How we Helped a Leading Property and Casualty Insurer Design a Cloud-Based Data Platform
As visionaries in the insurance industry, this market-leading Property and Casualty Excess and Surplus Insurance company valued innovation. But their complex business model was posing challenges and their business and technology leaders wanted to do more, at a larger scale.
To achieve their long-term vision, they knew they had to use internal and external data in a sophisticated way, and make that data easier to consume.
However, their traditional architectures and approaches didn’t appear to be the solution. So the need for a data strategy and roadmap was born.
Enter Centric: A Sophisticated Data Strategy to Solve Customer Data Need
With a vision in place, the client’s CIO partnered with Centric Consulting’s Chicago office to develop a comprehensive data strategy and roadmap.
The company valued the industry depth and modern data platform experience that we brought. Above all, they admired that we shared the CIO’s business-first approach. Together, we sought the best possible path for driving early business value through a modernized data platform.
Armed with a comprehensive set of guiding principles, developed in partnership with the client, we performed detailed interviews of more than 50 business and technology leaders. These interviews spanned across their business units and covered all aspects of the operating model (Digital, Actuarial, Finance) and value-chain (Marketing and Distribution, Underwriting, Claims).
We brought heavy insurance expertise to the project and were able to discuss goals and challenges with the interviewees in their own business language.
This business-focused approach, coupled with a keen sense of industry direction, allowed our team to identify high-value business data initiatives that were based on primary business objectives and key industry trends.
The Results: A Cloud-Based System Expected to Deliver in Just Six Months
Using our modern data reference architecture, we collaborated with the client to design a new, cloud-based, leading edge data ecosystem. This gave them the flexibility and scalability to achieve near and long-term business goals.
Our team selected a technology stack based in the AWS cloud platform to drive early benefits and make it fit with existing cloud technologies. Our technology-agnostic mindset allowed the team to select the right platform based on the client’s needs.
Finally, we estimated the effort and created a multi-year roadmap. The agile roadmap delivered good news: It would yield results in the first six months of the project, and continue to grow from there. The roadmap was created with the flexibility to adjust and fit evolving business needs.
We then shifted from strategy to execution, embarking on a data platform implementation journey together.