Big Data - A solution in search of a problem !

What does Big Data solve in Insurance, that cannot be really solved by traditional technologies? This one seemingly simple question generates a good deal of brainstorming. Let’s keep Health insurance aside (that’s easy) and think about P&C and Life insurance space.

Where is the big data ?

Number Uno is Social data, ever growing and less contextual, but BIG it is.
Then we have policy data over years. We, of course, have a loss history of several years.
We have external risk data sources.
Few companies may also have real-time data streams from Cars (PAYD or commercial fleets), factories etc..

What can we do with Big Data technologies?

Sure we have many problems.
First, we need to know customers better.
How many times we tell them that you can save $400 by switching and then when they ask for a quote, we provide a quote more than their current outgo.
Do we congratulate them when they have a new baby arrival at home?
Do we know that they are looking to buy a car?
With big data, we will be able to co-relate all the seemingly unrelated data sources and link them to derive the actionable intelligence.

Another application is Fraud detection. Some people are out of bars, just because we cannot practically spend time and energy to figure out their fraud. Big Data technology makes is possible and simpler.

What about Risk Analysis? Sure! More the data you have, more you know about your customers, you are likely to predict the risk better.

The real advantage
To some extent, we are doing all this with current traditional technologies as well. More the data, Merrier it is, so big data technologies will definitely help, but is that all?
In my opinion, the real advantage of Big Data is to find the problem (or opportunity) that you do not even know about. When a data scientist dives deep into data and finds patterns and co-relates, there will be an Eureka moment, that will provide you the real ‘intelligence’ hidden in this data. Indeed, Big Data is a solution in search of a problem!

An ounce of knowledge is worth a ton of data

As my colleagues return from Insurance CIO summit and other conferences, I am getting bombarded with questions and suggestions of leveraging the BIG social data.. There are many ideas floating - targeted marketing, risk evaluation etc..
Well, I adopted words of Dr. Fayyad (Yahoo’s ex chief data officer) to reply back - An ounce of knowledge is worth a ton of data!

Notwithstanding the legal and moral issues, the availability of this data does not mean 'availability of knowledge'.

The models put on this data are sometimes completely inadequate to generate any useful insight for insurers. Even if there are any, it is hard to tie back these insights to specific customers or prospects, thereby, making those completely non-actionable.

I think, the insurers will gain more, if they focus on generating 'insights' from the already available data, before looking at acquiring more data. There is a plenty of structured and un-structured data available within the premises of the organization, across several touch points.
How much that is being utilized? Do we have models to analyze the data and generate insights and predictions? Is this intelligence already integrated with the business processes - from customer acquisition, to underwriting and claims processing?
I think, we need to WALK before we RUN.

Translating Business Strategy to Enterprise Architecture

I recently concluded a consulting assignment to define Future (after M&A) enterprise Architecture for a health insurance company, who acquired another company with considerable overlap in business.

While it was ‘relatively’ easier to come up future IT architecture by analyzing future needs and system overlap, it was quite challenging to present to executive board (completely non-technical with attention span of max 5 mins) and explain how exactly it maps to their business strategy. We had generated loads of detailed EA artifacts, however, challenge was to put all this together in just couple of slides and create a strong business case to move forward.

I found TOGAF’s Content Metamodel very useful in creating this linkage. I identified strategy business themes and for each business theme, and developed a view similar to content metamodel to link business strategy to required business services first, and then further to changes required in business process & IT systems.

A quick glance at artifacts is as shown -

Keys for success in using a Global Delivery Model

My presentation at South New England PMI conference.
I shared thoughts and my experience of creating customized process framework by adopting best practices from traditional as well as agile methodologies that are appropriate for your project and your organization.

Keys for success in using a Global Delivery Model - snec pmi april 29 2011

View more presentations from Amit Unde.

What if two Turkeys make an eagle?

If you follow ‘Mobile world’ news like I do, you might have already heard about partnership between Nokia and Microsoft, and Google’s trash-talk in response – “Two Turkeys do not make an Eagle”.
Cut to one year back – when android itself was a Turkey, however, they pretty much turned themselves into an Eagle. If you trust in Gartner’s figures, Android market share has risen from 3.5% in 2009 to 17% in 2010 and it is on its way to 22% this year. See - http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1434613 .
Nokia’s Symbian has highest share so far and having seen a world (e.g. India) completely dominated by Nokia phones, I believe they will put up a pretty serious fight for Apple and Google.
What does this mean to us in Insurance industry, who are developing mobile business apps? I think, these developments make a clear case for ‘cross-platform’ development. Rather than, making an application specifically for iPhone or Android, it’s time to seriously consider cross platform development platforms. A hybrid approach with combination of common ‘Portable’ code and some sexier ‘Native’ features appears as a good balance that provides functionality with oomph.

Naturally Yours,

The stars are getting aligned for Natural User Interface (NUI) technologies, with widespread adoptions of touch phones and pads, and recent advancements in consumer technologies such as Xbox Kinect. Consumers have progressed from ‘liking’ to ‘expecting’ natural multi-touch interface. Many technologies are already creative waves.  In L&T Infotech, our Tech office experimented with Microsoft Surface and I was amazed to see the possibilities. Touch IT

I suspect that we will see explosion of application of these technologies everywhere in coming years…!  Consumer electronics industry such as Gaming, Phones, and computers will naturally be far ahead, however, I wonder where we will use this in Insurance industry.

I bet it will be for marketing splash and customer acquisition. I can see consumers leaning on the interactive tables and playing with Geco to understand different parts of policies OR interacting with cute Progressive lady to name their price. Who says buying insurance cannot be fun?

- Amit Unde

Is it End of Zachman ?

It's very sad the way things turned out for John Zachman's associations. Just came across an excellent post by Gartner's Philip Allega on this topic - http://blogs.gartner.com/philip-allega/2010/09/01/john-zachman-is-dead-long-live-john-zachman/

One would have expected further research from such elites, rather than just attempts of commercialization of the framework. Really, not much has been added to the framework, since, it is published in 1980s... Though there is lot of value in the thoughts that are behind the framework, IMHO, the use of framework itself is quite hyped.
In comparison, other established EA frameworks ( and methodologies) like TOGAF and even the new upcoming like EACOE are quite useful. May be they will continue Zachman's legacy.. but without his name !
Looks like he wants it that way.