SkySparc

Challenge

The ability to create timely, accurate reports is critical for any insurance and investment business. From customer statements to regulatory reports, operational reports such as reconciliations and accounting, and business intelligence reports that analyse trends and support management's strategies – all these draw on disparate data sources that must be managed effectively. AEGON's treasury runs on Wallstreet Suite, an integrated andstrategic platform with excellent reporting capabilities.

AEGON also needs to compile reports combining multiple in-house systems manually, which was time consuming, and increased the chance of error. Many of AEGON's departments (front office, middle office, back office, accounting and management) rely on reports compiled at least in part from Wallstreet Suite. Therefore rapid and accurate report production is essential. "Our reports were compiled by gathering information from various Systems." said Marcel Reuser, AEGON Group Treasury Operations Support. "This information then had to be processed and compiled manually into Excel spreadsheets. An average report took more than 45 minutes to produce – and was prone to human error."

AEGON's challenge was to implement a tool that could automate data extraction and provide a streamlined and accurate reporting tool that would improve the overall efficiency of the reporting process.

Solution

Once AEGON became aware of the capabilities of SkyREPORT, it decided to implement it to improve reporting, mainly for its treasury and cash management departments.

SkyREPORT's user-friendly wizards help the user create tailor-made management reports. And once reports are created, senior management can access the solution to immediately view reports on an ad-hoc basis without having to trouble treasury staff to compile data manually.

The solution uses the powerful and familiar Excel as its presentation layer, providing an excellent user experience for analysis and presentation powered by SkyREPORT's data management capabilities.

SkyREPORT provides a high level of control of the functionality of the report, allowing employees to input specific parameters; for example, scheduling specific reports to run first thing in the morning. It also allows old reports to run in the system, eliminating the need to rebuild the report while also enabling users to link all the relevant information together for a more detailed view. Overall, the solution provides more flexibility, the ability to customise reports and greater accuracy.

Result

Since the introduction of SkyREPORT, it has transformed AEGON's reporting systems and is giving departments within the organisation the ability to create and implement new reports that weren't possible before. The automation of the reporting process has allowed AEGON to achieve its objectives of reducing time and cost, and improving efficiency.

"By using SkyREPORT's automated system we can produce reports at the touch of a button. Our efficiency has improved as all the information can be collected in Excel, reducing our manual report processing to half the previous time. And it has practically eradicated the instances of human error," said Mr Reuser.

"SkyREPORT has made a tremendous difference to our reporting processes," said Mr Reuser. "Since implementing this new reporting tool we have saved significantly on the time and cost of producing reports where data from other systems are required, and our staff can now spend time on their more important tasks. SkySparc understands our business and we can trust the company to deliver a solution that matches our business needs closely. It provided excellent support throughout the implementation, which took less than a week to execute, and we are looking forward to enlisting them once again to help develop our systems moving into the future."

AEGON is looking to move more reports to SkyREPORT in the near future. and the solution will also assist AEGON to run tests on future upgrades to the Wallstreet Suite, helping to reduce the time spent on regression testing before upgrades go live.