Stopping the pain

The pain felt by BRI caused by data silos was a familiar one to Indonesia's fifth largest insurer, PT Asuransi Allianz Utama Indonesia (Allianz Indonesia). A joint venture with German insurance giant Allianz Aktiengesellschaft, the company, which provides a range of personal and corporate insurance products, operates seven branches and employs 200 staff.

In the late 90s, when Indonesian banks that faced difficulty in expanding started diversifying into insurance and brought in new products and new approaches, Allianz knew it was time to consider how to ensure its continued success in the face of increasing competition in an already dynamic industry. Recalls CIO Erwin Purwadarma: "It was difficult to innovate with insurance products. Take away price as a differentiator and you are left with customer experience as a critical way to stand out. If we could use the information we hold about customers' policies and their needs, we could improve our service to them."

Over the years, Allianz had collected loads of information about its customers but lacked the tools to use them to make better decisions. Purwadarma adds that an unexpected event like a large claim, or a request for an unusual type of insurance from a broker, could send these critical customers in search of a speedier response.

Unusual requests also exposed it to risks. It lacked the ability to quickly assess clients' past insurance histories and decide on suitable premiums as the information delivered to its customer service staff was not accurate or up-to-date. Since it did not know its customers' claim ratio, for example, it could be worried that by trying to serve them well it would be exposing itself to bad risks.

Too much data

To overcome these problems Allianz knew it needed to implement business intelligence (BI). Purwadarma was given a team of three people and a very short deadline. "I was told we needed to see results in one month." So he pioneered with Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) and Microsoft Premier Support Services (PSS) to build a strategic prototype of BI using Microsoft technology from design up to implementation.