Actuate Corporation has announced that a Forrester Consulting study, “The Total Economic Impact of Building Client Reporting Tools on Actuate,” found that the Actuate Enterprise Reporting Platform helps organizations provide reports that meet the strict requirements of their clients, improve IT efficiency in report production and generation, and shift away from capital-intensive print and mail reporting. The study, commissioned by Actuate, examined the total economic impact (TEI) and potential return on investment (ROI) organizations may realize by building client reporting applications on a dynamic, flexible client reporting platform.

Forrester’s study, based on interviews with six Actuate customers, created a composite organization that is using Actuate for customer self-service reporting with positive cash flow in 15 months with a Return on Investment of 92 percent over three years. The study illustrates the financial impact of offloading customer reporting from high-value individuals such as brokers, sales representatives, account managers, and senior technical resources to a centralized process. In addition, Forrester illustrates the financial impact of reducing the time that it takes to generate a custom report.

The study determined that organizations using a more flexible, dynamic platform for client reporting would gain the following benefits:

* Reports that meet the strict requirements of their clients. Customers felt that a decision to move to Actuate provided the capabilities that were required to maintain customer satisfaction while at the same time reducing the burden on customer facing employees.

* Improved IT efficiency in report production and generation. Customers found that Actuate’s improved report creation flexibility eased the creation of more customized, on-demand reports; Actuate’s platform stability reduced the number of unfinished scheduled report runs; and that Actuate’s parameterized reporting and guided analysis allowed the organization to shift reporting functions away from higher-value resources to lower-cost resources.
 
* Ability to shift away from capital-intensive print and mail reporting. Customers that had previously printed and sent hard copies of reports to clients now were able to overcome concerns of security and bandwidth utilization. The introduction of Actuate provided a stable platform from which to reduce high overhead costs for print and mail, by combining multiple print statements into one and moving statements online.

* Many companies have made their initial investments in a customer self-service website and are now faced with the challenge of weighing the cost/benefits of adding new capabilities to keep up with customer demand. The study provides a valuable model for these companies to determine the ROI of additional enhancements, such as providing more interactive, customization and analysis capabilities for their online customers

"We choose Forrester for this project because of the analyst firm’s industry experience in enterprise reporting tools and its industry-leading Total Economic Impact (TEI) methodology, which consists of three key components to evaluate investment value; benefits, costs, and risks in a formal way," said Rich Guth, vice president solutions and partner marketing at Actuate. “The business and financial benefits found in the study further validates Actuate’s contribution to efficient and cost saving reporting, as well as customer support and satisfaction.”