Seven out of the ten leading insurance companies worldwide now use Information Builders` WebFOCUS product as their business intelligence tool.
But survey results show that most insurance organisations use less than 10% of the data they collect and fewer than 7% of staff have full access to all available information.
In line with this, ICL and Information Builders have formed an alliance to address the South African market to provide business intelligence solutions specific to the insurance industry.
The solution will be based on Information Builders` WebFOCUS business intelligence software. ICL already has a number of WebFOCUS customers outside of the insurance industry including South African Airways, Afrox and Nutricia.
Tony Cross, ICL marketing manager, business intelligence, said WebFOCUS is able to improve risk management and provide fraud detection by automatically alerting organisations when possible criminal activity is taking place.
"WebFOCUS will also provide a significant competitive advantage in terms of providing more accurate and timeous information to branches, brokers and customers," he explained.
Cross said that in the US, WebFOCUS has reduced claims-related expenses and the time to settle claims by offering remote users, such as claims analysts, immediate access to information.
"This also reduces and in some cases eliminates hardcopy distribution costs. In terms of CRM, it enhances customer relations and improves cross-selling opportunities," he added.
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Information Builders provides its customers with robust business intelligence solutions, specialising in real-time information delivery over the Web. Headquartered in New York, Information Builders helps companies and government organisations improve their mission-critical operations by transforming data into usable information and delivering it to employees, managers, partners and customers through the Internet. With its award-winning WebFOCUS solution, Information Builders delivers information to more than 11 000 global customer sites, including most of the Fortune 100 and all US federal government agencies. The company employs 1 900 professionals worldwide and generated revenues exceeding $300 million in 2001.
ICL (South Africa) is the sole distributor of Information Builders in Southern Africa. For more information, visit www.informationbuilders.com or contact Tony Cross on (011) 233-5067 or tony.cross@iclafrica.com.
ICL
ICL South Africa, a subsidiary of Fujitsu Services Plc (Formerly ICL Plc), is one of the leading IT services companies in Europe, Middle East and Africa. It has an annual turnover of lb2.4 billion (EUR3.9 billion), employs 15 500 people and operates in over 30 countries. It designs, builds and operates IT systems and services for customers in the financial services, telecoms, retail, utilities and government markets. Its core strength is the delivery of IT infrastructure management and outsourcing across desktop, networking and data centre environments, together with a full range of related services, from infrastructure consulting through integration and deployment.
Headquartered in London, Fujitsu Services is the European-centred IT services arm of the Fujitsu Group. The Fujitsu Group is a $38 billion (about EUR43 billion) leader in customer-focused IT systems and services for the global marketplace.
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