Better insight into market and in-house performance

New SAS^® reporting environment improves chances for commercial success

Putting together detailed client profiles in order to boost the success of commercial actions. Evaluating marketing and sales departments based upon results. Paying sales representatives the right compensation based on their monthly performance. These are all key examples of what the SAS environment helped Touring Assurances-Touring Verzekeringen achieve.

A tool to improve customer knowledge
Touring Assurances-Touring Verzekeringen (TATV) is the second-largest direct insurance firm in Belgium. It has been part of the AXA Group since January 2007. The company specializes in home, motor vehicle and travel insurance and intends to continually strengthen its position in these markets. But to do that, the company needs to know its customers in greater depth.

“We need to be able to put together detailed profiles of all of our customers. This will enable us to customize our services and improve revenue by cross-selling and up-selling the right products to the right existing customers,” states Nathalie Servranckx, IT Manager at Touring Assurance-Touring Verzekeringen. “But to achieve this, we needed to renovate our SAS environment. The old one performed poorly, was updated only once a day, and couldn’t be maintained by our own IT department.”

Smooth implementation despite takeover
The SAS implementation was part of a bigger project: the implementation of a new front-office application (Siebel7). TATV implemented this new IT system in only nine months, as planned. The interruption caused by the AXA takeover proved to be no real hindrance. Servranckx says, “We decided to implement the newest SAS software in January 2006. Three months later, while preparing the actual development and integration of the new IT system, management announced the takeover by AXA. Even so, we had no problem implementing SAS in a structured and flexible manner thanks to its well-thought-out design. The new SAS solution also proved to be very easy to integrate with other software such as Siebel7, our CRM software.”

‘A hundred times faster’
The new IT system moved reporting at TATV a huge step forward. “Our users from the sales, marketing, and product departments are extremely pleased with the new reporting environment,” Servranckx says. “They find it very easy to use and can access the system from any computer with an Internet connection using their personal login and password.”

Once users have accessed the system, putting together a report is merely a matter of selecting the right data set. It takes only a few clicks before the report automatically appears on the screen or on the printer. “It is actually a hundred times faster than the old system. Now, reports roll out within only three seconds, whereas before it took about five minutes to perform the exact same action,” Servranckx adds proudly.

Gaining detailed market and customer insight
The new IT system provides TATV with in-depth market information. “We use SAS on a daily basis, for instance to measure our sales,” explains Servranckx. “This gives us detailed insight that we use to pinpoint the commercial actions we need to take to boost our market performance.”

“SAS also enables us to put together detailed customer profiles,” Servranckx continues. “This is highly valuable information for our marketing and sales departments. It enables them to tailor their initiatives to the precise needs of our customers, bringing us a critical step closer to even greater commercial success.”

Fine-tune and evaluate performance
The updated IT environment benefits TATV’s front-office activities. The reporting tool can be used to evaluate and remunerate performance. Every month, for instance, the Coordination Committee uses the system to evaluate the performance of the sales department. Based on these findings, the committee can decide upon the most appropriate actions to fine-tune the department in line with the group’s objectives.

The system also supports back-office administration such as calculating the compensation of sales representatives. “All contracts are registered in our data warehouse, including tariffs, and are linked to the individual sales representative,” says Servranckx. “At the end of the month, we just need to select the right report and we know exactly how much remuneration to pay to each sales rep.”

More opportunities
In short, the implementation of the newest SAS software has boosted front-office as well as back-office performance at TATV. “But, there is still room for more opportunities. We are currently investigating new applications for our SAS environment,” concludes Servranckx. “Reporting by telephone is one of many possible avenues to support our agents in the field. In the near future, we will expand our current IT system to cover all of our financial and operational reporting needs.”

The results illustrated in this article are specific to the particular situations, business models, data input, and computing environments described herein. Each SAS customer’s experience is unique based on business and technical variables and all statements must be considered non-typical. Actual savings, results, and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. SAS does not guarantee or represent that every customer will achieve similar results. The only warranties for SAS products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements in the written agreement for such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Customers have shared their successes with SAS as part of an agreed-upon contractual exchange or project success summarization following a successful implementation of SAS software. Brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.

Copyright © SAS Institute Inc. All Rights Reserved.