Global Insurer Improves Speed & Flexibility of Cloud BI Platform

Overview

A global insurance giant is lauded by its clients for its custom coverage, product diversity and worldwide presence. The company’s specialized offerings in multiple markets have cemented its foothold as an industry trailblazer.

In an attempt to modernize its operations, the insurer had embarked on a multiyear effort to develop its data warehouse and self-service BI system – one that integrated a large number of different data points from across the entire organization. But as the system had grown, so had its complexity.

The Challenge

Interdependent parts made adding new data to the process difficult and slow. The company’s platform was designed to load data overnight to be available to users in the morning, but this process often took longer than expected.

The BI platform was built on sound decisions with the right combination of technologies, but the data wasn’t always available quickly, and user demand was almost outpacing server performance.

Users wanted the system to show information from more sources, and the company wanted to keep the entire data history of multiple source systems. The architecture made these desires difficult and costly.

By moving some of the workload to the cloud, the company could gain a secure platform with massive processing power for potentially unlimited amounts of data — without the investment or upkeep costs of onsite hardware. This solution would give employees on-demand access to data and empower them to make informed decisions.

The dynamic Power BI self-service analytics platform delivers fast, actionable insight to drive business transformation, but the keys to unlocking its rich potential often lie in strategic deployment and governance. A consistent, organized environment frees users to analyze key data, while an inconsistent, disorganized one can impede business progress.

The Solution

Determined to get ahead of potential performance issues and delays, the company partnered with BlueGranite to explore ways to increase system speed and flexibility. At first, the company tested a cloud computing proof-of-concept project that enhanced the capabilities of its robust, internally implemented data platform.

After implementing this solution, BlueGranite showcased complementary solutions for the enterprise data warehouse that were effective for archiving and performing sandbox analytics – a space for data experimentation separate from the production environment.

The Results

BlueGranite’s work with the insurer yielded numerous findings and results:

Upon discovering many of the company’s system processes were designed to run in a serial fashion (similar to a one-lane road), BlueGranite identified ways to increase parallel processing of data, opening more lanes to speed things up.

The BlueGranite team proposed changes to simplify system code development, to make adding additional data sources easier and faster.

BlueGranite quantitatively measured the insurer’s SQL Server performance and storage, identifying storage bottlenecks and resolutions.

The system discoveries and technology additions offered improved the company’s BI platform and:

Gave users access to data whenever they needed it

Cut out unexpected delays

Supported data analysis in answering new questions

If your organization is interested in exploring a cloud data initiative, let BlueGranite help. Contact us today!