One of the ever-present challenges facing the Workers' Compensation industry is managing and making sense of the massive and growing amounts of information generated throughout the bill review process. This challenge increases daily with the introduction of new publicly available data resources, cheaper ways to store all this information and new tools that enable new different ways to manipulate information. The vast potential created by new tools and more resources creates a great need to make sense of and efficiently leverage big data.

The advent of big data initially brought the promise of more data intelligence, with the breadth, depth and sheer quantity of available information. However, enterprises everywhere are struggling to incorporate the insights offered by data analysis into their business operations. The "bottom up" approach makes it difficult for organizations to know what to do with the information they cultivate. Instead, they should focus on the questions they need answers for to drive improvement. Starting with the business need in mind, businesses can collect and review information to make better business decisions.

A three-pronged approach to leveraging big data is needed, and to demonstrate this approach, we look at a common need within the insurance industry as an example: How insurers can enable adjusters to quickly identify fraudulent providers and positively affect customer care.