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The Global Delivery Network helps alarge insurance company achieve highperformance by solving data challenges
Accenture InformationManagement Services
 
Business challenge
The client’s success hinges on itsability to provide a wide range of insurance and risk protection productsand services to suit customer needs.Despite steady growth and a positionas a frontrunner in the insuranceindustry, the company wished topursue an even more aggressiveand accelerated growth strategyto achieve high performance.One obstacle to growth was its legacyenterprise data warehousing technologyand practices. The insurance providerkept a cache of historical data in adistributed legacy environment, butdifferent technology platforms madeit difficult to conduct customer andproduct analyses across businesslines. This inability to assemble andsynthesize business data hamperedthe client’s capacity to respond tochanging customer needs.Inconsistent data warehousetechnology caused other problemsas well. Fragmented data storage jeopardized the insurance provider’ssystem scalability. Databasemaintenance was excessively difficultand time-consuming. And systeminstability meant support wasunreliable for their employee base.According to Accenture’s ongoingresearch into the characteristics of high-performance businesses and Accenture’smost recent survey of CIOs, the gapbetween business intelligencecapabilities and aspirations is commonto many organizations. Insuranceproviders, in particular, must manageenterprise information to effectivelyassess risk, competitively price productsand maintain a license to operate.Accenture’s experience within theinsurance industry shows that the gapcan be bridged through timely dataaccess and robust analytical capabilities.To improve its business intelligencecapabilities, the insurance providerembarked on an enterprise datawarehouse development effort forits personal insurance businesses.On this particular project, theinsurance provider partnered withAccenture Information ManagementServices and leveraged one of Accenture’s most innovative assets—the Accenture Global Delivery Network.Accenture Information ManagementServices specializes in harnessingclients’ data to enable them to bettermanage their business, interact withcustomers and make strategic,financial and operational decisions.
How Accenture helped
The insurance provider choseAccenture as its strategic outsourcingservice provider based on Accenture’sdeep insurance industry knowledge,specialization in delivering enterprise-wide information managementsolutions, advanced cost controlmeasures and experienced projectmanagement personnel.In addition to its knowledge andcapabilities, Accenture offered aninnovative risk-reward frameworkthat allowed both companies to haveshared accountability and shared riskin the outcome of the program. Sincethe client had not used externalresources before, this system gavethe client’s management and boardthe confidence to move forward.
The client is a leading property casualtyinsurer with diverse business lines, offeringa wide range of coverage in both personaland commercial settings, includingautomobile, homeowners, construction,small business, oil and gas, ocean marine,surety and management liability, globaltechnology and public-sector services.
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But what truly set the company onthe fast path to high performancewas Accenture’s cost-effective andscalable outsourcing capabilitiesavailable through the AccentureGlobal Delivery Network.Accenture’s mature network—consistingof more than 83,000 highly trainedprofessionals and more than 50 deliverycenters in 40 cities around the world—uses proven Accenture methods, toolsand metrics to proactively help cliententerprises and governments becomehigh-performance organizations thatconsistently outperform their toughestcompetitors. The Accenture GlobalDelivery Network excels at operationalexcellence in its delivery and sourcingapproach, which allows for universalconsistency, flexibility, and repeatableand predictable service quality tomeet the needs of each client, whilereducing risk.For this project, Accenture selectedits Delivery Centers in Mumbai andBangalore, India. Both centersoffered deeply skilled resources withexperience in the niche areas of datawarehousing and the developmentand delivery of complex informationtechnology projects, as well asAccenture Information ManagementServices resources who specializein business intelligence and datawarehouse solutions.Accenture’s charter was to:•Migrate and convert existingproperty data warehouses forrelated business functions intoan integrated, centralizedpersonal lines warehouse;•Create incremental, transactional-based updates from four operationalsource systems to the personal lineswarehouse using a standardizedExtract, Transform and Load (ETL) tool;•Provide project management andsystems analysis capabilities tothe client’s insurance businesstechnology group to effectivelymanage delivery and facilitateproject quality.Eighty percent of the Accentureproject team was based at the DeliveryCenters in Mumbai and Bangalore.These teams worked closely withAccenture colleagues at the client sitein the United States. The role of theAccenture onsite team was to workdirectly with the insurance provider
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“The Accenture Delivery Centers in Mumbai and Bangaloredemonstrated a solid understanding of the client’s datawarehouse conversion process. Using the resources fromour Global Delivery Network allowed us to deliver thebest possible product to our client. The quality of thedesign and development work provided by our teams inIndia and the US well exceeded the client’s expectations.”
Michael A. LucariniSenior Executive, Accentureduring the requirements gathering anddata profiling phases. At project peak,Accenture deployed 25 professionalsfrom the Delivery Center in Mumbaiand 11 from the Delivery Center inBangalore, along with five resourcesat the client site.The Accenture professionals fromMumbai and Bangalore re-engineeredthe existing applications and re-architected the data warehouseto provide optimal performance—reducing the daily cycle load timefrom 10 to two hours. The teamswere also responsible for the technicalarchitecture and design work.Accenture created a code utilityto automate the review process forchecking coding standards and bestpractices, which, in turn, reducedthe review time by 30 percent. Byundertaking rigorous review anddefect prevention measures duringthe design and build phase, Accenturedelivery center professionals facilitateda high coding accuracy rate of 95 to99 percent during system testing.Accenture also developed an exhaustivetesting strategy to help ensurecomplete test coverage. Skilled testingprofessionals created a testingautomation utility to reduce the systemtest cycle-one timeline by 50 percent.Simultaneous to this technicaleffort, Accenture delivery centerprofessionals worked to refine theclient’s data processes and projectstandards, and to increase theinsurance provider’s process maturityusing CMMI Level 5 processes. Thiseffort led to better schedule andbudget control, and enabled theAccenture teams to deliver the projectahead of schedule without riskingquality for the insurance provider’snew personal lines warehouse.
High performance delivered
Teaming with the client, Accenturecompleted the data warehouseconversion—including extensivetechnical architecture design, build,unit testing, assembly testing, systemtesting and implementation usinghigh-quality standards—a full 29 daysahead of schedule and 159 person-days under budget.The insurance provider’s decision totap the skilled resources, proven toolsand methodologies of the AccentureGlobal Delivery Network also resultedin a total operations cost saving of $1.3 million.The company is now positionedto dynamically grow its personalinsurance business through effectiveuse of the information in theenterprise data warehouse. Betterstorage and access to data givesthe organization’s managementteam improved analytical capabilitiesto assist with sophisticated peril-based pricing processes.In addition, the insurer can conductmore effective business intelligenceand customer segmentation analysis,supporting the need to create distinctcriteria for providing differentials inprice quotations. Access to key businessperformance metrics also has improvedthe client’s decision-making processes.Through the personal lines datawarehouse project and its strategicoutsourcing arrangement withAccenture, the insurance providerunleashed new growth opportunitiesand forged ahead on the path tohigh performance.
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