Dealing with data overload An expert explains the complexities and opportunities in business technology, what’s available and what it can (and can’t) do By Lisa Woodley
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’ve spent most of my career spearheading, building and driving change with electronic insurance distribution platforms, as well as broker and insurer back office systems. With the advent of these and so many other technologies businesses are facing the problem of data overload. Just think about how much data your business collects and how many processes your staff execute each and every day: • Email • Text messages • Voice messages • Websites • Social media, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and the myriad of other platforms • Accounting systems • Policy management system • Claims management systems
• Customer relationship management (although some CRMs interlink and share data with the policy management system) • Data exchanges with insurers, funders, banks, surveyors, assessors, etc • Application forms, claim forms, contracts, invoices, policy schedules, word documents, PDFs… Over the years, I’ve seen new technologies help us better process and manage our data. Each generation of technology helps us process and manage our data more efficiently. But there is so much data now that it is becoming difficult to know what you have and how to use it effectively. This generation of technology includes “AI”, “machine learning”, “RPA” and “bots”. • What are they? • How can they help your business deal
with the volume of data • How do you measure the value they bring to your business? • What will be the impact on your business? So let’s first understand what some of them are:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Siri and Alexa are prime everyday examples of Artificial Intelligence. AI is a collection of many different technologies working together to enable machines to comprehend, act, and learn with human-like levels of intelligence. Maybe that’s why it seems as though everyone’s definition of artificial intelligence is different. Technologies like machine learning, image recognition and natural language processing are all part of the AI landscape.
insuranceNEWS
October/November 2020
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