Centric’s D&A Team Is the Right Partner to Take Data From Blueprinting to Business Value

Members of Centric Consulting’s Data and Analytics team use their diverse industry experiences, deep technical knowledge, and a suite of accelerators and visualizations to solve modern data challenges.

In brief:

• Where do you start with data projects?: We take a business-first approach. Rather than starting with IT, we ask CFOs and functional leaders about their pain points before designing solutions.
• How do you speed implementation?: Our prebuilt accelerators and over 30 insurance visualizations allow us to build solutions quickly and help our customers identify meaningful patterns in their data. We also deliver usable reports every two to three months in our engagements, rather than building for years to show results.
• Do I need to be in a specific cloud environment to work with you?: No. We built our accelerators and frameworks using industry-standard code for flexibility. While many of our frameworks were designed for Azure, we can integrate them with other clouds, such as AWS. Microsoft Fabric now makes this process even easier with its “mirroring” capabilities.
• What happens after implementation?: In addition to their role in building solutions, our India team provides managed services focused on empowerment, knowledge transfer, and client choice and independence.

Businesses today collect more data than ever, and data has never been more valuable. However, many companies struggle to tap into that value because they can’t access their data or lack a “single source of truth” for it.

Companies that have grown through mergers and acquisitions are especially prone to these problems because they often fail to integrate the data storage systems of their acquired companies.

Data silos are the result, and they are costly.

“Many companies don’t know what data they have, how it got there and why, or what requirements and business logic govern its use,” says Centric Consulting National Data and Analytics (D&A) Practice Co-Lead Jeremy Gruenwald.

“They know they need to advance their technology, they know their current systems aren’t sustainable, and they’ve gotten to a place where they can’t keep up,” he continued.

These data challenges have multiple impacts. For example, a company may have a full-time employee who spends a significant amount of time on manual month-end reporting. Or, in the data-heavy insurance industry, a broker may be posting great premium numbers, but if sales data is siloed from claims payout data, there’s no way to know if those sales are profitable.

Gruenwald and members of his team — Senior Insurance Data Analyst Nicole Diedrich, Technical Architect Dinesh Reddy, and Senior Manager Brian Mowry — use their diverse industry experiences, technical knowledge, and Centric’s suite of accelerators and visualizations to solve these problems.

In this blog, these members of the Centric D&A team walk us through the process and differentiators that show why they are the right team and right partners for modern data solutions.

We Start With Phase Zero: Blueprinting

All Centric D&A engagements begin with a “blueprinting phase” or “Phase Zero,” during which the team first discusses data needs with business owners rather than IT.

 “For example, in insurance, we typically start with the CFO and heads of the functional areas, like the chief underwriting officer, the head of claims, or the chief actuary,” said Gruenwald, who often leads the discussions. “While the CIO is often in the mix, we start with business needs and work backwards to the technology.”

That’s because Gruenwald and his colleagues have often seen companies where IT has developed data lakes and warehouses without considering business objectives or the people who will consume the data. Diedrich, who often leads these early conversations, noted that open discussions are key.

“We let the client tell us what’s causing their pain,” she said. “Then we’ll talk with the data users and bring in data architects, visualization designers, and others who begin sketching the technical approach.”

Mowry, who grew up in the insurance-heavy state of Connecticut and has worked with insurance executives for much of his 18-year career, also participates in the early stages of blueprinting by empowering team members and removing barriers to their success.

“[In my role] I’m like a Swiss Army knife,” Mowry said. “I can step in throughout the process to help our folks shine and show what they are capable of. And, because I’ve been in so many meetings for various groups, I can articulate some complex topics in a short, concise way for any audience.”

Blueprinting usually takes about eight weeks, but that time is critical. It provides the discovery, planning and preparation needed to begin translating concepts into practice in the implementation phase.

Key questions the team seeks to answer in blueprinting include:

• What set of analytics should we focus on first (claims, underwriting, quoting, other)?
• Where can we get all of the relevant source data and history?
• What challenges are you currently experiencing with that data?

Centric can begin building and implementing solutions with the answers to these and other questions. While working with the business to address their needs, the team also builds out any new infrastructure and security required, ensuring the environment is ready to use as soon as business priorities are defined.

Our India practice’s Reddy is another key participant in blueprinting. His experience with the full data life cycle — from gathering data from various sources and consolidating it for actionable insights — prepares him well for more technical conversations.

“I explore the source systems to determine how we will ingest each of them into the data ecosystem,” Reddy said. “I work with systems architects to design the architecture, and I work with data engineers and business intelligence engineers to move the data into that ecosystem so the technical teams can create a data warehouse and visualizations.”

Another of Reddy’s roles is collaborating with different teams, such as business analytics, designers, and business developers, to define the solution that they will ultimately deliver to the client.

“Together, we build a roadmap, which can extend as long as three years,” Reddy said.

However, despite the focus on data and technical skills, Gruenwald emphasized that Centric’s People and Change team is a key partner.

“If clients want to skip the change management process, we aren’t the consultant for them,” Gruenwald said. “There’s no point building something people won’t use.”

We Build and Implement Solutions

The first step to implementation is to break the project into functional areas. This process sets up another of Centric’s differentiators: the delivery of usual reports and visualizations every two to three months covering a designated area of the business.

“Once we have enough functional areas built, we can start combining them for bigger insights,” Gruenwald explained.

For example, when policy and claims functions are integrated, an insurer can obtain the financial reporting needed to determine key metrics such as profitability. But to bring that data together, the team must conduct the “forensic data analysis” that Diedrich specializes in.

“I will look at all their data and identify patterns that offer clues about why data types are stored where they are, what they mean, and the rules that should govern them,” she said. “That’s the foundation for building a modern data platform the client can use for all their future analytical needs.”

The India practice is key to all Centric’s D&A implementations. They use the company’s 10 accelerators — tools built with industry-standard code — a modern analytics platform reference architecture, and industry best practices to speed pattern recognition and creation of technical solutions.

About 70 percent of Centric’s accelerators are tailored for the insurance industry, and several are part of the insurance analytics platform (IAP). The remaining accelerators and tools can be used for D&A projects in any industry.

IAP also includes more than 30 visualizations, monitoring tools, and data ingestion frameworks that help insurance companies build modern data analytics systems. While  Centric built IAP with Microsoft Azure in mind, its components can also connect to other cloud platforms, such as AWS.

“I think of it like a custom closet installation,” said Gruenwald. “We come in with our knowledge and toolkit of accelerators and build solutions that are right for our clients rather than delivering a one-size-fits-all product.”

One benefit IAP and Centric’s other accelerators deliver is the capability to identify patterns that capture a comprehensive business and technical history of data records over time.

“That way, if someone wants to know what their book of business looked like six months ago, or even what they thought it would look like six months ago, they can do that,” Gruenwald explained. “Different parts of the business then view their data through their own lenses.”

The result is like a data processing factory. The raw material (data) enters the system, which then prepares it for its journey to becoming a valuable business asset. Just like in a factory where workers might take samples along the way to ensure quality, the company can gain incremental value from the data along the way.

“It’s a value chain where clients don’t have to wait a year or two for results,” explained Reddy. “Instead, we deliver quicker, higher-value items along the way. That helps project sponsors become champions for us, which makes it easier to implement the data strategy we’ve defined.”

“The reward for good work is more work, and after an implementation, we almost always get more work,” Diedrich said. “We don’t have to force them to sign up for multi-year agreements. We want them to keep working with us because they want to.”

“When clients tell us that data is no longer a bottleneck but an asset that’s providing competitive advantage, we know we’ve succeeded,” Reddy said.

We Build Sustainability with Managed Services

After implementing the IAP or other data solutions, the India team steps into a managed services role to help clients use and evolve their new systems. In addition, they will help with knowledge transfer by creating playbooks for future implementations and providing strategic guidance as organizations scale.

“Our managed services span many roles, including data engineers, business intelligence engineers, and DevOps specialists, to maintain the entire data ecosystem,” said Reddy. “That diversity of perspectives allows us to continue optimizing and addressing emerging challenges as they arise.”

Mowry noted that sometimes, the team identifies other issues that fall outside the scope of their data work.

“When that happens, we will point the problem out to the client — not so we can own it, but so they are aware of it,” he said. “However, the client chooses how to address the problem. Usually they’ll tackle it themselves, but sometimes they’ll ask us for help.”

The main idea, however, is customer choice.

“Our clients choose to use our managed services teams to help them continue to maintain and enhance their solutions,” Gruenwald said. “We always make it clear from the beginning that they have that choice — they’re not locked in to using us.”

The Future of Centric D&A Team

Data is the lifeblood of business, but the challenge of converting data into value and competitive advantage can be overwhelming for many companies.

Our D&A team tackles that challenge with its business-first approach that prioritizes user adoption over technical complexity. Their methodology — starting with business stakeholders, blueprinting to identify needs and solutions, and using accelerators and visualizations — ensures the right questions are asked and the right solutions are delivered.

More importantly, the team’s commitment to client ownership and managed services prepares clients for long-term success. By building solutions on client infrastructure with transferable knowledge, they ensure organizations maintain control and flexibility as their needs evolve.

As companies increasingly recognize modern cloud platforms as strategic enablers, our proven ability to navigate complex data landscapes while maintaining focus on business value positions our D&A team as the right partner for organizations ready to transform their data into competitive assets.

Are you ready to move forward with a data strategy for your organization but aren’t sure where to start? Our Data and Analytics experts bring a tried-and-true approach for executing strategies into practical, pragmatic and actionable plans. Talk to an expert