With the insurance industry under pressure to improve efficiencies amid a changing financial landscape, many companies are achieving value through technologies such as cloud and advanced technology platforms.
Recent years have seen a notable shift from on-premises data management performed manually to automated solutions on the cloud. This has been found to enhance efficiency by leveraging data for enhanced insights. Cases show that technology has helped decrease finance closing periods by as much as 25 days, along with cost reductions of up to 50%.
Metrics such as cost savings, process efficiency, and advanced analytics underscore the need for quality data to drive effective decision-making and improve operational models.
How technology is helping insurers stay ahead of the curve
Major industry trends in insurance include the shift towards cloud, the adoption of new data ecosystems, and the importance of ESG. The cloud is an enabling technology across all aspects. The most effective deployments of the cloud enhance existing systems rather than replace them, leading to easier and improved internal and external integration.
In addition, data layer technologies enable the datasets to be leveraged efficiently. Combined with artificial intelligence (AI), data layer technologies can significantly speed up processes for insurance businesses.
Crucially, the growing volumes of data present opportunities for transparency of operations to measure and demonstrate progress in specific areas. For example, in ESG, it is possible to build trust with stakeholders by providing measurable insights that clearly show a commitment to key considerations.
Throughout all of this, the importance of interoperability cannot be understated. It is vital to manage increasingly complex and diverse IT ecosystems. Siloed data must be avoided to ensure a seamless workflow between different systems. A unified data model has many benefits, providing essential insights to drive further improvements in business processes. Data insights can also be used to transform the customer experience.
“One way that can deliver value rather than overhaul is increasing connectivity, smooth flow of data, and faster flow of intelligence within business operations,” explains Javier Gil, Global Insurance Industry Leader at SAP.
The benefits of AI for insurance businesses
The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) has been a major benefit for insurance businesses, streamlining processes and enhancing the customer experience to improve service delivery. AI can help to personalize customer interactions and better understand their requirements while predicting future needs through a 360-degree view of customers.
“You need to enrich the customer experience. We are helping to collect and analyze data, hence understanding the customer behavior to offer new added-value services,” says Gil.
“At the customer engagement, data plays an important role in evaluating customer needs and artificial intelligence helps take this interaction to a new broader dimension,” he adds.
Using AI and the cloud can upgrade processes, reduce costs, and increase efficiencies to deliver real-time insights through enhanced data analytics. Furthermore, the cloud and AI can free up resources within an organization increasing operational excellence and decreasing infrastructure costs. However, there must be a clearly defined purpose for deploying AI to avoid counterproductive outcomes and incurring unnecessary costs.
Enhanced data management for HR
In insurance, data can be used to optimize processes and make informed decisions. Enhanced data management and data analytics offer many internal advantages from a staffing and HR perspective. HR departments can establish a complete data profile for individual employees that reflects their contribution to a business and identifies areas for improvement.
Furthermore, data has a key role to play in enhancing employee satisfaction through increased transparency between the company and workers. Transparency of data makes objectives fairer based on real-time insights and increases the likelihood of buy-in from employees. Through the benefit of real-time analytics, staff can gain a clear understanding of where they are in terms of performance, and where they need to be.
Individual performance data can be used to establish KPIs to provide staff with realistic targets unique to their own capabilities. To meet objectives, training and development opportunities for employees can be customized to suit individual needs, personalizing career paths, and providing motivation to achieve goals.
“To retain the people, you need to understand how the person is feeling. What are their ambitions for their career path? What is the profile of the people you’re working with?” says Gil. “Data plays an important role in the evaluation and artificial intelligence is very much helping to enrich this interaction.”
The intelligent platform delivering value for insurers
SAP’s Business Technology Platform enables companies to adapt from on-premises to cloud solutions and standardize processes. Using the platform, customers can analyze their current systems and identify more efficient processes in moving towards the cloud. As more systems collect data, the platform can help deliver vital interoperability to ensure efficient data flow.
SAP applies a tailored approach to customers to allow them to transform their systems and processes.
“Let us analyze together the different processes you’re covering with the current systems, and what could be the potentially most efficient processes you could be deploying as you move towards the cloud,” says Gil.
An embedded AI Workbench within SAP’s Business Technology Platform offers advanced tools and frameworks for customers to create their bespoke AI use cases.
“Our Business Technology Platform offers you the framework, the tools to deploy Gen AI – what we call ‘the AI hub’. Based on that, you can create your own use cases and embed them in your processes leveraging operational excellence, gaining qualitative data insights, and enriching the user experience and function,” says Gil.
With more uses of data across a greater number of operations, robust protection is needed to ensure there are no breaches of sensitive information. Such a breach can seriously damage the reputation of a business. Such protection is provided through SAP’s Business Technology Platform.
To learn more about how SAP is enabling transformations in insurance, download the document below.
