Profitable Decisions - Zift Solutions

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More Profitable Decisions Consider new tools that empower front-line workers across your organization to “self-serve” the right information, at the right time, to act more profitably. Ø

y Chris Mabardy, Global Market B Development Director, QlikTech

knowledge transfer OCTOB E R 2 0 0 9

Executive Report

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Ø about the author Chris Mabardy is the Global Market Development Director for Financial Services at QlikTech, with over 10 years of relevant experience in consulting and enterprise software organizations. He is responsible for the overall go-to-market strategy and execution within the Securities, Banking and Insurance industries, based on customer and market demand. Chris was formerly with Deloitte Consulting where he focused on areas such as business strategy, operations, IT management, data warehousing, and business intelligence for the Financial Services industry. Chris has a B.S. in Computer Science from Boston College and an MBA from Duke University.

oday, all areas of the insurance business must keep an eye on



profitability, considering both top- and bottom-line impacts

and easily access critical information on an ad hoc basis to answer unpredict-

when making business decisions. While controlling losses has

able day-to-day questions. For instance, sales managers benefit by being able

always been top-of-mind for insurers, it has become impera-

to directly analyze which agents are performing better than others in terms of

tive that even decisions considered “routine” or part of normal operations

policies written and the loss ratios of those policies. Agents themselves benefit

take profitability into account — not just for success, but for survival in

from improved sales-performance tracking and a better ability to uncover

this fiercely competitive market.

cross-selling opportunities with profitable customers. Underwriters refine their



As they have in the past, insurers today strive to keep loss ratios as low

models by analyzing actual claims and losses against predictions, and managing

as possible while aiming to sell more profitable products to the right cus-

exposures better in the policy portfolio. And claims evaluators can reduce losses

tomers. The difference is that now all types of insurance products are readily

by gaining transparency into transaction histories and policy details.

available through a variety of channels, and carriers are forced to compete



on the basis of rates. Combined with increasing payouts and decreased

QlikView next-generation BI and have seen impressive results. QlikView

investment returns, insurers are faced with a challenging landscape in

recently helped a large healthcare insurer reduce its claims leakage rate

which customer profitability and risk management are paramount.

from 8 percent to 6 percent by unifying historical and current information



Typically, large organizations have teams of data gatherers and

from multiple claims systems, and allowing claims staff and management to

analysts to answer high-priority questions – such as whether to acquire

directly analyze trends, discover key anomalies and take necessary follow-

another company or move into a new market. However, everyone working

up actions.

in an insurance firm can benefit from improved access to information, and



the decisions they make can add up to tremendous value. Putting usable,

areas to analyze premiums, claims, profitability and risk by customer, type of

meaningful answers at the fingertips of the people on the front lines is the

damage, product and country. The insurer was able provide uniform, valid,

key to unlocking the value of information.

and meaningful information to empower underwriters and staff to make



faster and less risky decisions, while at the same time reducing the workload

To pull ahead of the competition, insurers are employing next-gener-

Many types of users across the enterprise have realized the ability to quickly

Forward-thinking insurance companies worldwide have deployed

Zurich Insurance deployed QlikView to employees across three business

ation business intelligence (BI) to harness the power of their information

of their reporting group by over 90 percent.

assets and make answers immediately available to businesspeople across



their organizations. According to a 2008 Gartner survey of 28 life, property

new BI platform to reduce reporting overhead and support business decisions

and casualty, and health-care insurers, improving the speed and qual-

across the company. The company deployed applications using QlikView

ity of business decisions was the fundamental driver underlying all BI

to 450 internal users and more than 7,000 independent agents, providing

investments made in the industry — more important than operational

solutions for improved sales management, customer segmentation, agent

performance measurement or regulatory reporting. By offering decision

enablement, operations and financial reporting. Now, agents have an inter-

makers at all levels a simple and powerful way to “self-serve” the right infor-

active application by which they can analyze information on customers to

mation at the right time, companies have seen how improved decisions can

uncover new sales opportunities, as well as track their own sales performance

have a significant impact on revenue, cost and overall profitability.

against targets and incentives.

Another insurer, Colonial Life (an affiliate of Unum Group), needed a

And, AON Insurance deployed QlikView to more than 400 users in corpo-

Real World Impacts

rate headquarters and across 12 countries in two months to improve global

Many major insurance firms are now leveraging next-generation BI to provide

sales and profitability tracking, achieving investment payback in months

answers for front-line personnel in functions such as sales management,

through direct reporting cost saves, and offering a new-found strategic ability

marketing, finance, underwriting and claims/policy administration, and in

to identify trends and unleash market potential.

large communities of captive and independent agents. The capabilities pro-



vided by these tools have helped to strengthen profitability across the board

make full use of strategic information lets them gain the insight they need

by allowing staff to recognize and evaluate:

to make better business decisions that, in turn, add up to a more profitable

Providing workers across the enterprise with the ability to self-serve and

and successful organization. • Which customers and products have yielded the lowest loss ratios and highest performance • Whom to best target for sales and marketing campaigns, and how sales

How to Get Answers

Getting answers to ad hoc questions has traditionally been a slow and frustrat-

are tracking against targets in terms of revenue and profitability

ing process. Business decision makers typically request information or reports

• How products are performing relative to risk forecasting, and what

from a BI or reporting group, and these requests typically end up in a queue.

exposure concentrations exist in the policy portfolio

Requests are sometimes prioritized based on level, with executive requests

• Which policies have lapsed

receiving immediate attention and those from front-line personnel — the

• Which claims have been paid, and which should not have been paid

individuals closest to the field — being delayed. These business users are then

“

The point is that if you are still running your business on questions you planned on answering last year or last month, you are probably going to quickly fall behind companies that are able to poke, probe and explore their options based on more visual and interactive forms of analysis.

”

– Forbes.com, The Death of Business Intelligence, September 2009, CTO and Evolved Technologist Editor Dan Woods

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faced with either finding information on their own or simply guessing. In either case, the quality of the decisions they make can suffer.

With next-generation BI tools that allow for powerful yet easy-to-use

analysis, a company can now empower its front-line management and staff to take advantage of information in new ways that complement traditional reporting. The key to unlocking value is delivering the right information to the myriad of business users who need it, at the time they need it, and in a way that is meaningful and usable to them. And because these needs vary tremendously, the best approach is one in which users can answer their own questions in a simple and intuitive fashion. This is the unique capability QlikView offers.

Business Intelligence is not a “one-size-fits-all” category. Different

approaches, including reporting, modeling and dashboarding, have been used to address the various challenges that exist across large organizations. Reporting-based technology was originally intended to answer questions that are known in advance — in a predictive fashion — with predefined views of information. But over time, a gap has emerged in addressing questions that are hard to predict and ad hoc in nature. And this is an area that reporting was never intended to address.

Only with tools that are specifically designed for this purpose, ones that

take full advantage of today’s computing power, can IT offer its users the combination of flexibility and simplicity required for true ad hoc analysis. Through its in-memory associative technology, QlikView computes and delivers answers dynamically, allowing for unprecedented flexibility and power while requiring only mouse clicks from the user. And this interactive analysis can be performed wherever and whenever it is needed — over the Web, via mobile devices, or in the cloud.

There are a multitude of vendors in the market — each of which offers

different strengths. Insurers should consider a ‘best-of-breed’ or portfolio approach to BI, one that takes advantage of the best tools for the right purposes. According to Gartner in its 2008 report, “Defining and Managing an Expanded Set of Business Intelligence Capabilities,” a portfolio approach to managing BI tools and technologies will maximize usage and return from BI investments. “The lack of a comprehensive approach to managing BI tools leaves enterprises unable to respond to the market trends and related requirements which IT leaders must address and which will ultimately determine the success or failure of BI programs,” says Gartner.

Ø

Ab out us 

QlikTech, named the world’s fastestgrowing Business Intelligence software vendor by IDC, has more than 10,000 customers in 90 countries and more than 500 partners worldwide. QlikTech was founded in Lund, Sweden, and is headquartered in

Radnor, Pa. (USA), with direct operations throughout the Americas and Europe. QlikView, the flagship Business Intelligence product from QlikTech, works the way your mind works — offering intuitive, visual and powerful information analysis directly to business users. Through its patented, next-generation, in-memory associative technology, large volumes of data from multiple sources are

related associatively, compressed and stored in memory to support interactive exploration. Business users slice, dice and analyze the full set of record-level information in any way they want — through a series of mouse clicks — and receive instant answers as they go. QlikView has been deployed at more than 50 percent of global top 25* financial firms to improve performance across their organizations.

*Top 25 based on Fortune Global Banking and Securities Firms by Revenue, 2008