Our March cover story in Tech Decisions is on businessintelligence and we've been previewing it on the Web site with several interviews.

One of those interviews is with John Lucker, a principal with DeloitteConsulting, and he had some interesting views on why various BIprojects—and really any software implementation—fail.

Lucker explains the importance of sticking to the 80/20 rule. Hebelieves scope creep is a major problem for carriers to deal withand the depth and breadth of a BI implementation exacerbates theproblem.

"I've been in project planning meetings and clients will saythey understand the 80, but what about focusing on a small amountof the business," says Lucker. "They end up focusing an inordinateamount of time on the 20 percent and completely lose track of thebusiness value and the value of time in accomplishing the 80percent sooner rather than later."

We all know the 80/20 rule (but did you know it's also calledthe Paretoprinciple?), but what amazes many people is a company'scomplete inability to follow it.

As we've all learned, any project involving an insurer's data—oreven third-party data—is fraught with peril. The thought ofcleaning up all that data into something resembling intelligentinformation can paralyze a company and has often led insurancecarriers to back away from business intelligence in the firstplace.

But as Lucker points out, the effort isn't nearly as great ifyou can focus on a large percentage (80 percent) of the data thathas similar—and valuable–characteristics and not come up with crazyexpectations that every problem will be solved through the use ofBI.

Eventually, someone might be able to figure out the remaining 20percent and by that time your company will have already gained somevalue from the work already performed—the 80 percent. 

Too many business users expect technology to solve every problemthat they deal with and we all know how that theory is working out.Insurers should know this better than anyone that such expectationsare foolish; that's why we have an entire market called specialtylines.