We asked five technology experts to weigh in on business intelligence measures, ranging from how to handle massive amounts of data and identifying important elements, the creation of dashboards, process management, and perhaps most importantly, how carriers can become more profitable. Here's what each had to say.

Turning Data Into Business Intelligence

Deloitte Consulting's John Lucker says insurance carriers have accumulated massive amounts of data over the years, which can present a daunting task when it comes time to turn that data into business intelligence.

KEY INSIGHT: “Typically, business intelligence is not a counting exercise. The phrase you hear often is 'good is often good enough.' What I've found almost every time I've [worked on data] with a client is they've seen that the cleaning exercise doesn't significantly change the trends and patterns that they were setting out to see in the business intelligence exercise.” Click here to read more.

Successful BI Means Eliminating Manual Processes

MutualAid eXchange's Paul Heacock says manual processes can be time consuming, particularly if you are trying to extract data from disparate systems and turn it into actionable business intelligence. He discusses his company's goals for business intelligence and the benefits it has already derived.

KEY INSIGHT: “We predefined the reports and the dashboards that we want. When we see a number we are curious about, we can drill all the way down to the coverage level to find out what created that number. We hope to spend a lot more time analyzing numbers than creating the numbers.” Click here to read more.

Achieving Success with Business Intelligence Initiatives

For Karen Pauli, research director in the insurance practice for TowerGroup, the first step in a business intelligence project calls for getting your data in order, but there are other steps that need to follow for carriers to achieve success with their BI initiatives.

KEY INSIGHT: “Once [insurers] understand that not all data elements actually turn into information, you can look at pulling out some of the data elements in the first initiative, get the data warehouse loaded with the important data elements that lead to decisioning, let the BI technology bring it all together and turn it into information, and then route it into the BPM software.” Click here to read more.

Mature BI Platforms Can Lead to Successful Implementations

There are several factors to consider when beginning a business intelligence implementation. Much depends on the maturity of the BI platform, according to Qasim Hussain, senior architect for the technology consulting firm X by 2.

Key Insight: “By the time you get the requirements designed and the models done, you've spent a significant amount of time thinking about the problem without actually delivering something that is useful to the business. The shift should be to a more agile or iterative approach where you take a small chunk, release it to the business, get early feedback as to whether it is meeting their expectation and adapt as you go along.” Click here to read more.

Predictive Analytics Is Next Generation of BI

Business intelligence projects can come into play across most of the functional areas of an organization, according to Steve Callahan, practice director for Robert E. Nolan Co.

Key Insight: “We have the pressure of achieving sales growth and profitability in an environment where expense reduction doesn't contribute as much as it could in the past. [Carriers] have to find out how to be more profitable. To do that, they have to look more closely at their products, their market segments, and their risk exposures. That's going to drive the greater use of tools to achieve profitability. They have to look at their business with a magnifying glass.” Click here to read more.

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