Gerry Hasset, Irish Life, & Graham Mulhern, MXI

Dublin – 6th, February 2012: Wicklow software provider MXI Ireland has secured a €380,000 ($500,000) deal with pensions and life assurance insurance provider, Irish Life, which has selected Tableau Software to support its new vision for Business Intelligence (BI) across the firm. The financial services specialist is using Tableau to provide user friendly dashboards that allow access to data on financial products to 300 of their staff, for use when they out of the office, presenting data to clients using tablet computers. Irish Life chose Tableau Software for its ease of use and cost effectiveness.

Working with business intelligence specialists MXI Ireland, Tableau has allowed the rapid roll-out of sophisticated online interactive data dashboards. The dashboards are currently accessible to business executives, account managers and the CEO, enabling them to review up-to-date information in a highly visual and graphical manner. Ultimately, the primary focus of the tool is to improve sales and customer service management, whilst also increasing business retention.

“From our experience with Tableau Software, we can see that the return on investment is already being delivered,” said Gerry Hassett, CEO at Irish Life Retail. “The whole implementation of my dashboards has taken a few weeks and has been a seamless operation. We can now see what is happening on the day-to-day and week-to-week basis which means we can develop our business accordingly and further enhance our competitive edge.”

Following an evaluation of Irish Life’s existing software and other major players in the BI software market, the company found that competitor products were more difficult to install and use and sometimes had multiple ways to perform the same task. Whilst Irish Life preferred Tableau’s clear and transparent licensing model and found the running costs to be more manageable.

“Tableau Software is an elegant business intelligence solution which is already having a positive impact at Irish Life,” said Graham Mulhern, Director at MXI Ireland. “Business executives and sales managers are following the emerging trends, seeing new and additional insights into the business information and capitalising on relevant opportunities. From MXI’s viewpoint, Irish Life is a household name and this relationship will have real meaningful effect on our business growth over the next few years, both in terms of sales and employment.”

“Our business needed a tool to make the job of analysing data easy,” said Paul Egan, Business Intelligence IT Manager at Irish Life. “We also wanted the ability to produce the information clearly for analysis in dashboard applications and in PDF format and accessible on the web and via the mobile.”

Data extracted from the Tableau will be used to monitor many aspects of business performance including sales margins, costs, the value of new business and head count to maximise efficiencies wherever possible. Customer service will be enhanced with the ability to maintain a deeper level of reporting, tracking the number of contacts that have been made online, via telephone or by paper and spot areas that can be streamlined to promise a better customer experience.

“Every organisation is faced with an onslaught of data and turning it into a format that is useful is the toughest part of the puzzle,” said Bruno Saint-Cast, VP for Europe at Tableau Software. “Irish Life has recognised the value of data in their business and the potential to improve processes and best serve customers.”

Irish Life plans to take their Tableau interactive dashboards mobile. Users will be able to browse content, access favorite reports and quickly collaborate, all while on the go.

NOTES TO EDITORS

About Irish Life

Founded in 1939, Irish Life is Ireland’s No.1 provider of Life, Pensions and Investments with over 1m customers and €31bn of assets under management. It has an excellent reputation for service delivery being recently voted ‘Top Life Company’ by the members of the Irish Brokers Association. It has a multi-channel distribution model with leading positions with Pension Consultants, Brokers and Direct. In addition, it has strong relationships with Permanent TSB, Ulster Bank & EBS. The Plain English campaign voted Irish Life as ‘Best in the World’ for clarity and honesty in 2009.

About MXI

MXI was established in 1994 and is a trusted Partner in the IT sector, serving customers across UK, Europe and the Middle East. Initially founded to supply the needs of manufacturing companies, MXI has established a Business Intelligence practice over the last few years specialising in Data Visualisation, Rapid Analytic Software, ETL and Financial Modelling. MXI’s solutions help customers see new insights into their operations, in a rapid and economical manner, forecast and control their day to day activities and achieve new efficiencies. MXI helps customers drive down costs and increase profitability every day.

About Tableau Software

Tableau Software helps people see and understand data. Ranked by Gartner in 2011 as the world’s fastest growing business intelligence company, Tableau helps anyone quickly and easily analyse, visualise and share information. More than 6,500 customers across most industries get rapid results with Tableau in the office and on-the-go. Tens of thousands of people use Tableau to share data in their blogs and websites. See how Tableau can help you by downloading the free trial at www.tableausoftware.com/trial.
For media enquiries please contact:

Simon Palmer
Republic
Tel: 01 282 2504
Email: simon@republicpr.ie

Article from The Sunday Business Post

Siemens wins €8.5m deal
18 July 2010

Healthcare provider Sheehan Medical has awarded an €8.5 million contract to Siemens Healthcare to supply equipment for its new facility, Cork Medical Centre.

Under the agreement, Siemens Financial Services will provide finance for all of the equipment to be used in the hospital. Siemens Healthcare will provide angiography, magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography, x-ray and ultrasound equipment.

‘‘We have first class technology in all our hospitals and aim to make the Cork Medical Centre the most high-tech facility ever developed in Ireland.

Siemens is an important part of this aim, its ability to provide an integrated approach that covers innovative technology will allow us levels of diagnosis and treatment that will be in unsurpassed in this country,” said James Sheehan, chief executive, Sheehan Medical.

Cork Medical Centre will be the anchor tenant in City Gate, a mixed-use scheme in Mahon.

The €90 million facility will have 75 in-patient rooms, four operating theatres and a same-day surgery centre with 20 out-patient beds. It will also house an intensive care unit and cardiology and neuroscience units.

Sheehan Medical is operated by James Sheehan and his father, Dr Joseph Sheehan, who is chairman. Joseph Sheehan was one of the founders of the Blackrock Clinic in Dublin in 1984.He was also part of the consortium that built the Galway Clinic in 2004.

- 60% of technology firms do not check the social media profiles of potential employees;

- 63% of technology companies do not blog

- almost a third (32%) of technology companies do not see the point of corporate blogging; and

- 39% said that blogging was too time consuming.

- 65% didn’t have a company Facebook page

The survey, which was conducted by Eurcom Worldwide during January and February 2010, only surveyed 286 senior level executives in technology companies, mostly across the European region. Whilst this is a very small sample it still shows either a lack or ignorance or low priority given to social media and on line marketing.

I find these figures astounding. After all I would’ve expect the use and awareness of this technology by technology companies to be much higher.  Of all the sectors that you would expect to embrace social media and blogging you would think it would be the IT sector.  I bet that if a similar survey was undertaken in the world of the FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) sector that the results would be a much higher because  this sector is much more forward thinking and cutting edge.

It appears for technology companies there only positive response was that 73% network on LinkedIn.

I’d be interested in a similar study in relation to how much use public relations and traditional media technology companies undertake and perhaps this would’ve been more apt for a PR company like Eurcom to undertake, but still it gives a very interesting insight into how technology companies think and act.

Part of the problem is their lack of knowledge and disinterest in marketing and PR. But it may be more to do with the fact that there is a perceived lack of need to focus on this. With a lot of technology start ups things move very fast and sometimes companies only think about PR and marketing when there is a lull to drum up new business.

Also with technology start ups the focus is on new technology. This is their priority and rightly so. Marketing could be seen as a luxury. In my experience a lot of tech companies do not know a lot about SEO, surprisingly so, and therefore, don’t appreciate the benefit of blogging.

Blogging is one of the single most beneficial ways for a company to boost its Google Ranking. And it is especially easy for companies to do because they have so much going on and so much information that can be put on a blog. Content such as the obvious media releases, but also press coverage, commentary on industry issues, product focuses, photos of events, video, all of which can also be automatically be sent to a corporate Facebook and Twitter feed.

With all my clients I ask them to incorporate a blog into their websites, which I then help them update with all their news,  not just the more traditional blog posts on the issues in their industry. I think this is an essential accompanyment these days to more harder copy / traditional forms of PR, that is still a priority to clients.

If a client is having some news covered in the media it is vital that they have full details on there website for when people look them up after they’ve read the article. If they don’t then they’re missing a major trick. Blogging software allows me to do this for them, without waiting for the client’s IT department to it, because I can log in to the blog element of website, without having to go into the main back end (content management system) of their website, which the IT guys don’t like (and rightly so) as the blogging software is kept in a different sub-directory with a separate login. Importantly clients should not make the mistake of having the blog hosted by the blogger provider, as this would do nothing for the search engine optimisation as it is kept on blogging providers website and not their own company site.

But this does not explain why companies do not use social media to analyse staff. Whilst 73% are in LinkedIn 60% do not check out the LinkedIn profiles of their potential employees. Why not? This is the obvious thing to do. After all many people have a LinkedIn account for that very reason, it is the equivalent of an on line CV. It’s the first place I would look to get background on potential employees.

On the whole there is sometimes a misnomer about the technology industry, whilst the products and services are very cutting edge sometimes the thinking isn’t. It reminds me of the scientific industry. There can often ve a very blinkered approach and people stick to their area  of expertise. The specialists in the industry know how to make their product, but don’t know how to market it and sometimes don’t even appreciate its wider application. That’s where people like me come in to help them get their product to market, get the word out and get them up to speed as to what they need to be doing internally to help them promote themselves.

It’s not hard but sometimes it takes someone from the outside looking in to point this out especially when a company is so immersed in launching it’s new product or service.

Ends