Recently, Quadrus and Microsoft partnered to provide United Farmers of Alberta with a strategic Business Intelligence (BI) solution. Learn more about this project in the following profile created by Microsoft:

United Farmers of Alberta (UFA), formed in 1909, is a farm supply and petroleum marketing co-operative and was organized to enable members to co-operatively purchase farm supplies and other goods or services, combining maximum economic benefit and service. Today, UFA has grown into one of Canada's largest agricultural organizations with over 106,000 active members and revenues of over $839 million in 2002. UFA has 34 farm supply stores throughout Alberta and over 120 petroleum and fuel cardlock outlets located throughout the province, as well as in neighboring British Columbia and Saskatchewan.

Previously, UFA tracked and analyzed mission-critical information, such as product performance, marketing campaigns and customer trends, using an existing legacy system.  UFA's IT team generated paper-based reports on key performance indicators and then distributed them to decision makers in the organization on a monthly basis. In the event that a specific or in-depth report was requested, IT staff had to manually run the report, which was time consuming.

UFA quickly identified that the organization needed a business intelligence (BI) solution that would integrate with existing legacy data sources, as well as the existing JD Edwards Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution used throughout UFA's head office, distribution centre, and farm supply stores. To determine its specific business requirements, UFA enlisted the help of Quadrus Development Inc., a Calgary-based IT professional services and solutions firm...