Harford Mutual’s Data Management Overhaul Targets Analytics

By Sherree DeCovny

Harford Mutual, a Maryland-based property & casualty insurer, does not have a data warehouse, so its existing online transaction processing (OLTP) databases are used as the source for about 450 reports. At peak reporting times when all the online applications hit the same databases, the day-to-day transaction-based systems slow down significantly. To rectify this problem, the company has undertaken a project to implement the Insurance Analytic Framework (IAF) performance and data management solution from Moore Stephens.

According to Steve Fabian, head of IT at Harford Mutual, under the existing system of OLTP databases there are frequently data definition and standards issues that have to be addressed when reports are produced. Reconciliation problems occur where two reports may have the same title, but may display different values of the data because the algorithms may be calculated differently. Ideally when new reports are created, the same algorithms should be used to produce the various data elements requested on the reports.

In addition, there are no handy query tools for senior management or decision makers to do ad hoc what-if analyses. Whenever they need new reports or a new view of data, they have to make an IT request.

Moore Stephens’ IAF will remove the burden of producing reports and doing inquiries from the OLTP. This task will be shifted to a separate warehouse and a basic reporting cube that will have all the major data definitions and measures used on reports. To this end, the day-to-day transaction activity will no longer be impacted.

The users, requesters and decision makers will be able to access the IAF with familiar tools. Microsoft Excel integrates with the IAF and the cube structure, so they will be able to do their own querying and slicing and dicing of the data.

“I’m anticipating that I will get far fewer requests for ad hoc reporting and queries,” says Fabian.

Users also will have access to different geographic, historical and product dimensions. The measures Harford Mutual is calculating and storing in the IAF will be able to be viewed in multiple dimensions all the way down to specific agents so it will be possible to get a better handle on performance.

From a business management and decision-making perspective, Harford Mutual anticipates it will be able to do analytics and predictive modeling that it was not able to do in the past. For example, when investigating performance issues, it will be possible to drill down into the data in real-time to look at specific geographic regions or lines of business that might be under or over performing. Further, it can go down to the agent level to see if particular products are performing according to plan.

“It will add so many more capabilities for doing those analyses that we do not have now,” says Fabian.

Moore Stephens’ IAF fit in nicely with Harford Mutual’s infrastructure and architecture, which includes Microsoft Sequel Server databases. Since the IAF solution is not proprietary, the IT team is familiar with the technology. The company will be able to do its own troubleshooting, and any additional report development needed can be done against cubes. It will be able to convert reports it is producing today, and any new reports, from using the OLTP as the data source to the IAF cube.

One of the benefits of IAF is it can be integrated with various products. For instance, several graphics systems that produce charts, graphs and dashboards, as well as other business intelligence presentation tools, can easily access the IAF. This is important because Harford Mutual uses best-of-breed solutions that are a best fit in each area of the business.

“We can start with Excel, which is familiar to all the business units,” says Fabian. “Since Microsoft is diving heavily into the business intelligence presentation market, we might be able to leverage more Microsoft tools in the future.”

Harford Mutual started the IAF implementation in February 2009 and it is scheduled to go into production early in the fourth quarter 2009. Fabian notes that the relatively fast implementation is attributable to Moore Stephens’ expertise in the insurance industry.

“When we were going through requirements and data definitions, and customizing the cube and the IAF, it was refreshing to not have to explain insurance terms and industry key performance indicators,” he says. “That contributed to shortening the time frames for this project.”