Enter Centric: Modernizing Data for Growth and Longevity
Using our insurance expertise and modern data strategies, our Data and Analytics team explored SECURA’s current data processes to develop a game plan. Our primary criteria for success was enabling the company to analyze its data at the lowest possible level of detail to satisfy financial and regulatory stakeholders.
Because SECURA wanted to focus on modernizing data and data handling, we used our IAP to:
- Implement a configurable framework for ingesting data from multiple systems.
- Customize our insurance data model for policy, claims, agent, and billing data.
- Use our internally developed code-generation tool to speed development.
We also provided pre-built insurance analytics visualizations and implemented an audit, balance, and control framework to monitor data quality.
During our discussions, we realized that complexities in SECURA’s historical data would interfere with their simplification goals. As a result, we co-developed a mapping engine to align old and new data. With this mapping in place, we produced financial numbers that matched their Finance department’s historical way of viewing business data and fostered trust with the project stakeholders.
Additionally, the new mapping engine now allows SECURA to update coverage codes without any programming, so they can introduce new products and coverages with minimal effort and minimal risk.
Now that this system is in production, on the first of each month, SECURA can see that their previous month’s financials match to the penny, all before even starting the formal month-end close process. Their monthly financial close process is now easier, and they have a single source of data within one system.
We also built an automated monitoring system for their financial data using a suite of Azure tools such as Synapse, Azure Analysis Services, and Power BI. Most recently, we leveraged our Cloud Cost Monitoring Dashboard to help SECURA manage its overall Azure expenses.
“SECURA has been a remarkable partner over the last two years, collaborating closely with our team at every stage of their modernization journey,” states Jeremy Gruenwald, Director of Data and Analytics for Centric. “Everyone at SECURA cares deeply about doing the right thing for their customers and for each other, and consistently choose quality. This willingness to collaborate on ideas – but not compromise on results – has led to a highly trusted data environment they can build on as their business grows.”
The Results: Flexibility and Confidence for Growth
As a result of our partnership, SECURA now has a configurable framework for ingesting data from disparate systems, allowing them to more easily introduce new products, and adopt new processes without fear of breaking their financial and reporting capabilities. With the help of our Data and Analytics team, SECURA can now:
- Match their monthly financial data results with expectations.
- Update their mapping and data flows without new mainframe code.
- Analyze and report on new data, along with monitoring for accuracy.
- More easily expand to new states, improve information-sharing with agents, and introduce new products for their customers.
Conclusion
Modern data solutions are essential for insurance companies who want to grow their businesses. SECURA is now reaping the benefits of its data modernization efforts. It retired its legacy systems with confidence, embraced continuous improvement in its processes, and began making data-driven decisions. The company is now ready to bring innovative products and excellent customer service to new areas of the U.S. for the next 100 years.
