SAS® reporting tools benefit Securex and its customers alike

Securex is the largest social services provider in Belgium. Its clients include enterprises, employees and self-employed workers. The company continues to grow, and this means a vast increase in the amount of data it has to manage. Information, however, is often scattered throughout the company. Securex turned to SAS to organize its data and transform it into reports that are accessible and readable for both managers and employees.

The applications Securex implemented include comprehensive internal reporting tools. But equally important, these tools also enable clients to log on to the Securex Web site and retrieve reports on social performance indicators for their own companies.

An organization in full expansion
Securex has been operating on the Belgian market for nearly a century. During this time, it has created a comprehensive set of social services, ranging from insurance to legal protection and HR consultancy. The company employs 1,350 people in more than 30 offices throughout Belgium, France and Luxembourg. More than 69,000 enterprises and 100,000 self-employed persons make use of the services of Securex.

To follow up on the status of its services and the performance of the company, Securex needed to organize its rapidly growing database. IT Director Marc Lucion explains: "It is imperative that we keep a close eye on the figures and follow up the performance of our company. Our job at IT is to help our managers instantly recognize difficulties so that they can counter them immediately. This safeguards the integrity of our company and the quality of our services."

A comprehensive solution for a complex environment
Centralizing the data and creating a uniform reporting tool were top priorities for Securex. "Up until now, our data were spread all over the country," Lucion explained. "Our employees had to file a request with the IT department in order to retrieve specific information." Owing to the complex interweaving of modern computer tools such as mainframes, operating systems and programming languages, the handling of these requests could easily take up to a week. Securex needed a partner to help it speed up the process and offer an easy to use and extremely fast reporting tool.

An all-in-one package
This search led Securex to choose SAS, and Lucion fully supported his company's choice. "We were looking for a solution that was fast and capable of handling massive amounts of data. The technology had to be able to assemble all the relevant data, centralize and visualize them, and then distribute them to the farthest reaches of our company." This meant that numerous people had to be able to access the same reports at the same time. Very strong security measures were also necessary to ensure that the reports could only be read by authorized individuals. On top of that, the programming code had to be universal and independent of the application or operating system. The SAS technology successfully fulfilled all of these demands.

Transforming raw data into relevant facts
Today, SAS is used for a growing number of applications at Securex. One of these solutions is used by the Securex SEP department. Translated, SEP stands for the "external service of prevention and protection for well-being at work." This EIS tool is an internal management reporting program. It keeps track of the legally required targets that Securex must meet each year. These include the number of medical examinations that Securex must perform at its customers' premises and the early tracking of work-related illnesses. SEP automatically generates reports that assess Securex's performance against its legal targets. This allows managers to assess quickly whether the company is in compliance with rules and regulations.

SEP also generates static reports that give crystal-clear tables and graphs of key performance indicators within Securex. They are renewed every week. Managers can consult the evolution of customer portfolios, their geographical location, and check on their profitability with a single click. According to Lucion, "Figures can be retrieved easily through our intranet. This hugely facilitates and streamlines access to our enormous database." That database is now centralized. The SEP tool also allows exporting data to Excel. Based on these reports, managers can now define and adapt their business strategy more rapidly.

A report for every service
Besides these static reports, Securex also puts the dynamic capabilities of SAS to good use in its "go-Start" application. This service provides a single point of contact for enterprises and self-employed people who wish to start up a business, and takes care of all administrative formalities. With SAS, Securex can generate tables and graphs on various performance indicators of the go-Start service. These include such figures as the total number of applicants over a certain period of time and their methods of payment.

Lucion explains the difference from the static reports: "The tables and graphs on go-Start are not prepared in advance, but are generated by the user. An intuitive interface lets the user filter the database on practically every parameter imaginable, ranging from year or month to the geographical location of the client. These dynamic reports have already become indispensable for our invoicing department."

Medical assessment of absenteeism
MCM is Securex's internally developed application for medical assessment of absenteeism. MCM also uses the SAS technology, but here it is not limited to internal reporting purposes. The MCM service aims to optimize the social atmosphere of a company by identifying misuse of absences while avoiding the financial burdens and organizational problems that arise through unjustified absences.

"We wanted our clients to benefit from our advanced reporting possibilities too," says Lucion. An entrepreneur who wishes to check up on the social statistics of his or her workforce can now log on to the MCM application on the Securex Web site. On that site, clients can, for example, consult reports on employee attendance and the causes of absenteeism. These last graphs are presented using a traffic-light system. Figures are compared to national and sector benchmarks. For instance, if the company's absence figures caused by influenza are similar to these benchmarks, the indicator turns green. If not, it turns red. These reports are highly detailed and give entrepreneurs an excellent insight into their company, as well as a logical basis for decision making and action.

A satisfying partnership
Lucion is very happy with the SAS reporting tools. "Thanks to SAS, we're finally getting our enormous amounts of data organized. This allows us to really concentrate on the quality of our services and make adjustments where necessary. The technology also enables the quick development of reports by our IT department."

On top of that, one of the most satisfying things to Lucion was what he described as the professional and personalized cooperation he observed in the company's dealings with SAS. "There were no significant problems during the implementation of the software, and the people from SAS were present during the entire process, from the assessment of our infrastructure to the follow-up of the reporting tools," he said. "This comprehensive solution once more stresses SAS' competence and expertise in the domain of IT."

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