Web-oriented approach to information delivery. - Proven scalability. - Flexibility to develop own information applicatio
Case Study
How NASCO Lowered Costs and Shortened the Development Cycle to Realize Significant ROI > business profile
“Actuate has helped NASCO cut its development costs in half while improving the end user experience. We are better able to deliver what our customers want on a timely basis.” — Malcolm Silberman, Project Manager, NASCO
The NASCO Challenge
The Actuate Solution
NASCO had limited flexibility to meet certain customer needs with existing systems— namely long development cycles, text-based reports and timely cost-effective ways to generate reports. Customers also had limited ability to customize reports without impacting other users of base reports. Changing reports was costly and involved a long release cycle.
NASCO selected Actuate’s BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools ) development platform to provide a costefficient, flexible, robust, rich information application solution for its healthcare Plan customers. The company selected BIRT based on the following criteria:
“NASCO is currently using a modernized membership and billing solution called MembersEdgeSM based on the MetaVance® application developed by HP. However, while this application supports our Plan’s needs for membership and billing functionality, the reporting component was not flexible or timely enough to meet our demands,” says Malcolm Silberman, Project Manager, NASCO. “The long development cycle had a negative effect on customer satisfaction.”
- Ability to integrate with existing membership and billing application - Ability to pull from data warehouse - More cost effective than Cognos - Web-oriented approach to information delivery - Proven scalability - Flexibility to develop own information applications in timely manner “Actuate and BIRT offer proven scalability that can work with any data warehouse in our Membership department,” states Silberman. “And Actuate was willing to work with us to grow our application — starting with a small deployment of 100 users and expanding to an extranet application with over 450 users,”
Insurance claims processor
> location
Based in Atlanta
> Challenge
• Reduce time to create Webbased applications • Leverage data warehouse to deliver plan information via extranet
> solution
Leverage Actuate’s BIRT platform for operational performance management
> benefits
• Lower development costs by more than 50 percent • Cut report deployment time from 18 to under 6 months • Expand premium billing service with new clients • Deliver interactive views on demand
Case Study: NASCO
says Silberman. Actuate is currently used by the company’s Membership department to provide information applications to Call Center Managers, Billing Managers and Financial Analysts at Plan customer sites. NASCO provides a consistent view of membership data to its internal users and Plan customers, offering a single version of the truth. Through an extranet site, end users can access billing and member data for their specific healthcare plan. “Through the flexibility of the Actuate solution, we are able to deliver enterprise, Web-based customer information via a single BI infrastructure, ensuring consistency while lowering our BI deployment costs,” says Silberman.
Enhance Product Offering and Revenue Opportunity NASCO was able to expand its premium billing business because of the richness and depth of the BIRT information applications. Prior to Actuate, some of NASCO’s customers would not use the premium billing service because of the lack of customized reporting. BIRT has also proven to be a scalable solution and enables NASCO to grow its customer base.
Benefits of Actuate and BIRT Significant Reduction in Development Costs NASCO leverages BIRT’s collaborative environment, allowing its developers, report writers and end users to create and/or use applications rich in interactivity, depth, span and complexity. As a result, NASCO has been able to lower its development costs by over half. Because of Actuate’s scalable platform and rich functionality, NASCO has also been able to reduce IT costs by consolidating applications on a single server.
NASCO utilizes the BIRT Interactive Viewer, an ad hoc webbased tool that enables end users to modify their views to suit their specific needs.
Improve Customer Satisfaction Because of Actuate, NASCO has reduced the time required to deliver new reports from 18 months to less than 6 months. “Our customers are happier now that their enhancement requests and needs are met on a timely basis,” says Silberman. “The Actuate and BIRT initiative has also boosted customer satisfaction by increasing collaboration between business managers gathering customer requirements and Plan resources.” NASCO customers are also empowered with interactive reports that deliver information on demand.
Actuate provides rich data visualization that meets the specific needs of NASCO’s Plan customers.
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Case Study: NASCO
The NASCO Future
Actuate - the people behind BIRT
NASCO plans to expand its Actuate user community and leverage additional capabilities of the BIRT technology. According to Silberman, “The cost savings and reduced turnaround times we have achieved with BIRT have been unprecedented. Due to our successful implementation and measurable value-add with the BIRT solution, we will be expanding our use of Actuate and continuing to leverage rich interactive information applications going forward.”
About NASCO In 1987, NASCO was formed through a partnership among major BlueCross® and BlueShield® (BCBS) Plans. Today, NASCO provides the most efficient single-system claims processing solution for national, state, large group and government accounts, processing over 147.7 million claims for over 11 million members. NASCO offers system and service solutions exclusively to many BCBS Plans. NASCO’s core strength comes from its claims processing system, the NASCO Processing System, which provides unsurpassed flexibility, scalability and operational performance. NASCO offers a highly configurable membership solution that can be suited for any Plan’s total book of business, as well as a multitude of performance-based services designed to help Plan customers improve their operational efficiencies and reduce costs.
Actuate founded and continues to co-lead the Eclipse BIRT open source project. BIRT is the premier development environment for Rich Information Applications that present data in compelling and interactive ways via the web on any device. Actuate and its people are dedicated to making BIRT the best environment for our customers to develop Web 2.0 applications that drive revenue through higher customer satisfaction/loyalty and improve operational performance. The people of Actuate continually participate in and provide resources for the vibrant open source community that has emerged around BIRT. Anybody can participate in the BIRT movement by visiting www.birt-exchange. com. Actuate offers value-add BIRT products and services that speed the development process and bring additional functionality, interactivity and enterprise scalability to BIRT-based Rich Information Applications. Actuate has over 4,400 customers globally in a diverse range of business areas including financial services and the public sector. Founded in 1993, Actuate is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices worldwide. Actuate is listed on NASDAQ under the symbol ACTU. For more information, visit the company’s web site at www.actuate.com.
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