Liberty Seguros created a single information culture with IBM Cognos Business Intelligence

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The United States insurance and financial Group Liberty Mutual has been consolidated in Spain through its subsidiary Liberty Seguros. The company has been increasing its market share through acquisitions such as those of Hartford Seguros and Royal Sun Alliance in 2001 and Genesis in 2004.
The group provides diverse insurance services, with particular involvement in products directed to families and to small companies. Its key lines are the automobile and individuals, although the company also provides products such as life, accident and property insurance.

Guaranteed dynamism through Business Intelligence
Liberty Seguros defines itself as a company characterised by its dynamism, a factor that is reflected in the information systems. The integration and consolidation of systems, the greater detail in the e-business processes and the implementation of productivity tools are the most important investment areas for the organisation.

In this regard, Imanol Vitoria, IT Director of the firm, explains that “the technological evolution of Liberty has been closely linked to its evolution from the business viewpoint. This dynamism, along with our centralised process model, makes technology stand out as one of the strategic initiatives in the corporate plans”.

The review process of the Information Technology tools and suppliers of the group began with the first acquisitions of the companies, later producing the consequent integration of systems. It was then when Liberty decided to implement a business intelligence system of IBM Cognos.

Objective of the Implementation Process
Antonio Ramos, Information Management Director of the economic-financial area of Liberty Seguros (the department in charge of this implementation) ensures that although they analysed different tools “we decided on IBM Cognos because of its friendliness towards the users and its ease of learning. It provided what we were looking for, in addition to being a tool used historically by the organisation. Furthermore, one of the philosophies of the project was to permit the financial department, instead of the system department, to be the guarantor and distributor of the information”.

The implementation of the product has been extended successively to all the acquired companies.
Antonio Ramos ensures that his objective is to end with a single repository of data and a single management system: “The ultimate objective is to have a single and centralised information system”. According to Ramos, the implementation of the BI tool of IBM Cognos in Liberty and in the successive companies that it has been acquiring has not presented complications.

With the help in its implementation of the consulting and integrating firm Lantares, Liberty has been consolidating its information model as the BI technology has been maturing.

Mr. Ramos ended by indicating that the investment in the installed IBM Cognos solution has been capitalised during the acquisitions made by the company; “In any case, in this type of project one does not measure an economic return, but rather the value that it provides to the users. What one must consider is the savings of resources and time that has been achieved with the use of IBM Cognos PowerPlay more than a ROI in economic terms.”

Technical Environment
Liberty’s central systems are supported by IBM iSeries equipment. The network servers are based on HP Servers on a W2003 operating system.

Benefits obtained

• The transactional and the information systems have been isolated so that they are different but, at the same time, they coexist, covering different functions.
• Capacity for separating the user from the obtaining and verification of the data in order to concentrate on the data themselves.
• The users of the tool speak in a single language.
• Creation of a single information culture that avoids discussions on the origin of the data and permits saving time.
• Creation of a front-end user of information totally independent from the sources of information
• The incorporation of changes in commercial organisation is carried out more easily.The flows of information have been modified and theproximity to clients is greater

About Lantares
Lantares, Solution Provider of IBM Cognos, IBM Cognos 8 BI Ready Partner and IBM Cognos Training Center, is the leader in development and implementation of performance management (PM) solutions, and also has professionals officially certified by IBM Cognos. The consulting services offered include from the definition of the project to the design of the architecture, providing the know-how accumulated in many projects of Reporting, Analysis, Balanced Scorecard and Budget Preparation, with the objective of helping the companies to achieve greater success with lesser cost. www.lantares.com

About IBM Business Analytics
IBM Business Analytics solutions deliver world-leading enterprise planning, consolidation and BI software, support and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance. IBM Business Analytics solutions bring together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers an open, adaptive and complete performance solution. Over 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries around the world choose IBM Business Analytics solutions.