Groupama generates reports and analytics in minutes with Qlik Sense

Organizations in banking and insurance enter, process, and analyze huge volumes of data every day. Without the necessary tools, it would be impossible for these types of institutions to quickly generate the dozens of reports and analyses needed to do their jobs.

One of the leaders in insurance, Groupama, has undertaken a major project to implement a centralized BI software to streamline reporting and provide employees with quick and easy access to aggregated, graphically, and dynamically presented information covering a wide range of the company’s activities.

With the BI tool implemented by our team, the company optimized processes and resources, improved data quality control, and easily managed data access.

In the following lines, we tell how the project went, how the business analytics system optimized business processes, and what benefits it brought to the insurer.

About the company

Groupama is part of the French banking and insurance group Groupama Assurances Mutuelles, which has over 100 years of international expertise and a presence in 10 countries.

Groupama entered the Bulgarian market in 2008 and already has over 750 thousand clients in the country. The company offers a rich portfolio of insurance products suitable for every aspect of people’s lives and activities.

Daily challenges

Before the implementation of the new BI platform, Groupama employees used an internally developed reporting system where users created queries and received Excel reports with redefined fields and metrics.

This way of working was too time-consuming for employees and made it difficult to find the data they needed quickly. In addition, the company felt a severe shortage of human resources among the IT specialists who were tasked with producing the necessary reports.

To overcome these daily challenges, Groupama’s management decided to launch a large-scale project to implement a centralized BI system that would enable automatic reporting and analysis, aggregated and graphical data presentation, and the ability to introduce restrictive access based on employee positions.

The solution – the Qlik Sense BI tool

Grupama started looking for a Business Intelligence solution that would meet the company’s needs and conducted a market study for this purpose.

The insurance company chooses Qlik Sense because of several benefits of the solution, including easy integration with various databases, associative data filtering, and the lower cost for the on-premises solution when compared to alternatives.

As a next step, the company management approached our experts for its implementation. Before starting the BI project, our team conducted a thorough business analysis to identify Groupama’s key requirements and define the scope. Based on this assessment, the overall vision for the new BI solution was created.

Qlik Sense Dashboard

Implementation of the Qlik Sense project

The implementation of the business intelligence software lasted 15 months and was completed in February 2021. To meet the set deadlines, we applied an adaptive approach in which the development and delivery of components happened in five smaller cycles or so-called Business Releases (BR), executed through multiple iterations.

Also key to on-time project delivery was adherence to a strict work rhythm – every Friday we delivered the finished components, every Monday we did a status report, key users gave their feedback by Wednesday, and in the meantime, work continued on the components in progress.

Our teams also used various techniques to optimize the schedule, including working on several Business Releases in parallel.

The onset of the pandemic also proved to be a factor in the implementation process, which necessitated reorganizing our work and moving entirely to virtual team meetings.

Despite the scale of the project and challenging timelines, the solution was delivered on time.

Among the main factors for its success, we consider the applied “agile” approach, the efforts and good collaboration between the teams involved in the implementation of the BI software from both companies, as well as the support of the senior management of “Groupama”.

The BI solution we developed includes a main application with 22 separate report pages, a payments application, a quota application, a Mapping Check application, and system applications for monitoring licenses, access, sessions, and reports used.

New horizons for Groupama with the BI tool

The Business Intelligence solution pulls, processes, and loads data from the core transaction system of both Groupama Insurance and Groupama Life Insurance daily.

As a result, the company’s employees have access to 6 main reports, each of which includes multiple small reports and different cross-sections in the areas of sales, claims and benefits, payments, marketing, claims quota, and portfolio analysis.

One of the most significant functionalities is a tool that enables the flexible inclusion and exclusion of dimensions (so-called dimensions) and metrics (KPIs), as well as the creation of multiple reports with different cross-sections.

The result is saved time in times and therefore resources.

The business analytics system allows tracking of historical changes in certain variables such as customer, agent, and policy status as of the last of the month as well as saving historical data for previous periods.

In addition, Qlik Sense enables flexible and dynamic switching between lines of business and periods – the beginning of the month, the beginning of the year; basis of reporting (underwriting and accounting year).

Through the BI tool, data can also be downloaded at a specific number and reports can be saved with a predefined structure in CSV format.

Another important functionality of the new reporting solution is related to ensuring GDPR compliance, as the BI software allows both user access management and anonymization of customer data according to European privacy requirements.

BI project results

The results of the BI project can be seen at many levels of Groupama’s operations, but perhaps the most compelling evidence of its success is its easy acceptance by the company’s employees.

Thanks to the new Business Intelligence software, the time to prepare the necessary reports and analyses is reduced several times - to just a few minutes, which frees up a large amount of employees' time and allows focus on activities with high added value. This results in a quick return on investment of time and money.

After the project was completed, Groupama significantly reduced the number of reports, the entry points were almost halved. This eases the work of employees and allows new employees to be introduced much more easily.

In addition, the extensive capabilities of Qlik Sense give the insurance company a complete and clear picture at all times of the activity and the results achieved.

Last but not least, the platform helps the company ensure better control over data quality, while also reducing the possibility of errors.

„When professionals work with professionals, things get done.
Definitely, the effort was worth it and we are very satisfied because the results are really impressive: time and therefore money saved, optimization, and a flexible system that has a lot of potential for upgrading.
Once an employee has seen that his work has been reduced from two days to three minutes, there is no way he will not believe in the platform”, is convinced Mikhail Todorov, Director of Project Management at Groupama.

Because of the trust created and the good partnership, shortly after the end of the project, the management of Groupama approached us again for assistance.

We have already launched two new BI projects, which we are working on in parallel. One is to upgrade the BI software with features left out of the original scope and the second is to prepare the data for reporting under the latest IFRS 17 requirements.

No business nowadays can grow and be competitive without the use of IT systems. Choosing the right software solution and implementing it is a complex, difficult but critically important decision.

At Balkan Services we have expert knowledge of both business and technology, and we speak both languages. We will listen carefully and advise you on choosing the right business system for your needs.

Balkan Services has been implementing business software since 2006 and has completed more than 690 projects, of which more than 420 are in the area of BI software. We follow a proven implementation methodology with clear steps and know-how on best practices.