Johannesburg, 30 Jun 2008
Cardif Pinnacle has chosen Progress EasyAsk for Operational Business Intelligence (BI) software to replace its nine-year-old BI system at its offices in Johannesburg.
EasyAsk Operational BI delivers faster reporting time than the company's previous reporting tool, and empowers employees at all levels of the organisation with the ability to retrieve BI data.
"Within a week of implementing EasyAsk for Operational BI, we were able to reduce our report development time from nine months to five minutes," says Neville du Piesanie, COO, Cardif Pinnacle.
"These results were made possible so quickly because EasyAsk for Operational BI didn't require us to train employees before using the tool. The interface of EasyAsk for Operational BI looks and feels like a Web-search box while performing like a more complex BI tool, providing all employees with an intuitive means to access data."
South African government regulations require Cardif Pinnacle, a specialist underwriter of protected repayment insurance, motor shortfall and other unique payment protector insurance products, to produce monthly risk calculations and performance management reports.
With EasyAsk for Operational BI, employees at Cardif Pinnacle simply enter the questions they need answered (such as list number of claims paid this month by agent, value and policy number) and the software instantly retrieves the data as an ad hoc report, as well as archived reports.
Cardif Pinnacle also used EasyAsk for Operational BI to help retrieve, identify and remove duplicate information from the operating systems that handled client information. The removal of this redundant information further increased the company's efficiency by eliminating the need to search each report for duplicate information, thus freeing up man hours to focus on strategic business initiatives.
Du Piesanie continues: "Through the use of natural language rather than technical search terms or SQL coding, in addition to the reduction of duplicate information stored in our data centres, we eliminated the need to sift through pages of data in order to find the information we were searching for in the first place."
"Traditional business intelligence tools only provide power users with access to data, or require extensive training, producing an IT-driven data retrieval process. Both models slow down productivity as business professionals wait for the data necessary to continue their initiatives," says Corey Springett, strategic business manager of Progress Software South Africa.
"EasyAsk for Operational BI software's familiar search box style interface, as well as its ability to use intuitive language searches, breaks down the barrier between business professionals and databases, increasing productivity and reducing IT work overload."
EasyAsk has gained widespread favour in South Africa in the first 12 months since launch, with half a dozen customers signing, and Springett expects this momentum to be maintained.
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