Cognos today announced that SSQ Group Insurance, part of the leading mutual diversified financial institution SSQ Financial Group, has chosen Cognos 8 Business Intelligence (BI) as its standard BI platform. With $1 billion in annual revenue, SSQ Financial Group is a leading mutual diversified financial institution. SSQ Financial Group serves more than one million customers and employs more than 1,250 people. SSQ Group Insurance includes life, salary, health, and dental insurance. A Cognos customer since 1998, SSQ Group Insurance decided to migrate to Cognos 8 BI because of its zero-footprint architecture, report creation capabilities, and ad-hoc query functionality. With Cognos 8 BI, SSQ will gain more robust functionality, empower users for self-service BI, and foster an open, flexible environment able to leverage and extend additional IT investments. As a result, all actuaries, as well as finance, sales, marketing, and administrative service departments, will be standardizing on Cognos 8 BI for reporting. "We wanted to upgrade our systems and chose Cognos 8 BI instead of other competitive offerings because of its advanced reporting capabilities that bring our end users one click away from the information they need to conduct their business," said Guy Bourassa, data warehouse architect for SSQ Group Insurance. "Furthermore, we were already familiar with its products and services. We also like the fact that we can receive our service in French, which makes it easier for our employees based in Quebec City, Canada." With Cognos 8 BI, SSQ Group Insurance will be able to access data from its Oracle Data Warehouse to deliver management reports as effectively as analytical or operational reports. These reports will deliver information throughout the organization about sales (new sales and renewals), finances (premiums, benefits paid and actuarial reserves), and files on disabilities and insured participants. For example, management will receive reports that show submissions and renewals carried out in a period by sales office and sales representative, as well as files processed by each work team. The company also plans to create reports that will allow the establishment of ratings and the examination of trends in premiums and benefits paid, medical issues, and healthcare consumption. These reports will allow SSQ to better manage the various sectors of the business unit with more consistent, widely available and better distributed reports. Cognos 8 BI is a groundbreaking product that provides decision makers at all levels of the enterprise with a consistent, accurate view of information to better manage performance. As a single product that easily integrates into existing infrastructures with multiple systems and data sources, Cognos 8 BI is a robust technology foundation for BI standardization and performance management. "SSQ has been a Cognos customer for many years now, and by standardizing on Cognos 8 BI, the company is yet again showcasing the quality products and services we provide," said Gaurav Verma, financial services industry director, Cognos. "SSQ understands the value that comes from standardizing on one, open BI platform as a way to help drive better decision making, enhance customer service, and improve overall company performance while reducing the administrative overhead that comes from managing multiple, disparate products."