A new centralized data repository that has created uniformity in report generation has helped Grange Insurance Group cut between 25 percent and 40 percent of the time it previously took to generate reports. In extreme cases, the new database structure has shrunk down to minutes requests that previously would have required the creation of a COBOL program to pull data from the mainframe and could have taken as long as 20 days.

The restructuring began when Grange tapped Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to develop a centralized enterprise database in an effort to better organize data that had accumulated over disparate solutions and databases within the company.

“The ability of TCS consultants to quickly learn the business requirements and apply the appropriate technology to enable these requirements was exceptional,” said Ralph Carlile, vice president and chief information officer for Grange Insurance.

TCS recommended that the company’s data be moved from legacy systems to a Microsoft SQL Server database. TCS’s iBIDS (Insurance-Business Intelligence for Decision Support) framework (built using SQL Server 2000) was used to provide standards, guidelines and a checklist to define the entry and exit criteria for each step in the software development lifecycle. iBIDS also provided best practices for quality management, metadata management, data migration, case modeling and performance management.

In the first phase of the project, TCS migrated the data from various legacy sources into a single enterprise SQL server database. In the second phase, data was transported into subject-specific data marts and OLAP (Online Analytic Processing) cubes. iBIDS segments and organizes data using analytical templates, such as sales and marketing, customer service, underwriting, actuarial, claims analysis, finance and investment.

“The data warehouse and subsequent business intelligence initiatives have provided us with the ability to rapidly access and analyze business situations and identify data trends. This capability did not exist before and would not have been possible without the talent of TCS,” Carlile said.

With the new system, not only is 100 percent of the data readily accessible, but the company is better equipped to conduct year-on-year and month-on-month analyses.

“The solution populates the data without human intervention, which has improved in-house administration and increased organizational efficiency,” Carlile said.

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