The deployment follows a successful trial during which iMarketer helped AXA mine large volumes of data at lightning speed and produce up-to-the-minute market data analyses, reducing turnaround time and facilitating a quicker response to market.

Vivien Lee, Sales Director, Business Strategies division, Experian Asia Pacific, commented: "With the Greater China economy in the upswing, the region's financial sector has never been more upbeat. Now, more than ever, key insurance players are expected to respond even more quickly to change or be left behind. Experian is delighted to provide AXA with its advanced and user friendly iMarketer analytics solution, enabling the insurer to interpret prevailing market demands and stay ahead of the competition."

"AXA has built a solid reputation for its ability to design and drive customized products and services that suit different types of customers," said Alan Davies, Assistant General Manager, AXA China Region Insurance Company Limited. "iMarketer provides our sales and marketing teams with the quickest route to understanding our customers' needs and behavioural changes, raising overall productivity and optimizing returns from our marketing investment."

To maintain its competitiveness, AXA China Region has invested heavily in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), including operational systems, customer intelligence and agency training, to provide executives with timely, accurate market insights that guide them in formulating near and long-term business strategies.

The decision to deploy Experian's advanced market analytics solution came this year when the company saw the need to have a faster means of manipulating huge volumes of data derived from its growing customer base.

AXA China Region set two stringent criteria in its search for the most suitable analytics solution. First of all, the solution should allow users to manipulate and present information in the quickest and easiest way possible, with the response time for data query reduced from hours to seconds. Secondly, the solution has to be user friendly so AXA's marketing staff can conduct complex analysis of scalable data in a simple and easy way.

"iMarketer's user-friendly interface has dramatically reduced the training time required to keep our staff up to speed with this new and powerful analytical solution. It empowers them to perform complex analyses without seeking help from our IT staff, relieving our IT people of a significant administrative burden," Davies concluded.