Risk Benefit Solutions (RBS) has contracted Decision Inc. to implement the Qlik Sense business intelligence tool at the financial services advisory to improve its human resource analysis to enable more effective decision-making.
Established in 1988, RBS is one of the largest fully fledged financial services advisory firms in southern Africa. Its services cover a broad spectrum of needs including insurance broking, risk management, corporate risk advisors, employee benefit administrators and consultants, and health and wealth management.
The requirement
Long-standing Decision Inc customer RBS was looking for a way to enhance its human resources (HR) environment with a graphical view of all relevant data points.
“RBS had no interactive reporting in place and was encumbered by a spreadsheet-driven approach that was not only inefficient, but prone to human error,” says Rudie Vermaak, Client Partner at Decision Inc.
RBS needed to pull reports that could show elements such as resignations, appointments, sick leave, and leave, and highlight any potential trends that would aid in improving business operations.
“Our partnership with Decision Inc and Qlik View on the finance side started several years ago. It therefore made sense to approach them as they have a good understanding of the complexities of our environment, and the systems that had to be integrated from a data analysis perspective,” says Deseree van den Berg, Executive Head: People at RBS.
The solution
Given the HR analytical focus required, Decision Inc decided on the Qlik Sense query-based business intelligence tool. The solution features an associative engine that brings together all company data for users to search and explore to find new connections.
“This implementation of Qlik Sense was designed to create an interactive application for RBS that would connect directly to the live data source and update on a regular basis. In turn, this would provide oversight and enable the organisation to move away from the manual-driven spreadsheet process of the past,” says Vermaak.
As such, Qlik Sense would deliver significant real-time value by determining for example the cost of leave that need to be paid out or identifying the resignations that occurred over time. So, instead of a person putting a request through for the team to report, the HR department can now manage everything centrally from their side.
“With Qlik Sense, HR is able to use data and conduct analysis for more reliable information and key insights that reflect what is happening in the organisation at any given moment in time,” says Vermaak.
Given how well Decision Inc knew the RBS systems, implementation went smoothly and was completed within two weeks.
“The team at Decision Inc. grasped our requirements very quickly. Using Qlik Sense, we now have a quick, consolidated view of all relevant HR data. This means preparing reports for exco or other meetings can happen faster than ever and is not reliant on the slower spreadsheet approach used previously,” says van den Berg.
The benefits
Van den Berg says the reports delivered to exco are now more meaningful than ever.
“Using the Qlik Sense dashboard, we can look at specific data and identify important organisational trends. The HR team has already made several changes to the human resource policy based on areas that we could not have identified without Qlik Sense,” she says.
Vermaak believes the fast implementation time and how well Qlik Sense integrates with the RBS data make it an invaluable tool for the future.
“Such has been the success of the project that the RBS COO is already in discussions to incorporate finance dashboards to further enhance the analytical capabilities of the organisation,” he concludes.