Up-to-Date BI Proves a No-Risk Policy for French Insurer
WebFOCUS Supplants SMACL's Obsolete Decision-Making System to Support Growing Business
Founded in 1974, the France-based SMACL insures municipalities, local organizations and businesses within those municipalities, and elected officials and salaried employees who serve those communities. With sales of approximately 173 million euros in 2005 – up more than 33 percent from the previous year and 50 percent over the previous four years – SMACL employs more than 400 workers, including 25 computer scientists.
As the firm continues to form relationships with new clients, it must handle an increasing number of requests for new insurance policy estimates. Ensuring profitability means that risk must be assessed and policy rates must be defined accordingly. To accomplish this in the most efficient manner possible, SMACL needed a dedicated decision-making platform for collaborators, employees, and subscribers.
Accessing the statistical information necessary to accurately determine yearly contributions for each new policy requires that users maintain and manipulate large data sets. For example, the risks associated with urban violence or floods will vary greatly from one region to the next. Local history, topography, and other characteristics must be closely evaluated and analyzed.
Lacking a single tool for decision-making, SMACL was using a variety of solutions based on Lotus Notes Office Suite, an approach that involved frequent technical deployments and continuous data reloads on each of the individual workstations. Although this method was sufficient when it was initially introduced, it was rendered obsolete as the volume of activity requiring decision-making support grew.
There became an urgent need throughout the entire organization for a single decision-making tool that could minimize maintenance and streamline access to information. "In the past, we could not find a solution that addressed all our requirements, so we continued to use internal office tools to manage our reports," said Jean Clisson, information systems manager at SMACL. "But, as we grew, it became vital to build a real decision-making platform that was readily accessible to the whole company."
SMACL's requirements included a single, fully integrated tool running on a uniform platform, with a centralized database. Additionally, because of the organization's complex and diverse technology architecture, robust integration capabilities were a must. The SMACL network is structured around a Unisys mainframe that hosts numerous internally developed applications. Several packaged applications have also been deployed to manage various administrative functions such as accounting and human resources.
After the initial needs were identified, and a plan was laid out and communicated, SMACL issued a request for proposal (RFP) to all major vendors in the reporting and business intelligence (BI) market. In addition to providing an overview of functionality and features, each solution provider was asked to outline its experience in the insurance field. After reviewing the responses, SMACL chose WebFOCUS from Information Builders.
WebFOCUS is a comprehensive, fully integrated, enterprise-scale platform that delivers powerful and feature-rich, yet intuitive business intelligence across an entire organization to enable timely and accurate reporting at the executive, analytical, and operational levels. With WebFOCUS, any data in any enterprise source (including documents and other unstructured formats) is made readily available, accessible, and meaningful to any user in any location.
During the project's initial test phase, the foundation for the decision-support system was deployed and a prototype was built. Mapping functionality from ESRI was then incorporated into the environment.
Through its partnership with ESRI, Information Builders gives users the ability to leverage geographic information systems for reporting purposes. The spatial component of any information from virtually any source can be visualized and analyzed in great depth. As a result, users can easily identify the similarities and differences between objects in specific geographic locations, or find spatial relationships between dimensions with similar or outstanding values.
One key obstacle that stood in the project's way was a tight timeline for completion. SMACL needed to have the system up and running before the start of the school year, which is one of the busiest times for most mutual insurance companies.
"WebFOCUS has saved us a lot of time in regards to monitoring and estimating risks, and responding to requests for insurance policy estimates," Clisson states. "Because it is Web-based, all the customized information needed to support decision-making is easily accessible via an online portal. And, the data our users can retrieve is broader, and more relevant, than what they were able to obtain using our previous reporting methods.
"Our user base of approximately 80 employees has seen significant and immediate productivity gains. We estimate that we are saving three days per year per person since the deployment of WebFOCUS."
Since the WebFOCUS implementation, SMACL continues to improve its decision-making environment by extending its capabilities to other branches. For example, those who oversee insurance for motor vehicles now have access to the system. More than 20 other applications are also planned for the future, including key performance indicators (KPIs) and dashboards that will provide insight into insurance management, human resources, and corporate management.
Information Builders has a strong presence in the insurance industry, and has provided powerful business intelligence solutions to leading companies around the globe such as Nationwide, Royal & Sun Alliance, Amerisure Mutual Insurance Company, Brotherhood Mutual, National Life, Lloyd's Corporation of London, and Everest Insurance. These organizations rely on the WebFOCUS platform to better control and monitor their agent networks, improve call center performance, more effectively manage risk, accelerate claims processing and tracking, enhance fraud detection and prevention, and much more.
e communities. With sales of approximately 173 million euros in 2005 – up more than 33 percent from the previous year and 50 percent over the previous four years – SMACL employs more than 400 workers, including 25 computer scientists.
As the firm continues to form relationships with new clients, it must handle an increasing number of requests for new insurance policy estimates. Ensuring profitability means that risk must be assessed and policy rates must be defined accordingly. To accomplish this in the most efficient manner possible, SMACL needed a dedicated decision-making platform for collaborators, employees, and subscribers.
Accessing the statistical information necessary to accurately determine yearly contributions for each new policy requires that users maintain and manipulate large data sets. For example, the risks associated with urban violence or floods will vary greatly from one region to the next. Local history, topography, and other characteristics must be closely evaluated and analyzed.
Lacking a single tool for decision-making, SMACL was using a variety of solutions based on Lotus Notes Office Suite, an approach that involved frequent technical deployments and continuous data reloads on each of the individual workstations. Although this method was sufficient when it was initially introduced, it was rendered obsolete as the volume of activity requiring decision-making support grew.
There became an urgent need throughout the entire organization for a single decision-making tool that could minimize maintenance and streamline access to information. "In the past, we could not find a solution that addressed all our requirements, so we continued to use internal office tools to manage our reports," said Jean Clisson, information systems manager at SMACL. "But, as we grew, it became vital to build a real decision-making platform that was readily accessible to the whole company."
SMACL's requirements included a single, fully integrated tool running on a uniform platform, with a centralized database. Additionally, because of the organization's complex and diverse technology architecture, robust integration capabilities were a must. The SMACL network is structured around a Unisys mainframe that hosts numerous internally developed applications. Several packaged applications have also been deployed to manage various administrative functions such as accounting and human resources.
After the initial needs were identified, and a plan was laid out and communicated, SMACL issued a request for proposal (RFP) to all major vendors in the reporting and business intelligence (BI) market. In addition to providing an overview of functionality and features, each solution provider was asked to outline its experience in the insurance field. After reviewing the responses, SMACL chose WebFOCUS from Information Builders.
WebFOCUS is a comprehensive, fully integrated, enterprise-scale platform that delivers powerful and feature-rich, yet intuitive business intelligence across an entire organization to enable timely and accurate reporting at the executive, analytical, and operational levels. With WebFOCUS, any data in any enterprise source (including documents and other unstructured formats) is made readily available, accessible, and meaningful to any user in any location.
During the project's initial test phase, the foundation for the decision-support system was deployed and a prototype was built. Mapping functionality from ESRI was then incorporated into the environment.
Through its partnership with ESRI, Information Builders gives users the ability to leverage geographic information systems for reporting purposes. The spatial component of any information from virtually any source can be visualized and analyzed in great depth. As a result, users can easily identify the similarities and differences between objects in specific geographic locations, or find spatial relationships between dimensions with similar or outstanding values.
One key obstacle that stood in the project's way was a tight timeline for completion. SMACL needed to have the system up and running before the start of the school year, which is one of the busiest times for most mutual insurance companies.
"WebFOCUS has saved us a lot of time in regards to monitoring and estimating risks, and responding to requests for insurance policy estimates," Clisson states. "Because it is Web-based, all the customized information needed to support decision-making is easily accessible via an online portal. And, the data our users can retrieve is broader, and more relevant, than what they were able to obtain using our previous reporting methods.
"Our user base of approximately 80 employees has seen significant and immediate productivity gains. We estimate that we are saving three days per year per person since the deployment of WebFOCUS."
Since the WebFOCUS implementation, SMACL continues to improve its decision-making environment by extending its capabilities to other branches. For example, those who oversee insurance for motor vehicles now have access to the system. More than 20 other applications are also planned for the future, including key performance indicators (KPIs) and dashboards that will provide insight into insurance management, human resources, and corporate management.
Information Builders has a strong presence in the insurance industry, and has provided powerful business intelligence solutions to leading companies around the globe such as Nationwide, Royal & Sun Alliance, Amerisure Mutual Insurance Company, Brotherhood Mutual, National Life, Lloyd's Corporation of London, and Everest Insurance. These organizations rely on the WebFOCUS platform to better control and monitor their agent networks, improve call center performance, more effectively manage risk, accelerate claims processing and tracking, enhance fraud detection and prevention, and much more.