Panorama Case Studies

Company: World’s Largest Building Society

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Solution name:

Financial Services and Compliance Reporting

Pain Description

Struggling to Comply with New Regulations

Based in London, this company is the world’s largest Building Society ― a member-driven organization similar to a North American credit union. It is the U.K.’s fourth largest mortgage lender and second largest savings provider and counts 11 million members. As a major financial institution, this company is required to comply with the Basel II Capital Accord, a new set of international regulations governing data consolidation and risk management. Basel II requires institutions to be able to quickly and accurately publish enterprise-wide consolidated reports on risks, capital and risk management. To comply, it constructed a new data warehouse, but badly needed a solution to provide a consistent single view of data to all user groups, and analyze vast quantities of risk data relating to millions of customers.

Slow and Awkward Data Reporting

From the CEO to the senior management team and through to key risk mangers, one of the drivers of the Basel implementation is that the end users are accountable for the information they produce and, in the worst case scenario, could even face jail.

This company already had a team of 30 to 40 MIS staff who produced numbers for analysis, but didn’t actually understand them, leading to a slow turnaround time. What was urgently required was a way for business end users to construct their own reporting. However it also had to be simple enough that it wouldn’t distract them from their real task of understanding the numbers.

Duplicate Tools Adding to Costs

Historically at this company different business areas were using different tools for data analysis and reporting, and IT ended up maintaining a collection of different tools which did the same thing. This caused several problems ― from a cost perspective it was difficult to mange, and from a technical perspective it was very difficult to support.

Pain Highlights

• To comply with Basel regulations the Society had to assess its operational risk by analyzing each individual loan, but it had no way to pull information from its data warehouse at that level
• Because business end users couldn’t construct their own reporting they are not truly accountable, as required by Basel 
• Slow turnaround time when requesting data reports hampered business analysts’ job of looking for new profits and efficiencies
• IT was incurring unnecessary costs by supporting multiple, duplicate analysis tools

Solution Description

Control Risk and Manage Capital
Using Panorama NovaView provides this company with a consistent single view of data for all user groups, and supports the quick and accurate production of consolidated reports. This allows the Society to prove to Basel regulators that it has control and accuracy in managing its risk, and by doing so will be able to maximize its revenue on the available capital.

Empower the End User
With Panorama NovaView the business end users ― the experts who really understand the numbers ― can now construct their own reports. Instead of requesting a report from the central MIS staff and waiting for a response, analysts can get their own information in just a few seconds. This empowers the end users to spontaneously investigate areas of interest that emerge from the data. This improved ability to examine data frees the analysts to focus on their real task ― discovering ways for the organization to become more efficient and profitable.

Improve Quality of Reporting with Increased Functionality
Additional functionalities are adding extra dimensions to the reporting, allowing users a deeper understanding of the data. For example, when reporting on mortgage portfolios analysts previously saw only a balance over time. Now, however, the user can break that number down by age of customer, by geography or in many other ways. The end result: analysts can now discover trends which were previously hidden by the overall numbers coming into the system.

Introduce Change Gradually
By rolling out three flavors of Panorama ― from power users to simple information consumers ― the company is gradually introducing change to the organization. For example, key users who are accustomed to receiving their information via Excel with no functionality get exactly the same thing ― with the exception that multiple tables can be added to a single report and then connected with users that use the browser.  The benefit is instantaneous because the information will automatically refresh, but the change is painless since the user’s view of the data is still the same. Additionally, delivering BI to everyone who needs it via a single source simplifies IT and training requirements.

Save Time and Money with Consolidated Reporting Tools
Previously the company was maintaining a number of different tools, but with its data warehouse it has a single platform to go forward on and Panorama provides a single view of the data. In the future, any areas of the organization that require aggregated reporting from the data warehouse ― such as HR systems or the general ledger ― will use Panorama by default. This eliminates the need to go through complex purchasing or application development processes.

Solution Highlights

• Meet Basel requirements by reporting on risk-related data
• Enable business end users to construct and be accountable for their own reports
• New reporting functionalities lead to more complete data analysis
• Introduce change gradually via customization
• Consolidate reporting tools across the enterprise

 

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