Guest post by Robert Cummings, Head of Insurance Business Unit, SAP
Product suites will revolutionize the way insurers do business, supporting customers and making decisions clearer.
In the last 20 years, I’ve seen some fascinating changes in all global industries, but especially in insurance. Firms that used to be world leaders in technology have seen those legacy systems begin to weigh them down as the pressure to manage and make sense of the constant flood of data increases.
Now, though, the tide seems to be turning. Companies are slowly emerging from silo-based ways of working and moving towards structures in which all elements of their business are transparent and accessible to one another. Software suites offer solutions that deal with their data practically and logically, ensuring that no advantage or insight is lost. But what does this mean for a customer?
To simplify it hugely, it means that with all the different areas of a business talking to one another in the same language, with compatible data, making things work is easier than ever. There’s just much less in the way. There are three or four key benefits, though, that keep cropping up:
- Customer Intimacy. Getting a 360º view of your customer is only really possible when you combine sales, core systems, billing and more.
- Product agility. A suite makes integration a lot simpler, so you can go to market with new products faster than ever.
- Understanding the customer. With a full risk and profitability overview of the customer, you can turn a guess into an informed opinion.
- Simulation. You can quickly and safely answer fundamental business development and preparation questions, by being able to ask such questions as ‘what would my business look like if we applied a different model or if a certain event happened?’ and simulate that in real time (which is where our in-memory computing platform helps us).
It seems amazing to think that we are now, with a click of a mouse, able to come up with insights and reports that would once have taken days – or weeks – of work. With margins, product offerings and speed-to-market under more pressure, I really believe we will see the tide turn in the same way as we have seen in most other industries.
To learn more about we can help you with your business challenges please have a look at SAP's Solution Explorer for the Insurance Industry.
What do you think about the issues discussed here? Continue the conversation in the comments below and on Twitter @SAPforInsurance
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