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Pacific Life insurance company is a leading provider of insurance products, annuities, and mutual funds. The company's Life Division needed a standard data environment with easy-to-use reporting capabilities. To enable its business groups to be more self-sufficient, the company deployed SQL Server 2005.
Pacific Life insurance company is a leading provider of insurance products, annuities, and mutual funds. The company's Life Division needed a standard data environment with easy-to-use reporting capabilities. To enable its business groups to be more self-sufficient, the company deployed SQL Server 2005.
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Pacific Life insurance company is a leading provider of insurance products, annuities, and mutual funds. The company's Life Division needed a standard data environment with easy-to-use reporting capabilities. To enable its business groups to be more self-sufficient, the company deployed SQL Server 2005.
Droits d'auteur :
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Formats disponibles
Téléchargez comme DOC, PDF, TXT ou lisez en ligne sur Scribd
Overview “Enabling our business users to access our
Country or Region: United States Industry: Financial Services, data warehouse directly through dynamic Insurance reports and queries has been a true Customer Profile testament to the power, functionality, and With roughly 3,000 employees and accessibility of SQL Server 2005.” more than half of the 100 largest Cameron Cosgrove, Vice President of Information Technology, Pacific Life Insurance U.S. companies as clients, Pacific The Life Division of Pacific Life Insurance Company had Life Insurance Company is a leading provider of insurance products, a strong dependency between its business and annuities, and mutual funds. information technology (IT) workers. The executives, Business Situation business analysts, finance personnel, and customer The Life Division’s reliance on IT service representatives who rely on corporate data to do personnel to access data and create reports had become time- their jobs had to frequently employ IT specialists to help consuming and inefficient. It access the desired data and put it into meaningful needed a standard data environment with easy-to-use reports. The process was slow for business users and reporting capabilities. exceptionally time-consuming for the IT staff. To enable Solution its business groups to be more self-sufficient and free its The company deployed Microsoft® IT personnel from constantly creating business reports, SQL Server™ 2005 Enterprise Edition with Business Intelligence Pacific Life deployed Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 features, including SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition with Business Intelligence features. Integration Services and SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services. The new solution has helped the company’s Life Division standardize its data infrastructure, ease data access and Benefits Data integration and business reporting, improve business and IT efficiency, standardization and reduce costs. Easy data access and reporting Improved business and IT “SQL Server 2005 Situation of the organization’s 70 databases Founded in 1868 and claiming more were reserved for reporting, housing has enabled us to than half of the 100 largest United data related to policies, agents, build a solid, States companies as clients, Pacific finances, transactions, and new Life Insurance Company is a long- business opportunities. Yet these uniform foundation standing insurance industry leader. reporting databases contained for data Over the years, however, a costly complex data schema with more than dependency had developed between 20 tables and multiple data fields management, its business personnel and IT each. Consequently, important reporting, and specialists. The more than 800 execu- business information was difficult to tives, business analysts, finance access, compile, and analyze. analysis.” workers, and customer service Cameron Cosgrove, Vice President of representatives of the company’s Life To further complicate matters, Information Technology, Pacific Life Division were largely reliant on the IT various business users needed to Insurance Company staff to access corporate data to obtain the data for differing reasons produce business-critical, ad hoc and from assorted locations. The Life reports. Accordingly, the IT staff was Division’s regional offices across the constantly burdened with requests United States require data access and from the business groups, taking report generation to help them them away from key infrastructure support the organization’s enhancement projects. independent agents. These regional offices are responsible for processing “It was a problematic and sales proposals, delivering presales unproductive circumstance,” recalls information, and submitting insurance Cameron Cosgrove, Vice President of applications for underwriting. The Information Technology at Pacific Life. division’s home office requires data “Our business groups could not and reports that outline business gather client and policy data or performance and facilitate under- generate meaningful reports on their writing, claim processing, account own, and were forced to wait for IT inquiries, and regional office support. specialists to do it for them. Of course, these frequent requests took These disparate offices need a variety the IT groups away from their day-to- of reports on a daily, weekly, monthly, day tasks. Each side was encumbered and yearly basis. Data related to the by the other.” number and type of policies, the company catalog, account demo- In delivering life insurance products graphics, specific business inquiries, and services to large premium company performance, and quarterly accounts, the company’s Life Division accounting is pulled, compiled, and was supporting more than a quarter- examined regularly. More often than terabyte of data spread across a not, these reports were custom-built mainframe, two clusters of database directly on the mainframe—a complex servers, and multiple locations. Five and time-consuming undertaking for “SQL Server 2005 the company’s IT staff. Even when Pacific Life. “The solution helps our reports were prepackaged and various constituents—regardless of has freed us from embedded in the organization’s technical expertise—access and the shackles of internal applications, Cosgrove compile data from multiple sources indicates that IT specialists had to and gives us an unified view of our mainframe reports.” help business users understand and information assets.” Christian Berke, Data Services utilize them. Manager, Pacific Life Insurance With exceptional integration Company “Reports are critical to our business, capabilities and extraction, and we have the data necessary to transformation, and loading (ETL) produce those reports,” he says. functionality, SQL Server Integration “However, our data systems are so Services enables the Life Division of dense and our reporting requirements Pacific Life to more easily manage, so varied, we needed a robust, access, and analyze information from standardized, easy-to-use solution its array of data sources. The that would enable our various Integration Services data-integration business factions to be more self- pipeline architecture allows SQL sufficient and free our IT groups to Server 2005 to consume data from focus on infrastructure improvement multiple sources simultaneously, projects.” perform multiple complex transformations, and then Solution concurrently distribute the data to Cosgrove and his IT staff decided to multiple destinations. Therefore, the standardize the Life Division data organization’s data warehouse can be warehouse using Microsoft® SQL used not only for large data sets, but Server™ 2005 Enterprise Edition. The also for complex data flows. As the organization deployed SQL Server information flows from source to 2005 Business Intelligence features, destination, the stream of data can be particularly SQL Server 2005 split, merged, combined, and Integration Services and SQL Server otherwise manipulated with other 2005 Reporting Services, to connect data streams. its disparate data sources, improve information access, and enable “SQL Server Integration Services has dynamic report generation. become the glue that fuses our mainframe, databases, and “SQL Server 2005 Integration Services applications,” Berke notes. “It gives and Reporting Services deliver an us the ability to link, compile, and advanced and easy-to-use solution for manipulate our data in a number of linking all of our data and giving our ways from any of our data sources. As business users the ability to generate a result, business users with diverse reports without the assistance of requirements can easily access and IT specialists,” explains Christian analyze information that is essential Berke, Data Services Manager at to their jobs without knowing where it “Reports that used resides, how it links to other related query model that allows Pacific Life data, or how to pull it out of a service- personnel to quickly create robust to take our IT staff oriented architecture system.” reports. Because Report Builder offers three days to usability similar to familiar software With tight integration of multiple data such as the Microsoft Office Excel® generate are now sources and linkages between spreadsheet software and the created by business previously uncorrelated data, Pacific Microsoft Office PowerPoint® Life has been able to take full presentation graphics program, it is personnel in three advantage of SQL Server Reporting easy to utilize and does not require a seconds. SQL Server Services. Using a data flow from deep technical understanding of the Integration Services as a data source, underlying data sources. 2005 does Reporting Services offers a everything we need comprehensive enterprise reporting In addition to SQL Server Integration solution that enables the creation and Services and Reporting Services, the in one, easy-to-use management of both traditional, Life Division is planning to make use package.” paper-oriented reports and of SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services interactive, Web-based reports. It in the near future. Analysis Services Cameron Cosgrove, Vice President of delivers a sophisticated yet easy-to- offers high-scale online analytical Information Technology, Pacific Life use environment for authoring, processing and data-mining administering, and delivering reports, algorithms for in-depth data and which helps Pacific Life business users business analysis. Berke expects that interact with data in an ad hoc Analysis Services will help the Pacific fashion and generate their own Life IT staff build complex analytical reports from scratch. models that facilitate enhancements to business operations. “Due to the complexity of our data infrastructure, our business users Benefits could barely access data in the past, According to Cosgrove, SQL Server let alone generate functional reports,” 2005 Business Intelligence features— says Berke. “Today, those same such as Integration Services and business users are able to quickly Reporting Services—have helped extract the desired information and Pacific Life Insurance Company create business reports in a variety of standardize its data infrastructure, formats, from a number of sources ease data access and business and for a range of applications.” reporting, improve business and IT efficiency, and reduce costs. Berke indicates that Report Builder, a new feature of Reporting Services, Data Integration and has been a key component in Standardization enabling nontechnical users to SQL Server 2005 has enabled Pacific generate their own reports. An ad hoc Life to standardize its data reporting tool, Report Builder environment and the ways in which incorporates a user-friendly business users access data and generate reports. The company was previously scheduled or real-time analysis using Business Objects Crystal mechanisms, or generated in ad hoc Reports, custom-built mainframe fashion. reports, and other application-specific reporting tools. Each required specific According to Berke, the organization’s skill sets, limiting the number of business personnel had not generated people who could create, augment, a single report on their own prior to and utilize the tools. SQL Server 2005 the deployment of SQL Server offers a standardized, familiar data Integration Services and Reporting and reporting environment for the Life Services. In less than two months Division of Pacific Life, ensuring after deployment, however, the consistency across the organization. business groups had successfully SQL Server Integration Services generated more than 50 reports provides seamless integration of without the assistance of IT multiple, previously unconnected data specialists. sources, and Reporting Services with Report Builder delivers a consistent “SQL Server 2005 offers an set of reporting features. environment and set of tools that we all understand,” explains Berke. “We “SQL Server 2005 has enabled us to now have an open, flexible data build a solid, uniform foundation for infrastructure that allows different data management, reporting, and business users to write and produce analysis,” says Cosgrove. “Regardless their own reports in any way they of whether the user is part of a want at any given time, without business analysis, finance, client knowledge of code queries, service, or IT group, the process for PivotTable® views, or relational accessing and compiling data is databases.” straightforward and standardized.” Improved Business and IT Easy Data Access and Reporting Efficiency Because the solution offers a By helping all users to be more self- consistent, standardized data sufficient in finding and utilizing infrastructure and user-friendly company data, and freeing IT reporting capabilities, access to specialists from continually gen- company data and the creation of erating reports, SQL Server 2005 has business reports have been improved the overall efficiency of significantly eased. Pacific Life both the business and IT groups. business personnel are now able to Business analysts, executives, finance extract account, policy, agent, and workers, and client service transaction information and create a representatives no longer have to variety of reports, regardless of wait for IT experts to produce reports. whether the reports are embedded in In addition, the Pacific Life IT staff no internal applications, delivered as longer spends an inordinate amount For More Information of time building mainframe and of SQL Server 2005,” concludes For more information about custom reports and teaching business Cosgrove. “Reports that used to take Microsoft products and services, call personnel how to use them. our IT staff three days to generate are the Microsoft Sales Information now created by business personnel in Center at (800) 426-9400. In Berke expects the new data three seconds. SQL Server 2005 does Canada, call the Microsoft Canada infrastructure to reduce by 80 percent everything we need in one, easy-to- Information Centre at (877) 568- the time that the IT staff spends on use package.” 2495. Customers who are deaf or developing mainframe and custom Microsoft SQL Server 2005 hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft reports. “SQL Server 2005 has freed Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is text telephone (TTY/TDD) services us from the shackles of mainframe comprehensive, integrated data at (800) 892-5234 in the United reports,” he exclaims. “As a result, management and analysis software States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. our IT personnel can spend more time that enables organizations to reliably Outside the 50 United States and on infrastructure enhancement manage mission-critical information Canada, please contact your local projects that bring additional and confidently run today’s Microsoft subsidiary. To access efficiencies to the business.” increasingly complex business information using the World Wide applications. By providing high Web, go to: www.microsoft.com Reduced Costs availability, security enhancements, The efficiency gains realized by the and embedded reporting and data For more information about Pacific SQL Server 2005 deployment have analysis tools, SQL Server 2005 helps Life Insurance Company products reduced Pacific Life’s business and IT companies gain greater insight from and services, call (800) 800-7646 or costs. Business users are achieving their business information and visit the Web site at: their data analysis objectives faster, achieve faster results for a www.pacificlife.com and fewer IT personnel are required competitive advantage. And, because to create, manage, and distribute the it’s part of Windows Server System, company’s business reports. SQL Server 2005 is designed to integrate seamlessly with your other “In our new business department server infrastructure investments. alone, we have a set of 20 reports that previously necessitated a full- For more information about SQL time IT person to administer,” says Server 2005, go to: Berke. “Those reports have been www.microsoft.com/sqlserver completely handed over to the business analysts in the department, and we were able to reassign the IT specialist to other projects.”
“Enabling our business users to
access our data warehouse directly through dynamic reports and queries has been a true testament to the power, functionality, and accessibility