Successful portfolio management at Helsana thanks to the implementation of a data-driven control cockpit

Helsana Group

With approximately 2.2 million customers, the Helsana Group is one of the leading health and accident insurance companies and one of the top 3 short-term disability insurers in Switzerland. It provides comprehensive assistence to private and corporate customers with regard to health and prevention, as well as in the event of illness and accident. More than 60,000 corporate customers place their trust in Helsana.

For more information, visist Helsana´s corporate page.

Challenge

Transparency about the profitability of corporate business portfolio and management of customer segments.

Consulting approach

Design, conception, and development based on pre-defined user stories and workshops.

Customer benefits and solution

An intuitive control cockpit and dashboards with different granularities for department-specific evaluations.

Lui Maksimovic

Head of quotation management for corporate business at Helsana

”We offer our corporate customers a comprehensive solution for occupational health. We must honor this value proposition completely and at all times.“

Picture of David Sebastian Mandl - valantic

David Mandl

Principal consultant at valantic Business Analytics Swiss AG

”Despite the great pressure to perform and the high level of requirements, interaction between our companies was very collegial, fair, and pragmatic. It was a very pleasant project.“

The challenge

Profitability, cost recovery, and great customer satisfaction are important strategic building blocks for today’s companies, especially in uncertain times. Only through continuous optimization and improvement can insurance companies offer occupational health services at attractive rates. In order to completely honor its value proposition and also operate economically, Helsana’s management set out to pursue these goals in the area of corporate business as well.

A central component of the optimization strategy was, among other things, a data-based control cockpit, one that provides employees in various business units with an operational, easy-to-use tool. With the new control cockpit, employees can analyze, understand, and if necessary, modify contracts, customers, and regions from various data-technical perspectives using uniform KPIs. In order to achieve these goals in an agile and optimal manner, valantic worked with the customer to design and develop an analytical front-end based on MicroStrategy.

Solutions and results in detail

valantic performed the following tasks based on defined user stories:

Design and conception of the multi-stage application
Evaluation of and cost estimates for the implementation variants
Conducting of workshops to find solutions
Development and documentation of dashboards/cockpits and reports
Development of test plans
Coordination with the infrastructure
Operational concepts and handover to the line

The end result was a control cockpit, which was developed and implemented in different granularities with specialized business unit-specific evaluations. It provides the specialist departments and management with centrally available performance data, premium data and volumes, sales KPIs, the portfolio structure, the profitability of contracts, customer master data, and other KPIs/insights in a clear and intuitive manner.

Helsana – more than a short-term disability insurer

Helsana’s primary objectives were to increase transparency, profitability, and customer satisfaction. The new single source of truth (central control cockpit) played a key strategic role in achieving these goals. The central control cockpit bundles and visualizes all relevant information for the various business units and makes it intuitively accessible. Each business unit is supposed to receive the exact information it needs to successfully complete its tasks, and this in real time, if possible.
“We offer our corporate customers a comprehensive solution for occupational health. We must honor this value proposition completely, and at all times. At the same time, as Helsana, we also want to be well-positioned so that we can work efficiently, effectively, and cost-effectively,” says Lui Maksimovic, head of quotation management for corporate business at Helsana.

One of the challenges was to gain transparency with regard to the profitability of the corporate business portfolio and to optimize management of customer segments. The old solution could no longer meet the requirements for portfolio management for active control and management. “Reporting on more than 16 million data records with 80 attributes and 15 metrics presents the software and developer with challenges that we were lucky enough to solve,” explains David Mandl, principal consultant at valantic Business Analytics Swiss AG.

The initial task was for the project management and product owner to coordinate, consolidate, and prepare the requirements. The hybrid, agile process model provided a sprint interval of two weeks, during which new developments were presented as part of sprint reviews, new “action items” were identified as part of the retrospectives, and the next sprint was planned. This way, it was possible to take account of new priorities at short notice.

“Regular feedback from the departments ensures that all requirements are fulfilled as well as they can be. A diversity of perspectives is the key to such a project. It guarantees enhancement for the benefit of users over the course of the project,” explains Maksimovic. valantic structured the complex optimization project at Helsana. “valantic’s expertise and extensive BI tool experience were a big advantage,” he recalls.

Focus on the customer life cycle ensures greater transparency and profitability / control options

In addition to a large number of commercially relevant cockpits, valantic has, for example, implemented a new application with a three-year focus. Insurance contracts usually last for a period of three years. For example, if the profitability of a contract develops unexpectedly in one direction, the responsible consultant at Helsana can approach the customer in question again in order to work with the customer to adapt the corporate insurance to suit the new situation. valantic’s new information system helps them perform this task.

Central “single source of truth“

The solution has already gone live and is currently being used by more than 200 specialist users. “We now have a central location where we can process our data so that we can benefit from it. That gives us important starting points for increasing profitability across departments and managing our portfolio even more purposefully,” summarizes Lui Maksimovic of Helsana.

David Mandl of valantic also draws a positive conclusion: “We went the extra mile and gave 110%. Despite the great pressure to perform, the interaction between the companies was very collegial, fair, pragmatic, and goal-oriented. It was a very pleasant project, one I would like to continue.”

Helsana Success Story | valantic with MicroStrategy

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Your Contact

Marc Philipp

Managing Director
valantic Business Analytics Swiss