Security Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York was founded in 1886. Over the years, they have weathered depressions, wars, and recessions to emerge as one of the leading mutual life insurance companies in the United States. Currently, Security Mutual markets products in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. From $15,000 in assets its first year in existence, Security Mutual has grown to more than $1.9 billion in assets, with more than $29 billion of life insurance in force.

SEQUEL extracts data easily
David Lunzman, a senior software developer, describes the role SEQUEL plays at Security Mutual. “I started with Security Mutual three and a half years ago and I had used SEQUEL for several years at my previous employer. Naturally, when I came to Security Mutual I recommended we purchase SEQUEL. Now, we use SEQUEL with our Genelco LSP application database to extract data. Extracting data is really easy with SEQUEL. Before SEQUEL we had to use SQL/400, or write RPG programs.

“With SEQUEL, I can pull out the data I need and format it into reports or create Excel files. We often use SEQUEL’s conditional processing, string handling, and date manipulation capabilities when we extract data. Date conversion has also been very helpful. We store our dates as packed fields. SEQUEL lets us convert them to date data types and show the number of days between dates. SEQUEL’s UNIQUE KEY function lets us remove duplicate records.

Drag-and-drop makes everything faster
“Using SEQUEL Viewpoint with its drag-and-drop capabilities makes everything easier and faster. For example, a user called and asked for an ad hoc report on our agents. I delivered it within five minutes. Most of our users access SEQUEL-manipulated data using a browser and the SEQUEL Web Interface. A browser is all the software they need to get the information they need.

Reports accessible through Windows or a browser
“We use SEQUEL to provide reports containing vital operating statistics for upper management. We often build run-time prompts into the reports to allow users to select a date range or a company. And, SEQUEL lets us provide drill-down options to our browser users. For example, management might run a summary report by agent, then pick an agent and drill for further detail. With SEQUEL, we can quickly build a view or report and make it immediately accessible through a browser or Windows. Our users can print a report or create Excel files. They really like the versatility of SEQUEL.

E-mail distribution a plus
“SEQUEL’s e-mail distribution is very useful. We have some reports that we run during our nightly cycle. With SEQUEL, we can automatically e-mail the reports or Excel files as attachments. SEQUEL also lets us e-mail from a browser. SEQUEL prompts for the e-mail address and sends out an Excel file attachment.

Short learning curve another bonus
“Recently, we hired a developer. With SEQUEL’s short learning curve, he learned SEQUEL quickly and thinks it’s fantastic. When I program, I use SEQUEL about half the time. I find that combining SEQUEL and RPG makes it easy to develop applications on the IBM System i. Because SEQUEL is command driven, it is easy to invoke from a CL program. I also like SEQUEL scripting, which we can run from a browser. I can do amazing things with SEQUEL—convert data to Excel, format and e-mail reports, perform drill-down analysis, and so on.”

To sum it up, David concludes, “SEQUEL is great. I have only good things to say about it.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 1:22 pm and is filed under SEQUEL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.