About DELA

DELA is a non-profit cooperative that focuses on the continuity of life. Their aim is to provide customers with a carefree future. A wide array of financial and practical services and expertise enable DELA to help their customers achieve this. Over three million people already have a DELA insurance policy, making DELA the market leader in the Netherlands in funeral services and related insurance. In Belgium, DELA is one of the top two funeral insurers and handles the majority of funerals and cremations in that country.

Challenge

DELA Belgium consists of local shops, each with their own administration and local systems. Stock for these shops is purchased centrally and tracked locally, leading to inconsistencies in local stock positions. Moreover, positions are not aligned with current demand and cannot be managed from a DELA corporate perspective.

Solution

Our implementation partner Nippur provided DELA with a solution that periodically consolidates and integrates data from local funeral shop administration systems into a central data warehouse. This data warehouse is located at DELA headquarters in Eindhoven. All historical data is captured in full, and is fully auditable and traceable. DELA continues to bring additional business areas into the data warehouse, including a Solvency II-related business case.

Architecture

Quipu software is used to generate the data warehouse data model including load code to bring the source data into the data warehouse.
Microsoft SQL Server and Integration Services were chosen as the database and integration platform. BusinessObjects is used for reporting and analysis within DELA.
The data warehouse has a Data Vault data model. This creates a solid and future-proof basis for extension with other source systems data, without touching the existing data warehouse data model and data.