Insurance Company Transforms Business Intelligence
The Challenge
A leading insurance provider serving 1.2 million policyholders across the Middle East was struggling with an outdated reporting infrastructure that severely limited business agility. The company's reporting process relied on manually-created Excel spreadsheets, with analysts spending 60+ hours monthly extracting data from disparate SQL Server databases, cleaning it, and assembling reports for executives. Financial reporting took 8-10 days after month-end close, making it impossible to respond quickly to market changes or identify emerging claim trends. Executives had no real-time visibility into critical KPIs such as claim processing times, loss ratios, policy renewal rates, or agent performance. When the board requested ad-hoc analysis, the data team required 2-3 weeks to fulfill requests. The company was losing competitive ground to insurtech startups that could make data-driven decisions in real-time. Regulatory reporting for the local insurance authority was a nightmare, often requiring last-minute scrambles and manual validation. The CEO mandated a complete BI transformation to enable self-service analytics, real-time dashboards, and automated regulatory reporting - all while maintaining data governance and security required for sensitive insurance data.
The Strategy
- 1 Design enterprise data warehouse consolidating data from 12+ source systems
- 2 Implement SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) for fast, consistent business metrics
- 3 Deploy Power BI with role-based security for self-service analytics across organization
- 4 Automate regulatory reporting and establish data governance framework
🏗️ Enterprise Data Warehouse Design
The Problem We Found
Insurance data was fragmented across 12 different systems (policy admin, claims, billing, CRM, actuarial) with no single source of truth. Each system used different customer identifiers and data formats. No master data management strategy existed. Historical data was purged after 2 years, preventing long-term trend analysis.
Our Approach
- Designed dimensional data warehouse using star schema optimized for insurance analytics
- Built comprehensive ETL pipelines using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) consolidating all source systems
- Implemented master data management for unified customer, policy, and agent dimensions
- Created slowly changing dimensions (SCD Type 2) preserving historical data for trend analysis
- Established incremental load patterns with change data capture for near-real-time data refresh
The Result
Successfully consolidated 12 source systems into unified data warehouse containing 8 years of historical data. Created 15 dimension tables and 8 fact tables supporting all insurance business processes. ETL runs complete in 45 minutes with near-real-time data freshness. Single source of truth established for all business metrics.
Metrics
📊 SSAS Semantic Layer & Performance
The Problem We Found
Direct querying against data warehouse resulted in slow report performance. No consistent business logic existed - different analysts calculated metrics differently. Complex actuarial calculations had to be recreated in every report.
Our Approach
- Built SQL Server Analysis Services tabular model with optimized in-memory analytics
- Defined 150+ calculated measures using DAX for consistent business metrics (loss ratio, combined ratio, claim frequency)
- Implemented row-level security aligned with organizational hierarchy and data classification
- Created aggregation tables for common query patterns reducing scan overhead
- Established perspectives for different user roles (claims, underwriting, finance, executive)
The Result
SSAS semantic layer provides sub-second query performance for complex calculations across millions of rows. All business users now work from consistent metric definitions. Power BI reports load 15x faster through in-memory analytics. Complex actuarial calculations centralized in one location.
Metrics
📱 Power BI Self-Service & Automation
The Problem We Found
Zero self-service capability - all reports created manually by data team. No mobile access to dashboards. Executives received static PDF reports via email. No automated alerting for critical business events. Regulatory reports required 40+ hours of manual work monthly.
Our Approach
- Deployed Power BI Premium with dedicated capacity for guaranteed performance
- Created 35 interactive dashboards covering claims, underwriting, finance, and operations
- Implemented Power BI mobile app with phone-optimized layouts for executive access
- Built automated alerting using Power Automate for SLA violations and anomalies
- Developed paginated reports with .NET custom extensions for regulatory submissions
- Established Power BI governance framework with workspaces, deployment pipelines, and version control
The Result
Transformed reporting culture from IT-dependent to self-service analytics. 450+ business users now create their own reports and dashboards. Executives access real-time KPIs from mobile devices. Automated regulatory reporting reduced manual effort from 40 hours to 2 hours monthly. Alerting system proactively notifies managers of SLA breaches and emerging trends.
Metrics
Impact & Results
The BI transformation revolutionized decision-making across the insurance organization. Report creation time decreased from 2-3 weeks to self-service, empowering 450+ business users to answer their own questions without IT dependency. Financial reporting now completes within 24 hours of month-end close (down from 8-10 days), enabling rapid business response. Executives access real-time KPIs from mobile devices, making informed decisions based on current data rather than week-old reports. Regulatory reporting effort dropped 95% from 40 hours to 2 hours monthly through automation, ensuring consistent compliance and freeing analysts for value-added work. The data warehouse established a single source of truth, eliminating the inconsistent metrics that previously plagued decision-making. Query performance improved 15x through SSAS in-memory analytics, with dashboards loading in 2-3 seconds. The company now identifies emerging claim trends and market opportunities weeks earlier than competitors, regaining competitive advantage against insurtech disruptors.
"Zatsys delivered a BI transformation that changed how we run our business. We went from making decisions on week-old data to real-time insights. Our executives can now monitor KPIs from their phones, and our analysts create their own reports in minutes instead of waiting weeks. The ROI was immediate - we identified a $3.2M claims processing inefficiency in the first month that had been hidden in our old reporting system."
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