Ask me anything

Local companies Matrix Vehicle Tracking and Europ Assistance have rolled out EasyAsk, a business intelligence (BI) tool that allows users to query almost any database in plain English.

EasyAsk is a Progress Software product, implemented at Matrix and Europ Assistance by local solution provider QBCon.

Europ Assistance is a service provider that aids corporates, brokers, clubs, medical aid funds, etc, in providing value-add services to their client bases. Such value-adds include international travel emergency assistance, emergency roadside assistance and legal assistance. The company's four call centres handle approximately 1.5 million calls per month.

Says director Rouxle von Molendorff: "The tool is used by call centre managers, supervisors and management. It allows us to understand the business and understand what is happening, in which call centre, now. We operate 24/7/365 and managers need to know what is happening, where the important cases are, whether we have enough people at any given site, and so on."

Europ Assistance's clients are all large corporates, like Edgars Club and Metropolitan Life, and, Von Molendorff says, it is critical that the company can give them timeous reports on what's happening in their business in terms of the value-adds being provided.

"If the client is a medical aid fund, we are the ones who decide if and when to dispatch an ambulance, for example, and the medical aid needs to know when and where and why."

Europ Assistance is implementing EasyAsk throughout its operations, from the call centres to financial systems.

Says Von Molendorff: "We wanted to ensure that we implemented an easy-to-use system that would allow us to manage the business better, in real-time. We looked at the [EasyAsk] system and saw that it would fit quite well. It was easy on the eye - and the pocket - and quick to implement."

The project kicked off in November and ran through December and January, with the first system launching in January. The second system was implemented and integrated with all other systems at the end of May.

"We're really very happy," she says. "The system is Web-based and is really easy and accessible for everyone." The challenge now, she adds, is to teach end-users that they are responsible for generating their own reports.

"Previously, they could pick up the phone or ask IT. To make them understand that they have to get used to the system and that they are liable for their own reports was a challenge for us. The business benefit is huge, though. To know your business on-time, real-time, to understand every day and every moment you can get information and know what is happening now - the cost benefit of that is huge."

Matrix Vehicle Tracking required a flexible reporting solution that would allow users to query company information and gain answers to various questions.

Says IT supervisor Glenn Chatterton: "Traditional BI solutions with fixed reports would answer what we see as our business-critical questions at the time of implementation. As the company changes and grows to meet market demands, however, those answers may become irrelevant. The EasyAsk solution is adaptable enough to meet our business requirements."

The cost benefit is huge.

Rouxle von Molendorff, director, Europ Assistance

Chatterton says the company looked into many different BI solutions. "We decided on the product because of the simple way in which it works. If you can use an Internet search engine like Google, you will be able to use EasyAsk. The other really impressive thing about it is the time to implement. It takes around two weeks, whereas a traditional BI solution can take anywhere up to 18 months. This would assist us in solving our reporting problem and giving the business a solution that they could see the benefits of straight away. We also looked into the type of reports that were requested by people on a daily basis and decided that this solution would give much better results than a traditional BI solution."

Matrix is implementing EasyAsk across 11 of its business units, in a phased rollout, with each phase taking roughly one month. Rollout started on 26 February and two units, connections and sales and marketing had been completed at the time of writing.

"The biggest challenge we faced was that all our data isn't on a single database or server," Chatterton says. "We overcame this by creating a database that contains views to all the data that we want to use; from this database, we can obtain reports using EasyAsk.

"The other challenge was the complexity of the data. Advanced SQL skill is needed to be able to make the data understandable to the person requesting a report. This was also overcome by creating a view that contains the SQL and converts the data before it is read by EasyAsk. The biggest benefit is that key business decision-makers have immediate access to information, without having to go through the process of logging a ticket for database administrators to design reports."

Matrix plans to make EasyAsk its main reporting solution for the entire company.