Reinsurance Intermediary Gives Colleagues Powerful Reporting Tools, More Confidence In

Reinsurance Intermediary Gives Colleagues Powerful Reporting Tools, More Confidence in Client Data

“With SQL Server 2012 Power View, our colleagues can obtain a central view of all global reinsurance data, which they can easily slice by geography or business role and drill down to investigate anomalies. It makes them more comfortable in their data analysis.” Barry Walhof, Senior BI Architect, Aon Benfield

Aon Benfield is a provider of reinsurance services to global insurance and reinsurance companies. The organization wanted to give its personnel better business intelligence (BI) reporting tools so they could create their own reports based on updated data. To that end, Aon Benfield decided to implement Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Enterprise and its new reporting tools. The firm’s colleagues now have easy access to data analysis capabilities and can analyze more data faster. Also, the company’s technology team has cut custom report development time from months to a single day.

Business Needs and reinsurance firms around the Aon Benfield is a global reinsurance world. The organization’s capabilities intermediary, providing capital include catastrophe modeling and solutions and services to insurance

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published November 2013 actuarial, risk, and capital strategy Solution analytical reports that update consulting. As GRiDS was already based on executives on current global sales Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, Aon trends. The company’s business is highly Benfield wanted to find BI tools that dependent on its internal Global Risk would interoperate seamlessly with “Our time to market with the SQL Management System (GRiDS), an that technology. The company found Server 2012 Power View solution was integrated suite of custom Microsoft those tools in the latest version of the amazingly quick. We delivered the first .NET applications for facilitating the software, SQL Server 2012. “SQL Server working prototype in days and were reinsurance business including 2012 showed better performance and able to add immediate value to the managing opportunities, quotes, better BI tools, so we knew we’d want organization at a fraction of the cost contracts, premiums, claims, payments, to implement it,” says Walhof. The expected,” says Bob Olson, Vice revenue, fiduciary accounting, and e- biggest attraction was Microsoft SQL President, Aon Benfield. commerce. The solution, used by 3,000 Server 2012 Power View, a new self- Aon Benfield employees, is based on service BI feature in SQL Server 2012 A total of 150 users will be using the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 software. Reporting Services that facilitates ad solution by the end of 2014. Aon hoc data queries. “Power View was Benfield also plans to migrate the In order to provide analytics to users really exciting for us, and we thought GRiDS data warehouse from SQL more quickly, the system needed our colleagues could benefit from it,” Server 2008 R2 to SQL 2012 Enterprise. enhancements to its global BI reporting states Walhof. tools. “Our users didn’t have a good Benefits way to get fast insight Aon Benfield implemented SQL Server Using new tools in SQL Server 2012, 2012 in February 2013. The company is Aon Benfield employees now have into global reinsurance reporting, which also taking advantage of the SQL powerful BI reporting capabilities and made it difficult for them to easily view Server 2012 Analysis Services tabular can analyze large data pools quickly. In top clients, business units, and model, an in-memory database system addition, the firm’s technology team products,” says Barry Walhof, Senior BI that uses the xVelocity in-memory has significantly reduced its own Architect, Aon Benfield. “As a result, the analytics engine (VertiPaq) to provide report development time, in some BI team was often asked to create fast access to tabular model objects cases from months to a day. reports.” and Microsoft Office Excel 2010 spreadsheet software data from Power Gives Colleagues Powerful, Familiar But because of the company’s View. Reporting Tools and Improves comprehensive IT processes, report Confidence in Data generation was a manual, time- Now, global client data is extracted Using SQL Server 2012 Power View, consuming process. “System security is into the GRiDS SQL Server 2008 R2– Aon Benfield employees worldwide complicated, and we’d have to access based data warehouse, and BI reports have self-service reporting tools that three separate systems to get the global from that data can be created in provide easy access to the latest figures and manually aggregate them,” Power View. updated global client data. “With SQL says Walhof. “Then there was a lot of Server 2012 Power View, our back and forth with different teams to More than 90 financial management colleagues can obtain a central view of make sure all the data was correct. This employees use the solution for easy whole process could take months reporting capabilities, creating Power all global reinsurance data, which they before a final report on the data could View dashboards that show detailed can easily slice by geography or be issued.” data about clients, reinsurers, business role and drill down to insurance premiums, and revenue investigate anomalies,” says Walhof. “It To overcome this challenge, Aon forecasting. The firm’s employees then makes them more comfortable in their Benfield sought a solution that could use the solution to reconcile data for data analysis.” give colleagues fast, simple, accessible end-of-month processing and for BI capabilities. global reporting. Aon Benfield users are already capitalizing on the solution’s powerful The company’s Risk Business BI tools. “The first time our CFO used Technology team also uses the this, she identified an issue solution to create and deliver frequent immediately in a Power View

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published November 2013 dashboard,” says Mark Walsma, BI and users can actually see more data but instead of the manual, time- Product Manager, Aon Benfield. “She results. Previously, performance consuming processes we used to have was able to quickly drill down to slowed down over 20,000 rows of in place for reporting, we can now use identify a large piece of business that Excel data. But with the tabular model, SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services was misclassified.” I’ve seen 90,000 rows, and and Analysis Services to create reports performance is still excellent.” quickly and return them to people in a Delivers More Data Faster day,” says Walsma. “And with those The solution also offers faster Significantly Cuts Management time savings, our staff time is freed up performance than the company’s Report Development Time to work on other things, such as previous system. “With the tabular Aon Benfield can now create custom infrastructure or data quality model in SQL Server 2012 Analysis analytical/management reports in one improvements. This solution has Services, our colleagues can analyze day in Power View, compared to transformed the way we operate.” more data faster,” Walsma says. “The months before. “We still have to create system processes data more quickly, custom reports for some departments,

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published November 2013