Data analytics
We understand that no two companies will do business the same way in any industry. That is why we go beyond project requirements and work with our clients to understand how their IT requirements align with their business goals. This approach helped us deliver a set of customer-tailored solutions for a client in the insurance industry.
Our client is a dedicated specialty lines insurance company that provides coverage for property, healthcare workers, marine and other areas a traditional carrier won’t cover because of risk or complexity. The company was spun out of another carrier in 2019 and has seen meteoric growth, putting it in the top 20 for revenue among insurance companies.
Our client had to start from scratch with many business processes, including creating secure and scalable data infrastructure. They needed a solution to support the sensitive data they had to launch the new business.
We helped guide the client in choosing a data lake on Microsoft Azure. This solution was a modern and elegant way of tackling the challenges of dealing with unknown data structures.
This solution delivered a streamlined process to look at data across the entire company in a more seamless, scalable way. We also helped automate and speed up many of it’s processes significantly.
It was during the spinoff in 2019 that we began our relationship with a unique challenge. As a newly independent company, our client had to start from scratch with many business processes, including creating secure and scalable data infrastructure. They needed a solution to support the sensitive data they were bringing with them to launch the new business.
Making this challenge more complex was the timeline. Our client had under a year to implement its infrastructure to store the data. As we worked with their team, we learned there were many manual tasks that were time-intensive and introduced the potential for human error.
There were many unknowns for the project, including:
Adding to the solution design challenge was the company’s plan to grow via acquisition. We needed to present a solution designed to collect data from new sources and grow over time.
Their team came to us with a data vendor in mind, but we quickly determined that the vendor’s database system wasn’t robust enough to support the company’s needs. The go-to solution in most instances would be an extract, transform and load (ETL) tool. ETL is a standard data integration process that takes data of different types and sources and transforms them into a consistent format stored in a data warehouse.
As our client didn’t know what types or sources of data its future acquisitions would present, we helped guide them to choosing a data lake on Microsoft Azure. This solution was a modern and elegant way to tackle the challenges of dealing with unknown data structures. While a data warehouse solution could have dealt with some of the data, it is a legacy approach that did not provide the business value or ROI the company needed.
Once their team approved the solution, it was time to get to work. We built the solution in 12 months—a process that would typically take up to three years. This aggressive timeline was achieved through rapid prototyping and incremental releases. Our team worked side-by-side with the business to ensure a common understanding of requirements and goals.
The data lake solution has helped improve processes across the company. Our client says that, instead of wrangling data, its staff now can study it to better understand how its business works and make adjustments to deliver better services for its clients.
Beyond the data lake solution, we helped our client automate and speed up many of its processes. For example, month-end reporting took up to three hours across its 76 insurance lines. It was a process in which its teams spent up to 25 days each quarter copying data from system to system. The new system brought that time down to under 10 seconds.
This solution for our client delivered a streamlined process to look at data across the entire company in a more seamless, scalable way.
Discover how Green Leaf Consulting Group’s strategic IT solutions can bring you growth through technology. Contact Neil McCole at neilm@greenleafgrp.com or (484) 535-4405.