Reports Made Easy...For All

Some companies use BAs purely to access operational data and create monthly or ad hoc reports. This is where their SQL skills become valuable. One life and health insurer based in the south has more than 75 BAs whose sole purpose is to run reports. It may be a stretch to title them "business analysts." Certainly they need to understand enough about the data to ensure they are pulling and comparing the correct data fields, but do they actually interpret the factors affecting the business and develop strategies to impact outcomes? These should be among the key responsibilities of any BA.

Insurers have tools available today that produce dashboards that easily enable any business user to drill down to better understand what is impacting business results. Companies no longer need an army of BAs to run reports and queries against complex databases. Dashboards can be built in a day and can be customized to provide a high-level executive view in addition to a deeper dive that identifies which agent is falling short on sales for the month or which adjuster has the highest severity cases.

Dashboards allow business users to reclaim ownership of their data. In this updated operating model, the role of IT is evolving from data governance to data stewards. IT is responsible for managing data security and standardizing data definitions and sources to ensure that different dashboards produce the same results. That way, everyone comes up with the same number when responding to a question about sales, losses, or expenses.

How Deep Should You Dive?

Business dashboards eliminate the need for a BA to have IT skills. Therefore, the time has come for BAs to reside on the business side of the house. The BA should be someone with deep business experience who can help uncover the obscure factors that are driving business results.

On the sales side, which agents are selling to inappropriate customers or missing the target audience? In claims, to what extent is attorney representation impacting your outcomes? Perhaps there are certain body shops that appear cost-effective in the initial estimate but then total repair costs are the highest after paying for supplements. What strategies or process changes can be implemented to address each of these situations?

Only a business-side BA with an intimate knowledge of the process and interdependencies can offer suggestions and effective alternatives to address these types of business issues. Suggestions for process improvements that come from a business-side BA will have a great deal more credibility and likelihood of success (no one wants IT telling them how to run their business).

The Newest Member of Your Leadership Team

Companies that have embraced the concept of integrating BAs into the business side of their organizations are having trouble finding qualified BAs. This is mostly because they have not taken the time to modify the job classification and description for a BA in their HR systems. While a BA in IT may be worth $75,000, a business BA should be worth somewhere in the range of $135,000 to $150,000, as this individual has the potential to be one of your most influential resources.

Keep in mind that you are trying to attract experienced subject matter experts who are capable of convincing C-level officers of strategic changes that need to be made to impact results. These are people who are inquisitive and resourceful with the authority to modify dashboards to track newly discovered performance indicators. They will most likely be individuals who are promoted from within and who know your business inside-out. They should either originate from or become tactically astute members of your department's leadership team.

The days of using a BA to run operational reports are over. Granted, you still need operational reports, but assign that responsibility to someone with a more appropriate title -- something that sounds more techie, like "rule architect" or "data consolidator."

This article is the third in a series about leveraging analytics to improve business outcomes, claim efficiency, and customer service. The series of articles includes The Next Frontier: Straight-Through Claims Processing and Business Analytics Enable Better Leadership.