Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Birla Sun Life Insurance deploys IBM Cognos solution


Private life insurer, Birla Sun Life Insurance (BSLI) has implemented IBM’s Cognos TM1 solution to improve and integrate its key business processes including planning, forecasting, budgeting, and profitability modeling.
The insurer needed the ability to streamline its spreadsheet based planning and budgeting process for data coming for its 600 odd branches and multiple products. It was looking at implementing a solution that would be managed by its internal team to do better planning and forecasting. IBM Cognos TM1 which is an OLAP engine for real-time analytical processing used to implement collaborative planning, budgeting and forecasting helped the insurer to integrate its operational and financial planning on demand.

It also helped BSLI identify different sales trends across the region and plan better for the future. Furthermore, it enabled the BSLI team to do what if scenario analysis, something which was not possible earlier since collating data in the spreadsheets based system took a lot of time.
Commenting on the benefits BSLI has seen post deployment, Mayank Bathwal, CFO & Head - Institutional Sales said, “With IBM’s Cognos TM1 we are able plan better, monitor performance at a granular level and thus manage profitability and capital more efficiently. The solution is easy to use software which our finance team can learn easily with minimal change management or skills upgrade. Also the finance team is able to support the solution for their business users with minimal support from IT team.”
Solution's ability to generate fast and accurate reports is something which has impressed users at BSLI a lot. The solution has a number of features that provide accurate Balance Sheets, information on Policyholders’ Revenue Account, Shareholders’ P&L Account, insight on Cost Allocation and Expenses, Channel Wise KPI and a Headcount Summary etc.
IBM SWG implemented the project at BSLI in a little over three months and continues to provide support and maintenance services.

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