As part of its strategic effort to distinguish itself in the extremely competitive Chicago market through Web-oriented customer service, Delta Dental of Illinois (DDIL, Lisle, Ill.; about $400 million in premium) has launched self-service reports to group benefit administrator users of its employer portal. The Business Objects XI application gives users the ability to download reports and access real-time information in a variety of presentations, eliminating time-consuming requests for special reports.

Delta Dental of Illinois has traditionally delivered monthly performance reports to its clients, but benefit administrators commonly request information not included in standard reports, according to Ross Gosnell, CIO, DDIL. The procedure for requesting non-standard reports began with the benefit administrator writing specifications and contacting the client’s DDIL account executive. The account executive would then write a request to IT, IT would deliver the report to the account executive, who would in turn deliver it to the benefits administrator.

"There is security involved in that process because you’re transferring protected health information in many cases, so there’s a whole drawn-out process that takes, in the best case, several days," Gosnell explains. With the carrier’s new self-service function, however, benefit administrator users of DDIL’s employer portal can receive specially requested reports in as little as an hour.

DDIL rolled out the reports self-service capability in April, having completed the application last fall and piloted it with selected customers.

The parameter-driven reports allow authorized users to shape delivery of data according to different organizational or time parameters. For example, users can request reports of month- or year-to-date, or one quarter compared to another. "What this gives them is the ability to mine their data, based on their criteria and their log-in," Gosnell says. "They can change reporting periods on the fly, they can look at multiple divisions and they have the ability to drill-down and look at real-time data—they can actually run a report in real time and see how much money they’re spending on dental claims, how many of their subscribers have gone to the dentist that month."

The drill-down capability means that a single online report can equate to four different reports—and report request processes—in a paper-driven environment. Users can download the reports directly from the portal in PDF, Excel or comma-separated files.

The reports are created through interaction of the Business Objects XI business intelligence platform with the carrier’s Oracle 9i database. "We have a strategic plan to provide information across the enterprise to end users, knowledge workers and external stakeholders using the Business Objects XI platform," says Gosnell.

DDIL originally invested about $100,000 in the Business Objects platform over two years ago and has expanded the relationship since then, Gosnell reports. The implementation of the self-service reporting capability included the development of a single sign-on capability that took about six weeks to develop.

--By Anthony O'Donnell

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