Clients

Midwest Card Services Finds Powerful Analysis with Data Warehousing Solution
Credit Card Servicer Gains Integrated View of Its Business

Commentary by John Folkerts,Chief Technology Officer, and Karen Stoltenburg,Project Manager, Midwest Card Services

Started in 1998, Midwest Card Services (MCS) is a fast-growing financial products servicing company with more than 400 employees and 200,000 clients. The company has diversified its services to offer telemarketing, ATM management, debit cards, and specialized loan services.

The Challenge

As a start-up, Midwest Card Services quickly developed its technology infrastructure to accommodate rapid growth and to provide clients with near real-time information. The company had the technology in place to meet its business needs, but in disparate, stand-alone systems.

"We had a lot of data at our fingertips that we couldn’t cross reference with our multiple systems," says John Folkerts, Chief Technology Officer, Midwest Card Services. "If we wanted to determine how a specific product was performing, we had to go across two or three platforms, which was extremely frustrating and time consuming."

The Solution

Midwest Card Services needed a data warehouse to bring together the data from its disparate systems and provide consistent decision-making capabilities across the company. The solution needed to grow as MCS grew, offer exceptional performance and power, and provide an easy to administer and use database——while running on a Windows platform. Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation, and its Teradata® database fit the bill.

MCS runs Teradata 3.01 for Microsoft Windows 2000 on an NCR 4850 server. Data is refreshed daily from its operations call distribution system, OLTP authorization system, credit underwriting platform, and various other internal operations systems. MCS used Teradata Professional Services for installation, training, data modeling assistance, tape backup setup and installation, and data translation assistance.

"The Teradata Professional Services team took the time to get to know our business and our data modeling before coming on site," says Karen Stoltenburg, Project Manager for the information and technology services group at Midwest Card Services. "To install the hardware, load data, and actually generate reports from our data in only five days was a tremendous accomplishment."

The Benefits

Now that the company has a single source of detailed data for the entire business, clients and department managers are seeing the benefits.

"It’s amazing the new level of reporting we’re able to provide the managers," says Stoltenburg. "They can now ask for information that was previously impossible to obtain, which lets them make more informed decisions."

MCS portfolio managers receive timely data to track the performance of different underwriting criteria and the profitability of each subset within the portfolio. With detailed reports based on up-to-date information in the data warehouse, MCS clients can more effectively analyze their portfolios. Running on the Windows platform, the system has proven easy to use and administer.

"We’re primarily a Windows shop. We wanted a common operating system so our system administrators could easily manage it, which is the case with Teradata for Windows," says Folkerts. "Plus, our users are familiar with Windows, so it’s an interface they feel comfortable with and can easily understand."

MCS plans to incorporate data that will allow it to analyze cross-selling opportunities within its client base. The company also plans to provide clients with Web-based access to the warehouse so they can run analysis on their data using near real-time information.

"We were looking for the big win, and Teradata has provided that to us."
—Karen Stoltenburg, Project Manager, Midwest Card Services

Why Teradata?

For Karen Stoltenburg, implementing a data warehouse was a frightening proposition, but that initial fear has turned to excitement.

"We have a relatively small technology team, and it’s scary to bring a new technology on board," she says. "But now we have a valuable tool that is making our life better and more efficient, without adding resources. We were looking for the big win, and Teradata has provided that to us."

John Folkerts had worked with NCR previously and was confident it could deliver. "NCR has a long history of quality services and products, which made the choice easy," he says. "We now have the means to take raw data, turn it into information, then take action. Our Teradata warehouse is proving itself essential to making us a more competitive, more successful company."

Case Study Source: http://www.dw-institute.com/research/display.asp?id=5401