Swann Insurance Selects Birst to Slash Time Spent on Reporting

Swann Insurance Selects Birst to Slash Time Spent on Reporting
 
Australian Personal Insurance Provider to Optimize Value of Distributor
Relationships With Fast, Easy Access to Detailed Sales Reports
 
San Francisco, Calif. – January 24, 2012 - Birst Inc., the leading provider
of agile business analytics, today announced that Swann Insurance will use
Birst to reduce time spent generating monthly sales reports by 120 hours per
month. The provider of personal insurance anticipates that, with faster,
easier access to these vital reports, it will be able to further optimize
the value of its distributor relationships. With Birst, companies can enjoy
a comprehensive business analytics suite in one single, powerful solution
that includes all the components required for advanced business intelligence
(BI) and makes the often cumbersome task of deployment quick, easy, and
affordable.
 
Through a network of distributors, Swann Insurance provides to more than
750,000 Australian customers policies that vary in length and are composed
of personal insurance products covering motorcycles, cars, bicycles, loan
repayments, bill obligations, and life insurance. To evaluate distributor
performance and policy profitability, the organization relies on detailed
reports of close to half a million records a month to track information
related to policy sales, such as policy length, policy components, and
corresponding claims and sales commissions. By deploying Birst, Swann
Insurance will gain dramatically faster access to this information and be
able to more quickly identify, adjust, and replicate business practices that
optimize distributor relationships and improve overall business results.
 
“One of our internal analysts has been spending three weeks a month running
these reports, importing information from our core insurance system into
Excel and then performing additional analysis,” said Vaughan Coots, System &
Application Manager, Swann Insurance. “With Birst, we can automate this
process, which will allow us to reallocate 120 hours a month toward other
aspects of our business, and significantly accelerate key decisions and
their impact.”  
 
In its search for a flexible, affordable solution to replace the company’s
time-consuming reporting process, Swann Insurance evaluated a number of
options, including its existing deployments of Salesforce.com and Business
Objects. The organization quickly determined that Salesforce.com would be
unable to process the large amount of information involved at the level of
detail required, and that the cost of expanding and maintaining its
on-premise Business Objects deployment would amount to at least three times
the cost of implementing Birst. In addition to delivering an affordable BI
solution that can be quickly deployed in the Cloud or on premise, Birst will
provide Swann Insurance with easy-to-use, advanced functionality that
enables users to display pixel-perfect reports in a format of their choice,
and drill-down for additional detail as needed.
 
“Birst is breaking new ground by providing an affordable BI solution that
couples flexible deployment options with enterprise-class functionality,”
said Brad Peters, CEO of Birst. “With this combination, we’re eliminating
the barriers that have historically prevented organizations from quickly and
easily gaining business insight that accelerates the decision-making process
and boosts the bottom line.”
 
About Swann Insurance
Swann Insurance is Australia's largest niche insurer and a leading provider
of personal insurance products.  With more than 50 years experience, Swann
Insurance provides protection to over 750,000 Australians for their motor
vehicles, motorcycles, loan obligations, specialised extended warranty,
bicycles and various debt/fee obligations.

Swann Insurance has offices located in all Australian capital cities and
retails a comprehensive range of insurance products through its chosen
distribution channels of Motor Vehicle Dealers, Motorcycle Dealers, Finance
Brokers, Bicycle Retailers and Educational Institutions.  With a substantial
network of over 1,600 authorised distributors, Swann Insurance has the
expertise and resources to support the industry with market leading
services.
 
About Birst
Birst™ is the leader in agile business analytics. It offers a single place
to manage all of a business’ analytics and the agility to answer questions
that span departments, data sources, and deployments—across public or
private Clouds. Birst gives users the fastest way to answer their most
pressing business questions—and then all the ones they didn’t know to ask.
At one-third the cost, time, and staff of traditional big BI, Birst brings
the benefits of analytics and fact-based decision-making to a much broader
audience. For more information, visit www.birst.com.