Customer Story

Boise Cascade builds a web reporting system in three weeks

Boise Cascade's management wanted a sophisticated web-based reporting system that interfaced with multiple host systems, and they wanted it in three weeks. For the application development team, the deadline seemed next to impossible. Here's how they met it with m-Power.

Company
Boise Cascade
Industry
Manufacturing
Location
Boise, Idaho
Employees
10,000

The short version

Boise Cascade's management wanted a sophisticated web-based reporting system that interfaced with multiple host systems, and they wanted it completed in three weeks. For the application development team, the deadline seemed next to impossible. But with m-Power, they hit the date.

Reporting system in 3 weeks

Delivered a sophisticated web reporting solution in just three weeks.

Deadline met, short-staffed

Met a near-impossible project deadline despite being short a developer.

Real-time data access

Provided executives with real-time access to their data.

[m-Power] is extremely intuitive. I did not have to learn Java to get this deployed. I'm an old RPG programmer, and all it requires is knowledge of your database. That was the big thing for me.

Stan Brewer, Lead Application Developer at BC

The full story

Who is Boise Cascade?

"Based in Boise, Idaho, Boise Cascade manufacturers a variety of wood products, including plywood, lumber, particleboard, paper, newsprint, and pulp. The company, which employs 10,000 people, also operates a fleet of trucks, vans, and trailers used to distribute its products and equipment around the country.

While BC's trucking division was successful, a competing trucking firm had surpassed it in one area: Web-based reporting. As a result, company management decided it needed a Web-based reporting system that was at least as good, if not better than its competitor's."

The challenges

"The word came down from Boise Cascade's management in May like a ton of pulp: Develop a sophisticated Web-based reporting system that interfaces with multiple host systems, and do it in three weeks. For the folks on BC's application development team, that deadline seemed next to impossible to meet." And they were short a developer.

Solution

"After a week of training, an mrc developer arrived at BC's Boise headquarters to help Brewer and Skinner with developing the actual reporting applications. After a full week of development work, the first Web-based reporting applications had been hammered out, and m-Power was serving up Java servlet-powered HTML pages that gave BC's users the real-time access to the load data they needed."

Value

"The product reliably generates reports for about 60 users in under five seconds.

The future is bright for m-Power at BC. Now that he has some experience with it, Brewer foresees the tool becoming a valuable part of the division's initiative to modernize its legacy applications. First up? Some 5250 maintenance screens that may be better served as Web pages."

Read the full story from IT Jungle

This article was written by an outside reporter, interviewing Boise Cascade independently of mrc, and published by an outside news source. The above quotes are excerpts from the story.

In order to view it in its entirety, visit IT Jungle at:

Boise Cascade Gets 'm-Powered' with mrc Reporting Tool »

Page updated July 2026

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