There's an insurance company CTO who is always happy to give me a few minutes of his time simply because it takes him away from the staff meeting on a data warehouse project. "It's like watching paint dry," he said. And that summarizes what data warehousing projects have going against them-long implementation times, little interest. Add to that a high failure rate-as high as 90 percent according to a 2000 report on data warehousing by Conning Insurance Research & Publications-and it's no wonder the data warehouse has long been the red-headed stepchild of most insurers' IT projects.
But data warehousing projectscan improve the odds of success by using technologies, tools, and lessons learned from those who have failed and those who have succeeded. "There are better technologies and approaches and there are more experienced people; there's definitely some promise," said Jack Gohsler, Conning's senior vice president.
So what does an insurer need to do? Interestingly, most deal not with issues of technology, but of personnel, management, and business practice.
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