“With SQL Server 2012 Power View, our colleagues can obtain a central view of all global reinsurance data, which they can easily slice by geography or business role and drill down to investigate anomalies. It makes them more comfortable in their data analysis.”

Barry Walhof, Senior BI Architect, Aon Benfield

Aon Benfield is a provider of reinsurance services to global insurance and reinsurance companies. The organization wanted to give its personnel better business intelligence (BI) reporting tools so they could create their own reports based on updated data. To that end, Aon Benfield decided to implement Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Enterprise and its new reporting tools. The firm’s colleagues now have easy access to data analysis capabilities and can analyze more data faster. Also, the company’s technology team has cut custom report development time from months to a single day.

Business NeedsAon Benfield is a global reinsurance intermediary, providing capital solutions and services to insurance and reinsurance firms around the world. The organization’s capabilities include catastrophe modeling and actuarial, risk, and capital strategy consulting.

The company’s business is highly dependent on its internal Global Risk

Management System (GRiDS), an integrated suite of custom Microsoft .NET applications for facilitating the reinsurance business including managing opportunities, quotes, contracts, premiums, claims, payments, revenue, fiduciary accounting, and e-commerce. The solution, used by 3,000 Aon Benfield employees, is based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 software.

Customer: Aon BenfieldWebsite: www.aon.com/reinsurance/Customer Size: 3,000 employeesCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Financial services—Reinsurance

Customer ProfileAon Benfield is a global reinsurance intermediary that serves clients throughout the world.

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Microsoft SQL Server 2012

Enterprise Technologies− SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services− SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services

For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit:

Reinsurance Intermediary Gives Colleagues Powerful Reporting Tools, More Confidence in Client Data

In order to provide analytics to users more quickly, the system needed enhancements to its global BI reporting tools. “Our users didn’t have a good way to get fast insight

into global reinsurance reporting, which made it difficult for them to easily view top clients, business units, and products,” says Barry Walhof, Senior BI Architect, Aon Benfield. “As a result, the BI team was often asked to create reports.”

But because of the company’s comprehensive IT processes, report generation was a manual, time-consuming process. “System security is complicated, and we’d have to access three separate systems to get the global figures and manually aggregate them,” says Walhof. “Then there was a lot of back and forth with different teams to make sure all the data was correct. This whole process could take months before a final report on the data could be issued.”

To overcome this challenge, Aon Benfield sought a solution that could give colleagues fast, simple, accessible BI capabilities.

SolutionAs GRiDS was already based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, Aon Benfield wanted to find BI tools that would interoperate seamlessly with that technology. The company found those tools in the latest version of the software, SQL Server 2012. “SQL Server 2012 showed better performance and better BI tools, so we knew we’d want to implement it,” says Walhof. The biggest attraction was Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Power View, a new self-service BI feature in SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services that facilitates ad hoc data queries. “Power View was really exciting for us, and we thought our colleagues could benefit from it,” states Walhof.

Aon Benfield implemented SQL Server 2012 in February 2013. The company is also taking advantage of the SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services tabular model, an in-memory database system that uses the xVelocity in-memory analytics engine (VertiPaq) to provide fast access to tabular model objects and Microsoft Office Excel 2010 spreadsheet software data from Power View.

Now, global client data is extracted into the GRiDS SQL Server 2008 R2–based data warehouse, and BI reports from that data can be created in Power View.

More than 90 financial management employees use the solution for easy reporting capabilities, creating Power View dashboards that show detailed data about clients, reinsurers, insurance premiums, and revenue forecasting. The firm’s employees then use the solution to reconcile data for end-of-month processing and for global reporting.

The company’s Risk Business Technology team also uses the solution to create and deliver frequent analytical reports that update executives on current global sales trends.

“Our time to market with the SQL Server 2012 Power View solution was amazingly quick. We delivered the first working prototype in days and were able to add immediate value to the organization at a fraction of the cost expected,” says Bob Olson, Vice President, Aon Benfield.

A total of 150 users will be using the solution by the end of 2014. Aon Benfield also plans to migrate the GRiDS data warehouse from SQL Server 2008 R2 to SQL 2012 Enterprise.

BenefitsUsing new tools in SQL Server 2012, Aon Benfield employees now have powerful BI reporting capabilities and can analyze large data pools quickly. In addition, the firm’s technology team has significantly reduced its own report development time, in some cases from months to a day.

Gives Colleagues Powerful, Familiar Reporting Tools and Improves Confidence in DataUsing SQL Server 2012 Power View, Aon Benfield employees worldwide have self-service reporting tools that provide easy access to the latest updated global client data. “With SQL Server 2012 Power View, our colleagues can obtain a central view of

all global reinsurance data, which they can easily slice by geography or business role and drill down to investigate anomalies,”

says Walhof. “It makes them more comfortable in their data analysis.”

Aon Benfield users are already capitalizing on the solution’s powerful BI tools. “The first time our CFO used this, she identified an issue immediately in a Power View dashboard,” says Mark Walsma, BI Product Manager, Aon Benfield. “She was able to quickly drill down to identify a large piece of business that was misclassified.”

Delivers More Data FasterThe solution also offers faster performance than the company’s previous system. “With the tabular model in SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services, our colleagues can analyze more data faster,” Walsma says. “The system processes data more quickly, and users can actually see more data results. Previously, performance slowed down over 20,000 rows of Excel data. But with the tabular model, I’ve seen 90,000 rows, and performance is still excellent.”

Significantly Cuts Management Report Development Time Aon Benfield can now create custom analytical/management reports in one day in Power View, compared to months before. “We still have to create custom reports for some departments, but instead of the manual, time-consuming processes we used to have in place for reporting, we can now use SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services and Analysis Services to create reports quickly and return them to people in a day,” says Walsma. “And with those time savings, our staff time is freed up to work on other things, such as infrastructure or data quality improvements. This solution has transformed the way we operate.”

This case study is for informational purposes only.MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published November 2013