Using data & analytics to better serve and innovate insurance products

Leading African insurance provider sought a comprehensive data strategy to leverage customer insights and innovate new products.

Complexity / Current state

With a new ERP, plus mobile app and in-house data team established, the Company lacked a data strategy to underpin its ambition to better leverage its data to develop advanced analytics.

Recommendation / Use case

Following a deep-dive assessment of the Company’s data ecosystem, capabilities and capacity, a compelling data strategy was crafted, plus business and investment cases. The strategy focussed on building strong data foundations, on top of which a customer 360 and advanced analytics could be developed, thereby informing a refreshed CRM strategy.

Outcome

With the advantage of a comprehensive strategy, actionable insights, and ‘how to’ guides, the Company’s incumbant team was able to commence the implementation as originally envisaged.

The Company is a leading African, composite insurance group, with an ambition to leverage its current data to develop advanced analytics to power its business strategy. With new private equity shareholders supporting the senior management team, leadership engaged DataDiligence to assess the readiness of the Company’s data ecosystem to support its ambition. The assessment findings would then inform a thorough data strategy to underpin the strategy, which the Company intended to implement using its incumbent data team.

Initially, we assessed a number of areas, including:

How well was data being collected and integrated across the organisation, its systems and applications? What was the quality and availability of the data?
How deeply does the Company know its customers and actively leverage the insights to efficiently generate revenue and improve customer experience?
How well is data being used across the organisation to inform its business and operational models, as well as digital channels?
Does the Company have enough resources and talent to maintain and develop its analytical solutions?

The Company had recently invested into upgrading its data and analytics having introduced a new ERP system, launched a mobile application, established a dedicated data function, and created a portfolio of BI dashboards and reports. While the current data maturity was still relatively low compared with developed countries, it should be considered a strength for a company in an emerging market. The modern data infrastructure offered material opportunities for advanced analytics, but without a data warehouse integrating all data sources into an analytics-ready description of the business and its operations, and so long as data flows remain manual or incomplete, the data team would struggle to innovate beyond basic analytics and BI dashboards.

Drawing on insights gained during the assessment, a detailed data strategy was crafted to address the gaps identified, plus build on the Company’s strengths.

The strategy focussed on defensive and offensive recommendations:

Strengthening data foundations including introducing a data warehouse, data science platform, or data flow automation into the existing infrastructure. The data architecture, infrastructure, and requirements were designed.
Developing a holistic customer 360° capturing all relevant aspects of customers’ behaviour, preferences, needs, and interactions with the Company. Thirteen thematically organised areas describing specific aspects of a customers were identified. Plus, an initial list of 200+ features was created.
Leveraging advanced analytics to gain insights into customer behaviour, identify sales opportunities, risks and fraud, and improve operational efficiency. A prioritised list of use cases was created based on feasibility, estimated business impact, and dependencies and synergies between individual use cases.
Tightening a CRM strategy anchored in omnichannel personalisation. Gaps in the data collection across the customer touchpoints and customer journey were identified and recommendations made. Also for using customer 360° and advanced analytics to drive personalised user experience and data-driven sales and marketing activities.

Each of recommendation was accompanied with a thorough documented business case, plus roadmap for execution, together with milestones, and required investments is available.

A detailed data strategy, underpinned with business case and potential economic impact(s), was delivered and presented to the leadership team and private equity shareholder. The plan was designed and drafted in such a way as to enable the in-house team to execute the required development and implementation without additional external consultants.