Applying a unified system for inquiries and analyses is a must for any large organization that operates with large amounts of data and wants to save time and resources in their daily processing.
One of the leaders in the insurance business, "Groupama", decided to launch a large-scale project to implement a BI system that optimizes reporting in the company, improves control over data quality and efficiently manages access to them.
"Not long ago, we used to have more than 200 different reports, which the IT department maintained. They were static, and there was a constant need to adjust existing sections and presentations. We wanted to have a centralized system for inquiries and analyses, which would allow us to summarize and graphically present the data and also introduce restrictive access to the specific positions of the employees," Mihail Todorov, Director of Project Management at "Groupama" explains.
He adds that one of the reasons the company chose Qlik Sense is that they had previous experience with another Qlik tool and its capacity. In addition, a market study reveals several advantages of Qlik Sense, including easy integration with different databases, associative data filtering, and lower costs of the on-premises solution compared to alternative analytics systems. After opting for the BI software, the company turned to Balkan Services experts for its implementation.
Scope and stages of the BI project
The BI project is large in scope and complexity, as it involves a significant part of its processes in general and life insurances. Therefore, before implementing the BI tool, the Balkan Services experts conducted a detailed business analysis, which identified the company's main requirements and determined the project's scope.
As a result of the evaluation, we created the vision for the new solution. It includes references and analyses, grouped in 6 main reports in sales, claims and compensations, payments, marketing, claims quotas and portfolio analysis.
"The initial analysis helped extract and analyze the requirements thoroughly to outline the scope, set a budget, and start work. As a result, we took on an adaptive project management approach that focuses on the rapid development and the delivery of completed operational components of the cycle system," Nairi Masihi, Head of Project Management at Balkan Services, explains.
BI system capabilities
The developed BI system downloads, processes and loads data daily from the central transaction system of the two companies, "Insurance Group" and "Life Insurance Group". As a result, employees have access to 6 main reports, each a collection of many short reports and different sections.
Masihi points out that one of the essential features is introducing a tool with which end users can configure the form and content of data without the IT department's intervention, which saves time for everyone.
"It allows for flexible inclusion and exclusion of dimensions and key indicators, as well as the creation of a large number of reports with different cross-sections. By introducing it, we met one of the main requirements for covering more than 200 separate reports, which the employees of "Groupama" handled, the expert from Balkan Services adds.
The Business Intelligence platform also allows tracking historical changes in specific dimensions, saving history from previous periods, flexible and dynamic switching between business lines and periods, downloading data of a certain number and saving reports with a predefined structure.
Another important feature is related to ensuring compliance with the GDPR.
Challenges and success factors
Implementing such a large-scale project does not happen without anticipated challenges, one of the most serious being the short period to fulfil the project's scope. Therefore, they applied graphics optimization techniques to overcome time pressure, including parallel work on several components.
According to Masihi, the key to meeting the deadlines was to stick to a strict rhythm of work.
For his part, Todorov admits that they initially had a particular vision, but when the software revealed its potential, they upgraded the task to achieve an even higher added value. "In the beginning, the design and brainstorming took more time, but after it worked, the process accelerated, and at the end, we were running," the expert from Grupama described.
Thanks to the high productivity of the teams, the second half of the project scope is realized twice as fast.
"It was a challenge to combine the data of the two companies so that they could be analyzed together and be comparable. The amount of data was enormous. The information was spread across many excel tables, some with hundreds of columns and millions of rows. We had to consider several individual cases to achieve total consistency of the company data. Some developments that did not exist so far were also complicated. Their lack prevented the employees from validating the relevant data, Nikolay Atanasov, senior BI consultant at Balkan Services, explained.
With the onset of the pandemic, it is necessary to reorganize the work and move entirely to virtual team meetings.
However, despite the difficulties of the agile approach, the well-coordinated team of both companies committed to the project and the support of the group's top management contributed to the successful results.
Benefits
The saved time and resources stand out as the main benefits of implementing the BI system. Todorov notes that before the project, preparing all necessary reports and analyses took a lot of time.
For example, due to its complexity, the report on damage quotas took two working days for two employees, whereas now it takes 1-3 minutes.
"We report a very positive and quick adoption of the new decision. It is also much easier to introduce a new employee to the team because the entry points are much less," Todorov adds.
"A change in the way we work is always associated with some resistance from the people. However, we are amazed how quickly our employees adopted it, not only because the interface is convenient but also because they realize their great opportunities for further upgrades and optimizations. "Once an employee sees that their work has been reduced from two days to three minutes, they can't help but believe in the platform," he added.
Qlik Sense's wide range of options also gives the insurer a comprehensive view of the business and results at all times.
"When professionals work with professionals, things work out. The efforts were worth it, and we are delighted because the achieved results are awe-inspiring: saved time and resources, optimization and a flexible system that has great potential for upgrading, "Todorov concluded.
He added that Groupama is already working with Balkan Services on a new project to develop the BI system to upgrade its capabilities. Moreover, thanks to the established trust and the excellent partnership between the companies, they have already launched a separate project to comply with the latest IFRS 17.
