Customer Spotlight: IAS Transforms Operations with Data Insights

IAS introduces Qlik Sense to modernize their data analysis processes

4 min read

Founded in 1984, IAS is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices in Oklahoma City, Las Vegas, St. Louis, Portland, Connecticut, Michigan & Ohio. With hundreds of certified agents around the United States, IAS provides Finance & Insurance management solutions, aftermarket, technology and training products to many of the Top-100 dealer groups.

After operating the business mainly by Excel, IAS decided in November 2016 to search for a BI platform that could accelerate their data analysis for senior decision maker insights. After a thorough search, IAS engaged with Qlik in March 2017. The company decided to implement Qlik Sense given its ability to combine multiple data sources and bring all data analysis in-house through one platform.

“We needed everyone to make more focused decisions based on accurate data. We wanted to instill an environment of accountability where senior decision makers can ask anyone from the sales teamabout anything and receive a clear answer. When we looked at Qlik it hit all our requirements, from general reporting to data visualization, with the ability to do more predictive analytics.”

Patrick Straub, VP of Business Intelligence

Since IAS did not have a dedicated BI team, they gathered an internal stakeholder group during the pre-instillation phase to help implement the platform. The project was led by Patrick Straub, IAS’s VP of Business Intelligence. Working together with people across the company, Patrick was able to identify 80+ end users to receive licenses.

“What was big for us is that we had different skill set levels. We had people who were very heavy in Excel and Access, and others were very light. Qlik was the most adaptable to all skill sets that we had. It was not a big stretch versus other products in the market where they had to relearn another tool.”

Patrick Straub, VP of Business Intelligence

Once the team was built, the installation phase lasted approximately two weeks. Patrick interviewed several people at IAS to determine how they use data in their daily work and what type of information people constantly searching for. Patrick found that they had well over 100 reports in place to run the company every month. As a group, IAS created a reporting needs and data landscape, and then decided to install high value and audience reaching apps through Qlik.

The team members attended a range of tutorials, webinars, on-on-ones, group training, and phone call trainings ahead of full deployment In a matter of two weeks IAS had the agreed upon project plan, data model and two built apps ready to go.

“It was a very seamless process. It was perfect because we came out of it with high self-confidence that we can do what we need in small bites at a time.”

Patrick Straub, VP of Business Intelligence

The company uses Qlik Sense in several ways, including market opportunity gap analysis. By combining current dealership locations with Post Office Data (demographics, zip codes, income, etc.), IAS discovered new opportunities in largely untapped market segments. With Qlik’s single dashboard, IAS is now able to proactively and confidently plan future dealership strategies. In addition, Qlik’s Associative Data Model allows the team to bring in external data sources from clients. They are now able to detect inefficient processes and act upon them. For example, with customer service, when a customer comes in with an escalation on a claim, instead of going through a hierarchy process, the customer support team can insert the information on a one page app to determine whether the claim is worth running by the supervisor or approving right on the spot. This reimagined process cut down the timeframe of what used to last up to three days to a few minutes.

Today, with a centralized BI team, IAS leadership is able to have meaningful discussions using synchronized data systems and decision making is closely tied to data analysis. People are spending less time creating manual reports, communicating through emails and calls. Looking forward, the IAS team is in the process of building new and improve self-service apps that will help with internal and external processes.

 
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