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Contributed Article from SAP (Sponsored)
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Speeding Data-Driven Decision Making
Many insurance organizations have successfully captured siloed data and packaged it in the form of executive dashboards used to help drive decision making. However, these insurers often find that gathering information is too slow and ineffective to enable quick decision making.
By Lisa Valentine
There is no shortage of data in the insurance industry, and indeed many insurance organizations have successfully captured siloed data and packaged it in the form of executive dashboards used to help drive decision making.
However, these insurers often find that gathering information is too slow and ineffective to enable quick decision-making.
"Insurers need to take time out of the decision-making process," explains Barry Rabkin, senior analyst in the Insurance Service practice of Financial Insights (Framingham, MA). Instead, they need systems and processes that can enable what Malcolm Gladwell, in his bestselling book "Blink" terms "rapid cognition." Simply put, rapid cognition is the ability to make good decisions based on "thin-slicing" of data. Rather than having to plow through reams of data, rapid cognition enables both individuals and organizations to pinpoint trends, see opportunities, and respond to problems quickly.
It is possible to achieve rapid cognition in the insurance industry, believes Rabkin, but to do so organizations need to be able to blend operational processes with business intelligence tools for two purposes: to squeeze time out of business processes and to be able to analyze and report on the results of the processes themselves.
Insurance companies can leverage analytics and business intelligence to gain insights into evolving trends in pricing and risk to better inform underwriting decisions as well as to optimize business operations, including claims management, customer service, financial reporting and analysis, compliance and other key areas.
Speeding up processes is one element of rapid cognition. Also needed is the ability to provide information on the processes and feed this information back to all stakeholders, whether internal employees or external third-party partners. In other words, the processes themselves give off information, providing a feedback loop. Rather than a linear structure, Rabkin likens the feedback loop to "information surround sound."
Capturing intelligence on the results of an end-to-end process and then being able to report on it quickly implies an integrated insurance solution that captures not only the processes, but the key relationships that make up those processes, says Rabkin.
SAP's NetWeaver provides a comprehensive integration platform for both SAP and non-SAP applications. Combined with SAP for Insurance applications that support the entire insurance life cycle from acquisition through claims, billing, administration, disbursement and reinsurance, NetWeaver captures the correct data and SAP Business Intelligence solutions provide the tools to view this data and to achieve rapid cognition -- the ability to make fast, accurate decisions that will become the cornerstone of the successful insurance organization.
On The Net
www.sap.com
www.financial-insights.com
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