Information Builders Underwrites New Enterprise Reporting System for National Life

Snapshot

Organization National Life (www.nationallife.ca), a strong performer in the insurance industry since 1899. The Toronto-based company offers flexible products and plans for clients across Canada and in the Caribbean.

The Challenge Replace an entrenched executive information system, which governed everything from sales bonuses to financial reports, with a more modern and affordable BI solution.

The Strategy Establish a relational database of current transaction data, accessed by a thin-client reporting tool that enables complex query and analysis capabilities by users throughout Canada.

The Results Ability to easily examine policy and sales data in many ways; less money spent on software maintenance; greater flexibility for extending online reporting capabilities to a broad user base, both inside and outside the company.

Information Builders Solution WebFOCUS, Information Builders' Consulting).

Business intelligence (BI) tools have grown increasingly more sophisticated in recent years, blossoming into advanced product suites that feature data-access facilities, enterprise reporting, ad hoc-query capabilities, online analytical processing (OLAP), real-time information delivery, and portal integration. However, not all BI tools have the staying power that companies need to deliver data to a growing organization. In some cases, the software simply can't scale properly. In other cases, the technology can't keep up with changes in the surrounding IT infrastructure, particularly as Internet technologies simplify the paradigm for information storage, presentation, and exchange.

Such was the case for National Life in Toronto, where a legacy executive information system (EIS) gradually lost touch with the escalating demands of a successful insurance business.

"We had a pressing demand for more timely sales data by senior management," says Gary Coles, senior vice president of administration at National Life. "Our IT staff had trouble maintaining the software and extending its capabilities to the field. We needed instant, customized views of our broker data in a variety of formats, since different people have different requirements."

Coles oversees all IT and systems functions for National Life, along with the HR, legal, and administrative departments. As the business liaison for the BI project, he was charged with replacing the existing EIS system, called MIAME – a well-entrenched information system that governed everything from sales bonuses to financial reports. "We wanted to replace the system and at the same time make it bigger, brighter, and faster," Coles continues. "We also wanted to extend the functionality that users enjoyed in our head office to marketing personnel at our regional offices – without having to roll out a lot of desktop software."

Industry Leader

National Life markets individual life insurance, health insurance, and retirement/investment products for individuals and groups. Headquartered in Toronto and with regional offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Montreal, and Halifax, the company employs more than 370 people across Canada. National Life is a wholly owned subsidiary of Industrial Alliance in Quebec City.

Coles and his team took a hard look at the requirements and devised the following objectives for the new BI system, which they called GEMINI:

	A current, supported, and robust technology platform for data storage and reporting
	Capabilities that are at least equivalent to existing core MIAME functions
	Complete access for remote offices and other clients
	A reduction in the overall support burden caused by the EIS application
	Improved ability to adjust the data when errors are discovered
	The ability to enhance and improve existing functionality where appropriate
	Simplification of the downstream processes to reconcile geography versus channel views

Led by Dimo Dzoutzidis, director of systems development at National Life, the team conducted an extensive market search for a new BI toolset. "Most of the products we looked at required significant infrastructure and were too expensive, and the vendors lacked expertise in our industry," Dzoutzidis reports.

Everything changed when they discovered WebFOCUS, an enterprise business intelligence suite (EBIS) from Information Builders. "We liked the 'zero footprint' architecture on the desktop," says Dzoutzidis. "Most of the newer BI tools have thin clients, but WebFOCUS was the only one with no client-side software whatsoever, other than a standard Web browser. Information Builders also offered affordable licensing terms, and we valued their experience in the insurance industry. To top it off, they created a proof of concept within a week. This boosted our confidence level that Information Builders could deliver a workable solution."

Insuring Success

As someone who was intimately acquainted with the old MIAME system, Coles knew precisely what he wanted. He played a key role in ensuring that the major business functions were developed in a familiar way. Working with Dzoutzidis, he delivered a scope document to key project stakeholders in January 2004. They estimated that phase one of the GEMINI project would take six months to complete, and they appointed Vijaya Ganesan, an application specialist at National Life, to spearhead the development effort.

Working with two consultants from Information Builders – one helping with data analysis and data modeling, the other with front-end development and reporting – National Life laid out a BI framework to provide statistical reporting, parameter-driven queries, and drill-downs into current sales information. Information Builders assisted with the entire process, bringing concentrated expertise from previous life insurance distribution projects.

"The implementation was fast and the technical skills provided by Information Builders were very strong," confirms Coles. "The consultants delivered the completed system in less than 50 man-days, which was really quite impressive. Technically, they were top-notch. They did an excellent job and kept the project on budget, which was essential. Even more importantly, they understood the insurance distribution model well enough to develop an effective data model – and get it right the first time."

WebFOCUS is installed on a Microsoft Windows 2003 platform, along with a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database, where the reporting data is stored. Each night, ETL processes extract source data from the SOLCORP policy-administration systems as well as the compensation system, where daily transaction data is maintained in DB2, VSAM, and Adabas databases. Data extracts and associated business logic are written to the SQL Server database, which is sorted and summarized into a broker hierarchy to facilitate reporting.

For example, sales data for the individual life business and annuity business is structured to reveal premium dollars coming in by sales-person. Authorized users can drill down through this hierarchy to the detail level to isolate the product, agent, and client for each sale.

Once the reporting database was in place, the developers built a series of canned reports that mimic the MIAME screens and enable similar functionality, such as altering dimension tables and drilling down to policy-level detail. They also instigated appropriate database maintenance processes, including a backup and recovery strategy to protect against data, hardware, and program failures.

Premium Service

Ganesan and two other IT pros are currently responsible for maintaining the GEMINI system. All three attended training classes in Toronto conducted by Information Builders' education department. "Education for both core and backup staff gave us the ability to respond to data and reporting issues," says Dzoutzidis.

Within three months the number of users has grown from 75 to 110, with expected growth to about 350 once the system is fully deployed to all of the regional offices. As usage escalates, National Life can expand the application to any existing server. "With this architecture, there is no limit to the number of people we can add," says Coles. "The performance is fantastic – even faster than our old system."

Internally, the new reporting system duplicates most of the functionality of the previous legacy system and boosts navigational flexibility. For example, it delivers regional, company, office, and policy totals for each broker. "Users in the field are the greatest proponents, since they have information that goes above and beyond what they experienced previously," says Prem Agrawal, general manager of Individual Operations at National Life.

In addition to saving money by simplifying software maintenance, the GEMINI system will provide a lot of new functionality to the business. "Our people love it," Agrawal adds. "Because it is browser-based it is so much easier to use than the old system."

The thin-client architecture is particularly economical, since it makes it easy to roll out advanced analysis capabilities to a diverse user base. WebFOCUS does not require a lot of server resources, and users only need a standard Web browser to access the system. They can read data on the screen, import it to a formatted PDF file, load it into Excel, and automatically distribute reports by e-mail.

"Our users can examine the data in many ways: by region, by product, by broker, and so forth," Agrawal confirms. "They can quickly access aging summaries, view data by face amounts, and select many different time periods: monthly, quarterly, annually, or a range of times. It is very sophisticated."

In-stream auditing and checkpoints within the ETL processes allow administrators to see if values are being lost or altered, thus simplifying support and troubleshooting efforts. "It is easier to verify the numbers with this new system," says Dzoutzidis. "MIAME was a black box – we had a bunch of stuff going into it and a bunch of stuff coming out, but we really couldn't see what was happening in the middle. We can now make more confident business decisions with clear visibility into what's really going on."

Technology Renewal

During phase two, National Life plans to add mobile access for Blackberry users, who want to obtain report extracts on the go via e-mail. They also want to migrate some of the historical data from MIAME, make some structural improvements to the database, develop some additional reports, and provide more flexibility for rolling out GEMINI to remote users, including managing general agents (MGAs).

"We plan to add new functions, reports, and data sources," notes Coles. "Ultimately, we hope we will be able to use this tool at other Industrial Alliance companies as well. We have presented it to some of the other teams and they are very enthusiastic."

While most of the credit goes to the ingenuity of National Life's business managers and IT pros, Coles is quick to acknowledge Information Builders for playing a key role in the GEMINI initiative. "Information Builders complied with our key requirement for Web-enabled access to data and a very thin client on user desktops, yet at the same time delivered very advanced software," he stresses. "They were also willing to work with a limited budget, and devote focused industry expertise to the project. Information Builders knows our business."