right tool for a business user's needs, and a new Qui ck Reference tool to easily provide access to master data and industry comparative metrics. The new portal, along with the consolidation and retirement of redundant BI solutions, facilitated the removal of hundreds of unused reports and cleanup of many user ids no longer accessing these tools - all completed in less than 6 months.

The portal provides a quick link to existing BI applications, a visual aid to help users determine if they currently have access to these tools, documentation regarding internal data governance, industry information and 'at a glance' definitions of the data which can be found in the applications. The 'Find a Tool' area of the portal prompts the user to answer a few specific questions regarding their data needs and makes suggestions regarding the appropriate tool for their needs. A Quick Reference Guide within the portal is helpful in providing direct access for data hierarchy and data definitions. With a simple click, users can look up information which was previously only accessible through the use of a developer's Structured Query Language (SQL) submission.

The BI Strategy also addressed the redundant use of different BI vendors and is reducing the vendor footprint to a single enterprise solution. The implementation of an enterprise licensing agreement with a single BI vendor was negotiated in 2010 that will dramatically reduce MasterCard's long term BI investment and will be accessible by all internal users.

Results: The ability to access over a dozen applications through one simple navigation step to the Analytics Portal resulted in over 20,000 visits to the various BI tools in less than 6 months. New users now have the ability to access these tools through a new streamlined process, granting approval in some instances immediately. Enhanced training, tabling events and over

50 demonstrations of the portal were conducted during the month proceeding its rollout, and these communication events have allowed the BI solutions group to inform not only their US based users but also reach out to global users as well.

The BI solutions team is also conducting a phase 2 project, aimed at utilizing the usage statistics and further consolidating the BI toolset to continue to ease the process which users must perform to obtain data results.

Most BI applications are being redesigned utilizing Information Builder's WebFocus tool solution, leveraging the guided adhoc capability to help user's drive their own results without the help of a developer or having to buy their own BI solution. By putting BI within the grasp of all users, there has also been an explosion of pent up demand, and dozens of new application requests are also emerging to facilitate streamlined and informed decision making. The rollout of the Analytics Portal, though, was the catalyst that facilitated the conversation and helped remedy the gaps in MasterCard's current solution set to now enable growth and productivity.