Category: technology

**Wright State University** 

## **CORE Scholar** 

Master of Information Systems Capstone Executive Summary 

ISSCM Master Programs 

2014 

## **Implementing Enterprise BI for Meridian Bioscience, Inc.** 

Paul Hansford 

Wright State University - Main Campus 

Follow this and additional works at: https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/master_infosystems 

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Part of the Management Information Systems Commons 

## **Repository Citation** 

Hansford, Paul, "Implementing Enterprise BI for Meridian Bioscience, Inc." (2014). Master of Information Systems Capstone Executive Summary. Paper 3. 

https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/master_infosystems/3 

This Abstract is brought to you for free and open access by the ISSCM Master Programs at CORE Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master of Information Systems Capstone Executive Summary by an authorized administrator of CORE Scholar. For more information, please contact library-corescholar@wright.edu. 

## **Implementing Enterprise BI for Meridian Bioscience, Inc.** 

## **Student: Paul Hansford** 

## **Faculty Advisor: Shu Schiller** 

Meridian Bioscience, Inc. (NASDAQ: VIVO) is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio.  The company was incorporated in 1976 and today has 525 employees. Meridian Bioscience, Inc. is a life science company, which engages in the development, manufacture, sales, and distribution of diagnostic test kits primarily for gastrointestinal, foodborne, viral, respiratory, and parasitic Bioscience has three operating segments: U.S. Diagnostics, European Diagnostics, and Life Science. 

The main crux of this capstone project was to provide Meridian with the ability to take action on data insights based on CRM data.  This primary need calls for a Business Intelligence (BI) solution.  The underlying value propositions for the Meridian Bioscience BI implementation will include the man hours saved, by federating data from multiple systems and distributing reports near real-time for front office knowledge workers.  There is a hard cost savings for print savings replaced by electronic portal in lieu of paper distribution.  Additional savings for reducing the activities required for the reports/dashboards creation is “on demand” generation timeline reduction. This reduction will lead to a significant cost reduction in labor and time savings in information delivery. Finally, the data quality improves the decision support framework allowing users to take immediate action in the present. 

Meridian Bioscience is a customer relationship management (CRM) software customer for Simplesoft solutions, Inc.  Today, Simplesoft Solutions is focused primarily on customer relationship management consulting.  The company is headquartered in Springboro, OH.  From the perspective of Simplesoft Solutions, Inc. (a CRM consulting firm specializing in mid-Enterprise deployments of Sage CRM Solutions), SalesLogix is designed to help Simplesoft to service customers.  Simplesoft is an outsourced near shore CRM implementation services company serving business-to-business customers. 

The Information Systems (IS) tool chosen for servicing the Meridian BioScience customers is a middle market CRM tool called Sage SalesLogix.  This capstone project delivered a BI solution designed as an embedded deployment within the Sage SalesLogix CRM implementation for 

Meridian Bioscience.  Since BI solution is completely about data, the initial tasks for Meridian’s deployment are:  analyzing and managing data, implementing dashboards, and building decision support based on the CRM data.  The data storage for the applications utilizes MS SQL Server as the database management system.  The data added to the CRM tool, through various input methods, and being analyzed by the near real-time BI solution called Sage SalesLogix Advanced Analytics (SSAA), which is TIBCO Spotfire. 



Question: Where is Meridian Bioscience headquartered, how many employees did it have, and what BI product analyzed CRM data in the SalesLogix deployment?
Answer: Meridian Bioscience is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, and had 525 employees. CRM data was analyzed by Sage SalesLogix Advanced Analytics (SSAA), which is TIBCO Spotfire, using MS SQL Server as the database.