The Hibernian Group is one of Ireland's largest and most successful financial organisations, with activities spanning general insurance, risk management, pensions, life assurance, investment management and personal financial services.

As a part of the AVIVA Group, Hibernian is backed by one of the world's largest insurance organisations. AVIVA has operations in over fifty countries worldwide and funds under management of over 300 billion.

An emphasis on providing competitive products and excellent service to meet customer needs remains the basic business philosophy. The company is committed to delivering security, quality and value, and with this aim, invests in the best technology to ensure employees' time is used productively and efficiently.

Noel O'Mahoney, Administrator at the Hibernian Group comments, "An initiative to reduce the amount and cost of paper reporting, and to increase accessibility and usability of reports for a greater number of users, led to the investigation of a number of products that might suit Hibernian's needs. Datawatch|ES was deemed to be the most suited to this requirement. It offered what we required for report management and report distribution, as well as allowing us to enhance the effectiveness of how the business could utilise the data in reports."

BETTER INFORMATION DELIVERY AND LESS BURDEN ON IT WAS THE NEED

When Datawatch was first introduced to Hibernian, a project background was established. This concluded that IT was looking for a solution that would reduce the burden on IT for the day-to-day reporting demands of the business. They needed to focus the development resource on system migrations and upgrades and not on report developments.

They had tried a web-based report viewing solution, but as this did not offer any report mining, the business users rejected it, as it actually made it harder for them to produce and work within reports.

IT and Business representatives discussed the project requirements with Datawatch. This was to provide a solution that not only solved the support issues for IT, but also enhanced and simplified the management and configuration of reports and data for the business user.

DATAWATCH|ES WAS THE ANSWER

Hibernian used the ES Spreadsheet module of Datawatch|ES to transform report data into Microsoft Excel spreadsheets tables, summaries and charts. ES Spreadsheet is one of the powerful analytics modules of the modular enterprise application, Datawatch|ES. Datawatch|ES transforms an enterprise reporting environment and enables users to work with the data locked in the reports online, with no limitations.

Datawatch|ES offers online report archival, distribution and programming-free analytics with complete security. ES Spreadsheet allows users to leverage the power of Microsoft Excel right through their browser. Users can extract all report data, or a summarised view of the report data, into a live Microsoft Excel file downloaded automatically from the Web.

As ES Spreadsheet fully supports Excel templates users can choose to load data into an archived Excel template, predefined with pivot tables, charts, multi-sheet workbooks, macros and more.

Monarch Data Pump is another product from Datawatch used by Hibernian. Data Pump provides the scheduled processing; it is specifically designed for extracting report Monarch Data Pump is another product from Datawatch used by Hibernian. Data Pump provides the scheduled processing; it is specifically designed for extracting report data, loading that data into any ODBC compliant database, or distributing exported files via e-mail. It can also extract data from multiple columns in a single pass. The implementation project was managed by Datawatch International and included installation, training and configuration services.

Noel comments, "The installation went relatively smoothly and the Datawatch technician was competent, helpful and professional. There have been a few issues since installation but nothing critical. Datawatch|ES has secured the business users' acceptance and now most reports are handled through Datawatch|ES and no longer printed."

Noel continues, "Our "First Time Right" initiative, adopted from the highest level downwards throughout the company, emphasises the importance of getting the job done on time, every time and to the highest quality. Datawatch|ES fits into this strategy by providing a streamlined, more reliable method of storing and distributing data throughout the company. By having information available quickly and accurately, we can serve our customers better, both internal and external."

The system contains a number of Document groups, all holding a number of document types. Each Group pertains to a particular department within the company. Reports for each group are updated daily from a single server location, where files are sent to by ftp when produced. Users are assigned read only access to Datawatch|ES and to the reports from their group.

DATAWATCH|ES IN ACTION FOR HIBERNIAN

Noel resumes, "We now have approximately 120 Datawatch|ES users. They have found the solution relatively user friendly and it was easily picked up with a minimum of training. Datawatch provided the training, which was useful to some experienced users who had specific questions to ask. A number of the staff using Datawatch have stated that it makes their jobs easier and often speeds up laborious tasks".

The product is being used to convert all currently printed reports and all newly developed reports to online reports, to reduce both the cost of printing and the difficulty that arises with maintaining paper based equivalents. Reports can then be made available to multiple users across the business. Reports are automatically archived and are easily retrievable.

Noel concludes, "Our Premium Collections department deals with a number of large monthly reports which often contain in excess of 10,000 records. These reports had to be analysed manually in the past. Using Datawatch|ES we were able to split each record into an individual document and so isolate particular records over a number of months and also consolidate them into one view, depending on a given criteria - name, policy number etc. Datawatch|ES has greatly reduced the need to maintain volumes of physical reports and has increased usability, as it is easier to search for specific data within reports. Also, the ability to export data to Excel allows users to carry out specific calculations that may not be available in the report itself. As many of the reports are still being printed at the moment, pending signoff as online reports, it is not possible to say what the fiscal saving has been at this stage, but we envisage this will be significant."

The benefits realised by Hibernian since the implementation, include on line access to reports (which means no delays in the business process), plus reduced support and report developments requirements on IT. Business users can easily automate many manual report processes. These all offer more productive staff and effective reporting provides improvements in the business cycle. The financial savings come in paper and print savings, no geographic reliance on paper archives and significant office space saving on storing paper archives.

The Hibernian Group significantly improves information flow and reduces costs with Monarch BI Enterprise Server (PDF)