National Insurance Leader Reduces Costs While Empowering Business Analysts with Access to Real-time Information Across Platforms
Dallas, TX (PRWEB) October 18, 2014 -- Serving the needs of millions of Americans each year, this leading insurance provider offers a wide array of insurance products and services, including life insurance, annuities, health insurance, property and casualty insurance, credit insurance, and pension plan services. The organization relies on the UltraQuest Reporter from Select Business Solutions for robust business intelligence, empowering its business users with the real-time data they need to make fast, accurate and strategic business decisions.
The industry leader turned to UltraQuest when its 30-year old FOCUS business intelligence (BI) solution, developed by Information Builders, became too costly to maintain. In addition, the legacy solution lacked the technology advances the company needed to report on data across numerous data sources, mainframe databases and web-based applications. “It was very difficult to communicate information that was not stored on the mainframe,” explains the company’s Special Projects Coordinator. “A lot of our systems are moving to a distributed platform on servers, and it was extremely challenging, if not impossible, to access and mine that data.”
The organization evaluated a number of business intelligence solutions, but chose UltraQuest Reporter because it offered a cost-effective, state-of-the art solution that could support its reporting needs across different platforms and provide users with the critical real-time data required for fast decision making.
To minimize time and expense and maximize the value of UltraQuest, the industry leader relied on Select’s consultants to help with the implementation. “The Select consultants did a terrific job collaborating with our internal team and implementing best practices to ensure the conversion was as successful as possible.”
Together, the teams conducted an initial discovery, and realized - through a process of elimination - that there were a number of reports they no longer needed. They then identified those reports that were still strategic to the business and converted those from the legacy system to UltraQuest.
“Our consultants from Select were instrumental in helping us identify what we needed to convert, which streamlined the entire process. That team was 100% responsible for converting all of those mainframe jobs for us that we ran in a batch process every day. Additionally, they provided an in-house educational program for our business analysts to train them on UltraQuest and help them convert their own ad-hoc jobs over to the new system. All of that support and expertise was critical to ensuring a successful conversion and enabling users to be up and running on day one.”
During the implementation process, Select’s consultants were able to identify areas where data within the 30-year old system was inaccurate. By fixing those instances within UltraQuest, business analysts are now reporting more relevant and accurate data. “When you are dealing with financial information, you want the most accurate data possible, particularly when those projections are used to make important product-related decisions. With UltraQuest, we are now confident that our analysts have access to the best data available to make the most informed business decisions.”
UltraQuest was designed with the business user in mind. “The user interface is so intuitive that a new business analyst, with very little programming experience, can quickly design the report and run it with very little assistance from IT once the schema is created.”
Prior to UltraQuest, there were several business units that requested more robust reporting. However, because the company’s legacy solution lacked the ability to integrate with new technologies, the group would have to unload data from one system in order to marry it to the data of another system. For example, some marketing groups are responsible for both annuity variable and life insurance portfolio products. But the organization could never report effectively on those two areas together since the data resided in two different systems.
“Today, with UltraQuest, that is no longer an issue. We can now mine data from all of those different systems and generate one consistent report in real time. That is having a direct impact on our business analysts’ agility to quickly react to market change and opportunity. ”
The move to UltraQuest has also had a significant impact on the insurance provider’s bottom line. “In the first 18 months we saved $250,000 in maintenance fees and we expect to continue saving $100,000 a year with UltraQuest.”
In addition to having a quality product, the insurance leader also appreciates the people at Select Business Solutions. “Everyone I have come into contact with at Select has been very knowledgeable and experienced, able to connect with and advise both our technology and business users. They have been very responsive in providing support – going above and beyond. That was exactly what we were looking for in a technology partner.”
About Select Business Solutions:
Select Business Solutions is a leading international software company with customers drawn from the Global 1000. Select provides comprehensive solutions consisting of tools and services for business intelligence and information access, as well as business critical IT software development, deployment and management. Headquartered in Shelton, Connecticut, Select operates sales offices throughout North America and Europe, in addition to a network of international distributors. http://www.selectbs.com/
Media Relations, Select Business Solutions, http://www.selectbs.com, +1 9728995223, [email protected]
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