Tranquilidade selected Pivotal Greenplum Database because of its scalable shared-nothing, massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture. Ultimately, Pivotal Greenplum Database enables better decision making which leads to higher productivity and efficiency – saving money and driving profitability. To learn more, visit pivotal.io/big-data/pivotal-greenplum-database

1. The insurance company Companhia de Seguros Tranquilidade
was founded in 1871 and has played a leading role in the
Portuguese economy. Its distribution network encompasses
38 corporate stores, more than 78 franchise stores and over
270 agent stores nationwide. The company’s more than 700
employees offer Tranquilidade’s full range of non-life solutions
to over 600,000 active clients.
CHALLENGE
Streamlining Reporting and Analytics
To stay ahead of the competition and stimulate business,
Companhia de Seguros Tranquilidade needed an alternative to
its legacy data architecture. The company was burdened with a
complex layered architecture in which the data were stored in SAS
files and spread over eight separate data marts of 25 terabytes,
each dedicated to a different corporate department. Reporting
and analytics could only be handled by highly technical experts.
“Our former data architecture was so complicated that only
advanced technical profiles were able to understand it and turn
the data into any kind of intelligence, even for the most basic
kind of querying and reporting,” recalls José Manuel Vera, CIO of
Companhia de Seguros Tranquilidade. “Not only did this influence
the delivery speed of reporting but it left the door open for
mistakes. Worse, the reports that were made were often so
intricate that it was nearly impossible for untrained business
users to interpret them correctly.”
Tranquilidade was struggling with the severe effects of data
explosion on their business agility. Not only were they getting
close to a point at which their data warehouse would no longer
be able to hold all of the fast-growing data, their reporting and
analytics processes were continuously increasing in complexity
and decreasing in speed, while the delivered documents were
getting more difficult to interpret. It was time for a change.
AT-A-GLANCE
Challenges
• Complex legacy data architecture
• Slow reporting process
• Limited access to data
• Ineffective analytics
Solution
• Pivotal Greenplum Database
Key Benefits
• Easier access to information
• Faster queries – reduced from two days to less than
one hour
• Increased reporting – from monthly to daily
• Leveraging Big Data
• Reduced costs
CASE STUDY
Companhia de Seguros Tranquilidade
UTILIZING BETTER AND FASTER INTELLIGENCE TO IMPROVE STRATEGIC
DECISION MAKING
OVERVIEW
“ With Pivotal Greenplum Database, the speed at
which we now can gain access to information is
incomparable to anything I have known before.”
— José Manuel Vera, CIO, Companhia de Seguros
Tranquilidade
pivotal.io

2. Pivotal is a registered trademark or trademark of Pivotal Software, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. © Copyright 2014 Pivotal Software, Inc.
All rights reserved. This document was originally published in 2012, and is being republished with limited, non-substantive updates in 2014. Published in the USA. PVTL-CS-352-01/14
At Pivotal our mission is to enable customers to build a new class of applications, leveraging big and fast data, and do all of this with the power of cloud independence.
Uniting selected technology, people and programs from EMC and VMware, the following products and services are now part of Pivotal: Greenplum, Cloud Foundry, Spring,
GemFire and other products from the VMware vFabric Suite, Cetas and Pivotal Labs.
CASE STUDY COMPANHIA DE SEGUROS TRANQUILIDADE
Pivotal 3495 Deer Creek Road Palo Alto, CA 94304 pivotal.io
SOLUTION
Pivotal Greenplum Database Handles Massive Data Volume
Tranquilidade selected Pivotal Greenplum Database because of
its scalable shared-nothing, massively parallel processing (MPP)
architecture. “We strategically opted for this kind of structure
because it enables us to scale horizontally and stimulates faster
analytics than the more common OLTP anatomy of the solutions
of the competition,” Vera explains.
“Fed up with our labyrinth-like data architecture, we were
immediately attracted to the crystal-clear model and
infrastructure of Pivotal Greenplum Database – that is built to
manage, store and support analytics of massive amounts of data,”
he continues. “It allows us to consolidate all the raw data into
one single data warehouse and have all the separate data marts
communicating.”
Even the process of moving the data from the old to the new data
architecture of Pivotal Greenplum Database – a very complex and
elaborate operation – took much less time than expected.
BUSINESS BENEFITS
Pivotal Greenplum Database delivers the following business
benefits to Tranquilidade:
Easier Access to Information
Pivotal Greenplum Database enables department-wide access
to the reports, and employees each handle their own queries. In
addition, the company’s external partners have near-real-time
access to relevant reports.
“There is no point in having powerful tools, if the information is
inaccessible to the business users,” Vera says. “The more people
who receive the reports and intelligence at the right time, the
more we can use this information to inspire successful decisions
and follow the right strategies.”
Faster Queries
Pivotal Greenplum Database has dramatically increased query
speed for the company’s reports. Monthly reports that used to
take 48 hours of straight processing now run in less than an hour.
“With Pivotal Greenplum Database, the speed at which we now
can gain access to information is incomparable to anything I have
known before,” Vera confirms.
Increased Reporting
“On the basic level of reporting, we were able to boost the
delivery time from a monthly to a daily basis,” explains Vera.
“Knowing each day, for example, how many policies we are selling
and differentiating between the separate divisions has made a
huge difference for the commercial department.”
“As to the less prioritized and more technical reporting, for
regulators and internal use, we moved from once a month to once
a week,” he adds. “This is the kind of information that, for instance,
gives us a much better perception of the contracts we have with
companies that work in the claims management segment.”
Leveraging Big Data
“One of the main benefits of Pivotal Greenplum Database is that
it allows us to move much deeper into analytics and even tap into
the goldmine of Big Data,” says Vera. “In addition to asking better
questions and organizing more complex ETL processes, we can
now take full advantage of predictive analytics.”
Pivotal Greenplum Database facilitates high-performance,
parallel import and export of compressed and uncompressed
data from Hadoop clusters. “So, not only are our structured
data now better structured, we can also integrate them with
unstructured data from Hadoop sources, like clickstreams, to
extract deeper insight,” Vera notes. “Our direct line insurance
company was, for example, able to find out why there was such
a discrepancy between the amount of online simulations and
actually-concluded contracts and successfully adjust its strategy
in the matter.”
CONCLUSION
Ultimately, Pivotal Greenplum Database enables better decision
making which leads to higher productivity and efficiency – saving
money and driving profitability.
“When it comes to basic intelligence, we are now spending a lot
less per report – in man-hours and because we are able to do
a great many more than before,” Vera concluded. “And, more
importantly, the business collaborators now receive all the
intelligence they need at the right time, so that they can focus
even more efficiently on their core activities and drive revenue.”
LEARN MORE
To learn more about our products, services and solutions, visit us
at pivotal.io.