Project feedback from a BI project for a major insurance company

We supported a major insurance company on a Business Intelligence project. Loris, one of the three VISEO senior consultants mobilized on the project, talks to us about it.

A new data centre for a major insurance company

I joined the project 6 months ago, the client is an important player in insurance and is committed to promoting and defending its values such as changing business habits, being agile, respecting its commitments, defending the best interests of its customers and partners, negotiating appropriate solutions, offering a clear product and service offer, regular monitoring and optimal satisfaction. These values also include the availability of high-performance management tools.

Indeed, always concerned to be at the forefront in terms of innovation and technology, the client wanted to create a new data centre, bringing together the various existing actuarial, performance and statistics departments, as well as new tools, ready for the new challenges that the company will face. VISEO has been selected to support it, among other things, in this adventure full of innovation....

Definition of a master plan, selection of suppliers and technologies, implementation of an application and infrastructure governance policy, business analyses... until implementation. Three VISEO consultants are mobilized in the customer teams, on site, in total transparency and with a willingness to collaborate effectively.

A project based on innovative technologies

As a result of a partnership with Microsoft, the project is based on innovative technologies that are booming and promising. Big Data, Cloud, continuous integration and DevOps are the most promising challenges, behind a very ambitious need in terms of Business Intelligence. Like many insurers, our client is an important consumer of analytical and statistical tools, a characteristic of its business and its uncertainties. Despite this, customer teams did not want a traditional data warehouse, often managed outside the IT department processes and a little fixed in relation to the needs and demands in perpetual evolution....

Based on the Azure Cloud and developed within the Visual Studio Team Services ecosystem, the solution allows you to extract, standardize, clean, standardize, aggregate and consolidate business data related to contract management, accounting, finance, customer relations or marketing follow-up. The data formats encountered throughout the project were very varied and of uneven quality, due to a large portfolio of tools, the result of strong external growth.

This need for innovation and questioning arises from the particular characteristics of cloud solutions, where there are almost no limits in terms of computing and storage power but where new constraints, both functional and technical, have quickly appeared. Security requirements, latencies inherent in the distributed nature of the architecture, high variability of costs according to architectural choices, youthfulness of certain services... But Microsoft is careful and takes great care of the projects related to its new solution and the consultants who support it.

Towards tomorrow's Business Intelligence

Combining concepts, architectures and ways of working specific to Business Intelligence projects with Microsoft Azure tools and the latest development methods has not always been easy. As consultants, we had to question many methodological achievements and certainties in order to propose effective, reliable, fast and above all innovative solutions. We are thus touching a future where even data warehouses are decentralized, within private or public clouds, agile, compliant with IT processes and above all very attentive to business needs and their evolution.

This project has been an excellent way for me to familiarize myself with the BI issues of tomorrow, to contribute to the building of an architecture that is still under test and to help advance these innovations within other VISEO projects. Even to the point of obtaining the title of Azure Advisor at Microsoft and assuming the role of BI referent on Azure within VISEO.