US INSURER BUILDS STRATEGY TO MODERNIZE ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSE AND CREATE SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH
Since founding their business in 2016, a leading US specialty insurer had grown significantly—and the amount of data they needed to store and utilize had grown along with them. Their existing Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) needed to be scaled to their current operations.
Working with Endava would allow the insurer to understand how a modern EDW would help them meet future business needs, reduce manual effort, and improve data quality across the organization.
A strategy to scale operations
The existing EDW was created early into the insurer’s operations, and as the business grew, the EDW could no longer keep up with the volume of data, analysis, and reporting. Manual workloads had also increased, with most reporting and analysis taking place outside of the EDW.
The insurer’s main challenges included:
■ Creating a single source of truth for all data ■ Lack of control around data use ■ Scaling the EDW to accommodate current and future growth ■ Separating operational and analytical data ■ Securing deep technical expertise to support internal teams
Building the right plan
Endava took a two-pronged approach to solve the insurer’s challenges. First, we created a strategy to rectify issues with the existing EDW to scale for business needs, and then focused on minimizing the risk of the insurer being in a similar situation in the future.
The approach included:
■ Developing an extensible enterprise data model ■ Creating a plan to re-architect and redevelop the EDW onto Snowflake ■ Identifying opportunities for enterprise grade tools and components ■ Creating a full data governance model to scale with the insurer
“The insurer knew what was wrong but didn’t know how to fix it. Instead of approaching it as just an EDW project, Endava approached it strategically at the enterprise level to not only help them with their EDW, but also with the wider data framework and controls so they could minimize the risk that the current issues would reoccur in the future.” – Robert Anderson, Principal Industry Consultant
Ready to create a single source of truth
With the plan for a modern EDW in hand, the insurer has the components needed to create a single source of truth for all analytical data. The recommended tools would ensure that data is assessed at the point of ingestion, improving data quality and reducing manual workloads.
Overall, the recommended strategy will help achieve these key results:
■ Clear separation of analytical and operational data ■ Significantly reduced manual effort, especially with report creation ■ Fewer data quality issues ■ Clear traceability of decisions regarding data