DELA stands for “Draagt Elkanders Lasten” (Carry Each Other’s Burdens) and is part of a cooperative. DELA specializes in all aspects related to farewells, providing support to people during one of the most challenging times in their lives: the farewell of a loved one. Our organization has been around for over 85 years and has been present in Belgium since 1989, where it employs nearly 800 staff members who assist before, during, and after a funeral. DELA is best known as a funeral insurer but also operates around 70 highly qualified funeral homes across more than 120 locations in Belgium, three crematoria, and a repatriation center at Zaventem airport. Additionally, around 30 bereavement care consultants are available daily to help relatives with practical and administrative tasks after the funeral. DELA handles approximately 80% of repatriations and buries 1 in 10 Belgians. DELA is thus recognized as the funeral specialist of Belgium. In line with its social commitment, DELA established the DELAfonds, which supports initiatives aimed at making the difficult moments surrounding farewells more bearable.
The finance department of DELA has enlisted the help of Cloubis to assist them with their monthly reporting:
DELA’s current processes require many manual actions and are consequently time-consuming and sometimes unclear. Errors can always creep into the calculations and formulas since these are created manually. It is then difficult to determine exactly which steps were taken during the data processing, in other words, there is no clear ‘data lineage’.
The finance department of DELA consists of controllers and financial experts, but they have rather limited knowledge regarding data processing and data transformations. Since the team needed a solution in which they could work autonomously without undergoing weeks of training, it was important not to implement an overly technical data tool. This led us to Alteryx. Alteryx is a user-friendly tool with drag-and-drop capabilities and Excel-like formulas, accessible to a broad audience and having a relatively short learning curve.
With Alteryx, DELA’s finance department gets a clear (visual) overview of all the steps taken, and each step can be traced one by one. Exception reports were also built in so that the department receives notifications when something doesn’t go as expected, allowing for quick resolution.
Previously, manipulations had to be performed in multiple Excel files because there was too much data for one file. Now, all the information can be uploaded together into Alteryx. This provides an overview of all financial data, which can be edited, manipulated, and analyzed in various ways. Additionally, it is faster to upload data and perform analyses in Alteryx than in Excel.
Before the solution with Alteryx was implemented, the controllers had to spend several days building complex reports in Excel. Now, this is resolved in seconds with the push of a button, as the entire flow is now robustly constructed. This gives them a clearer view of the ‘data lineage’ and allows them to go further in their analyses, resulting in better decision-making and advice.
The overview of the data, reports, and insights has become much clearer and faster since DELA adopted Alteryx. Additionally, various stakeholders within the company now have access to the data and no longer need to understand the logic behind the custom Excel filters to interpret the data. Finally, this system is more efficient and scalable than working in multiple Excel files.
