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The Principal Financial Group Enables Self-Service Reporting with BusinessOjbects

"BusinessObjects helps us achieve our goal of operational excellence. Information transforms the way we do business and BusinessObjects helps us realize that transformation."

Martha Esser, System Liaison, Principal Financial Group

Challenge

With $311.1 billion assets and 18.1 million customers worldwide, Des Moines, Iowa-based Principal Financial Group® (The Principal®) is a Fortune 500 company that excels at delivering a wide range of financial products and services to businesses, individuals, and institutional clients from across the globe. The company's lines of business include retirement and investment services, life, disability and health insurance, wellness services, online banking, and global asset management. The Principal distributes products and services through its financial services companies and a national network of financial professionals.

With so many customers distributed across its businesses, The Principal wanted to improve the ease and timeliness of reporting for staff as well as for external business clients through Web-based self-service. For example, the Retirement and Investor Services (RIS) segment needed to deliver key pension data to clients. Previously, business clients had to call The Principal and speak with a relationship manager or account administrator to get the information they needed – a time-consuming process that relied on people to locate and assemble data. Information gathering could take a few hours or even as long as a week. A self-service capability would provide clients direct access to online reports, eliminate delays, and allow staff to focus on other priorities.

Maintenance was also an issue. Regina Hayes, lead IT application analyst for the Retirement and Investor Services segment, explains that her team had to accommodate different output formats, resulting in duplicate maintenance efforts and, at times, curtailing development efforts. "A lot of what we do focuses on providing reporting solutions for business owners and their employees," says Hayes. "We had a project requiring approximately 30 reports to be available to external clients. Some internal partners chose not to have a PDF option available to their business clients, because they didn’t want the double maintenance – so they were losing out on functionality."

Approach

Already a prodigious user of business intelligence (BI) and reporting technology from Business Objects, an SAP company, The Principal decided to migrate from BusinessObjects™ Version 5 to BusinessObjects XI Release 2, to take advantage of enhanced reporting capabilities. Internally, across the company’s numerous lines of business, about 10,000 IT and business users develop, publish, or access Business Objects reports related to group health, vision, dental, disability, life and retirement plans. Externally, many more thousands of users from the wide customer base of The Principal access Business Objects reports over the Web. The Principal maintains a centralized IT infrastructure supporting all business units, with each business unit’s IT staff supporting the reporting capabilities unique to that unit. Tim Peterson, assistant director of IT at Principal Financial Group, says, "Like many other central services provided to the organization, we have the flexibility of offering a very cost-effective reporting solution to our internal and external customers."

Results

The RIS segment completed its migration to BusinessObjects XI Release 2 in approximately six months. This single line of business within The Principal deployed BusinessObjects XI reports and services to 2,800 internal RIS users and as many as 30,000 external users. As part of its XI Release 2 deployment, the company’s RIS segment also uses Crystal Reports®, BusinessObjects Web Intelligence®, and BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence. With online, self-service access, external business owners and financial professionals can login to The Principal Web site to access reports related to asset retention, pension plans, participant statements, and so on – accessing information when they need it.

Web-based reporting through BusinessObjects gives customers of The Principal a single point of contact for viewing reports. "Customer satisfaction is at the heart of every business, and we see this as a critical component of customer service," says Hayes. "With Business Objects reports available over the Web, our customers get the information they need – on demand, in their time, instead of having to wait for the data to be sent manually via email." Now, The Principal can leverage BusinessObjects to extend more hands-on capabilities to its clients, who can login to the Web site and access their reports. Hayes says, "Sharing information with customers over an extranet has become a fundamental requirement of doing business." Martha Esser, system liaison at The Principal, adds the customers benefit from the new system, too. "BusinessObjects XI Release 2 eliminates the need to create extra reports to accommodate multiple formats – greatly reducing IT maintenance efforts," says Esser. "End users can access a report and save it in any format. BusinessObjects XI Release 2 cut our report development time substantially."

The enhanced Business Objects solution provides greater flexibility, expanded functionality, and the self-sufficiency internal customers expect. Self-service reporting also frees IT to focus on activities other than report development, and enables the company’s internal business teams to focus on nurturing relationships rather than developing reports. "BusinessObjects saves us time, enhances the user experience, and allows our relationship managers to have more direct client interaction," says Hayes. "Our relationship managers and plan administrators now have more time and information to focus on what they do best – fostering relationships with customers. For example, guided by information from the system, administrators can assess 401(k) plan participation and tailor their marketing efforts to increase participation of our clients’ employees, so our clients obtain a higher level of deferral percentages," explains Hayes. "It’s a win-win. We grow our business and employers like having us on their side, helping raise the participation rate within their retirement plans."

Internally, enhanced reporting has been a big benefit. "BusinessObjects helps us achieve our goal of operational excellence," says Esser. "Information transforms the way we do business and BusinessObjects helps us realize that transformation. Plus, our analysts finally get a chance to analyze, as opposed to spending all their time gathering and assimilating data."

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