Retirement Industry Insurance Giant Reduces Reporting Process from 30 Hours to 5 Minutes
The Challenge
A $4 billion leader in the retirement industry was dealing with large quantities of data from many internal and external sources in various formats – files, databases, spreadsheets, etc. The challenge for them was to ingest, process, and store the data, making it available for reporting and analysis.
For parts of the organization, this reporting and analysis activity was using spreadsheets for either pre-processing or final reporting. To move away from Excel, the company invested in technology to help deal with its plethora of data. However, they were struggling to use the tech they had purchased, and they didn’t have the capacity or knowledge around best practices to fully leverage their investment.
Our Solution
Our data management and analytics experts started by identifying the short- and long-term needs of the organization. In the short-term, we focused on the critical compliance requirements needed to support and simplify third-party audits and standardize and validate data ingestion. This meant focusing on automating the analysis and reporting for monthly and quarterly financial performance. Long-term, we wanted to automate and standardize their data management processes.
Starting with the more immediate short-term needs, we helped the company make the most of the software they had already selected. Beginning with the analysis of their reports, we worked to condense and streamline. We then used the software to build and automate reporting while providing an auditable process that will be used to generate future reports. Finally, we trained team members on how to use and maintain the reports and how to leverage the software to build the future reports they would need.
As we continue our work, we evaluate the processes and tools and make recommendations for continuous improvement of the data and analytics capabilities of the company.
Client Impact & Results
The results of both the automation and standardization of data for the client created measurable outcomes. We reduced the reporting process from 30 hours to less than five minutes. Further, the simplification of the reports has allowed them to gain efficiencies and decrease individual reports generated on a monthly or quarterly basis by 40%. This report reduction has created capacity, reduced audit costs, and, more importantly, provided the client with better real-time data.
Whether your organization needs help identifying and implementing a technology solution or you need assistance with a situation like this, where a solution decision was made and you need help fully realizing the value of the investment, we can help. Since we are solution-agnostic, we can focus on supporting our clients with the best possible solution to meet their goals.