Mutual & Federal cuts time to intelligence

Mutual & Federal (M&F) is part of the Old Mutual Group and one of South Africa’s leading insurance companies. M&F created a Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC) to help deliver to the organization a single version of the truth and to cut time to intelligence by combining software development and business skills.

Enterprisewide BI processes
M&F serves the personal, commercial and corporate markets in South Africa and neighboring countries. It reaches the market through brokers, who offer clients personal service and advice when purchasing policies and practical assistance in the event of a claim.

In 2003, M&F embarked on a strategic programme together with SAS to implement an enterprisewide management information system (MIS) using SAS Insurance Intelligence Solutions. Ownership for this initiative resided at the top executive level: The project management board met every month to monitor progress. Members all came from the general management team, representing the organization’s business units. The first deliverable was to implement a data warehouse. During the first phase of the project, M&F realized that it needed a sustainable structure to promote the use of business intelligence across the organization. This was a new concept for M&F, but senior management gave it formal status as a Business Intelligence Competence Center  (BICC) – a department outside of IT – in October 2005. It now has 17 members, split roughly between business and technology experts, reflecting its position as a bridge between the IT function, actuaries and business services such as marketing.

The primary objective for the BICC is to achieve “one single version of the truth” across all reporting mechanisms by transforming data into reliable and consistent knowledge, thereby enabling decision makers to make effective and informed decisions with greater confidence. The pooling of business, information technology (IT) and analytical skills into one department is essential in pursuing this objective. Only with a central BICC department can M&F be sure that it achieves standardized BI processes across the enterprise.

“We found that we are in a position to deliver information to the end-users more quickly and efficiently with a BICC than previously,” says Anne Ulyate, Manager of Group Intelligence at M&F. The BICC is delivering value by cutting the time to intelligence: “For example, reports that used to take staff about two weeks to compile can now be done with the click of a button …. The time saved can be spent writing new business,” says Ulyate.

The BICC provides training and user support plus expertise in data acquisition, advanced analytics and integration development whenever required. SAS was instrumental in helping M&F define its BI strategy and set up the BICC, while a firm of consultants handled change management.

“The value of a central BICC is that when you have developers and business analysts working together in the same department, each learns the other’s skills and discipline, which ultimately reduces the time to intelligence,” says Ulyate.

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