ICIC Reduces Risk With Self-Service Reporting Environment
"Most of the time, we can have a new report ready and in production in no more than one day."
WebFOCUS Active Reports Gives Policyholders the Ability to Track and Analyze Credit Exposure
As the leading credit insurer in Israel, Israeli Credit Insurance Company (ICIC) protects importers and suppliers in the domestic market who sell to clients on credit. ICIC insures credit in 115 countries and its 500 policyholders include many of Israel's leading companies, along with their subsidiaries around the world. All told, ICIC protects more than $11 billion worth of credit each year in both local and foreign trade transactions.
In an industry where information is the primary currency, business intelligence (BI) technology gives ICIC a competitive edge. "All big companies need to protect their assets," explains Ofer Resh, chief information officer at ICIC. "Credit exposure is one of the big liabilities of a company. We're using BI technology from Information Builders to help our policyholders manage their exposures."
ICIC's credit insurance services have become particularly valuable in light of today's worldwide credit crisis. If a client of one of ICIC's policyholders does not pay its debts - whether due to insolvency, financial difficulties, or adverse political events - that policyholder is covered. In addition, ICIC provides policyholders with complementary services such as financing plans based on credit insurance (receivables discounting), financing plans for import transactions, manufacturing cost insurance, insurance on advance payments to suppliers, and various types of performance guarantees.
All of these services have become easier to manage now that policy-holders can use a WebFOCUS reporting system called ICIC Online to manage, view, and update their exposure and associated claims.
"WebFOCUS gives us a competitive edge by making it easier for customers to create and manage their exposures," confirms Resh. "We regard BI software as one of our primary market differentiators."
Rapid Development Yields Rapid Results
Due to ownership changes, ICIC had to revamp its entire IT infrastructure within a short period of time. As part of this effort, the company decided to replace its JavaTM-based reporting system with a BI environment. They wanted to be able to create new reports quickly in a structured yet flexible way.
"We were given four months to introduce a new reporting system that includes about 50 reports," says Resh. "We had to maintain the same functionality, response time, and look and feel as before, yet also give customers new capabilities."
ICIC decided to use Information Builders WebFOCUS for this project because of its comprehensive application development and deployment capabilities, which includes Active Reports and Active Dashboards. Powered by highly portable JavaScript technology, Active Reports can be downloaded and viewed within a browser, either online or offline, which means ICIC's customers would not need licensed BI software to view and analyze their exposure information.
"We can send Active Reports to policyholders by e-mail, and because the source data is included in the file, those users can drill down and perform custom analysis," Resh explains. "This gives them a sophisticated reporting environment without needing to install or maintain any BI software."
To build the ICIC Online reporting system, ICIC enlisted help from SRL Software Resources, Ltd., Information Builders' agent in Israel since 1982. The team used WebFOCUS Developer Studio in conjunction with SRL WrapApp, a third-party tool for rapidly creating structured ad hoc reporting applications with WebFOCUS.
"WrapApp and WebFOCUS enabled us to quickly create parameterized reports with multiple drill-downs," reports Eran Arigi, a senior consultant at SRL. "This self-service reporting system gives users maximum flexibility to qualify and retrieve pertinent data."
The reporting application also features automatic exports to Excel spreadsheets and interactive graphs that let users visualize the exposure data. Within the ICIC Online environment, users can submit requests for new coverage, send e-mail to their referrals, and even retrieve archived documents from within WebFOCUS reports via a Web service interface.
Active Reports Enable Offline Analysis – With Zero Overhead
The ICIC Online reporting system has been in production for about a year and already it has 600 registered users. The multilingual solution can be deployed in either Hebrew or English and is widely used by policyholders, sparing the IT department from many routine tasks. "About 15 percent of our customers went into the system today to gather information," says Resh, glancing at the activity log. "That means we don't have to create reports for these people."
ICIC customers are particularly intrigued by WebFOCUS Active Reports since they enable them to slice and dice the insurance data without having to be connected to ICIC's information systems.
"Customers can run an Active Report, save the information to the desktop, disengage from the network, and continue working with the information," Resh explains. "Instead of simply receiving a static report, they can manipulate the data and export it to Excel for further analysis. This is a unique capability that only ICIC provides."
To protect this important customer information, ICIC created a secure login procedure based on one-time password (OTP) technology. Users need three pieces of information to enter the system: a username, an ID number, and a one-time password received by SMS or e-mail. Once users are authenticated, WebFOCUS only reveals information relevant for their company or division.
Sustaining a Competitive Edge With Self-Service Reporting
Arigi says WebFOCUS reporting technology has become fundamental to ICIC's business by making it easy to build, modify, and distribute new reports. In the future, developers plan to use WebFOCUS Active Dashboards to make it faster and easier to present information. This will enable customers to compile multiple tables and charts into a single customized dashboard.
As with Active Reports, customers will be able to save these interactive displays on their personal computers, receive them as e-mail attachments, or forward them to other users. In short, ICIC customers will have all the power of a BI dashboard without requiring any on-site software - or even a connection to the primary BI system.
"Most of the time, we can have a new report ready and in production in no more than one day," Resh says. "Thanks to the deployment capabilities of WebFOCUS, we can give customers greater control and also allow our development team to focus on value-added activities."
Resh says that the BI environment is an important part of ICIC's business. ICIC also used WebFOCUS to create an Executive Information System that managers use to analyze financial activity.
He says his team also plans to create Flex-based dashboards and introduce ad hoc reporting tools.
"From operational analytics to high-level CEO reports, we can now give both our internal users and our policyholders lots of options," he concludes. "Best of all, thanks to Information Builders' self-service licensing policies, this great reporting technology is free to our customers. If you're an ICIC policyholder, you get to use all this great reporting technology."