If you work in the London Insurance market, you will know that Blueprint Two is the hot topic of conversation right now. At ActiveOps we’ve already written one blog on the subject, talking about how our AI-driven Decision Intelligence platform can help organizations like yours manage the Blueprint Two transition.
In this blog, we’re taking a bit of a deeper look at exactly how Decision Intelligence can help you understand the current state of your operations, so you can make a plan to get from where you are now to where you want to be once Blueprint Two Phase one – or any other transformation projects you have going on – goes live.
How much do you know about your operations?
In any operations – whether it’s in insurance, finance, or even healthcare organizations – there are some common challenges that make it difficult for operations leaders to get a clear picture of their operations.
Challenge 1: no consistency
Many operations will find that different departments, or even teams within those departments, do things their own way. That could mean:
- They use different systems to capture productivity and capacity data – or don’t capture it at all.
- They define or calculate productivity in different ways – or don’t calculate it at all.
- They use different processes to gather and report that data
On top of this, that data is often siloed across the business. It all makes it incredibly hard to get a common view of information like productivity, work in progress, utilization or capacity across the organization. Comparisons between departments and teams are difficult, making it hard to identify where you might have hidden capacity or overworked teams.
Challenge 2: old data
Recent research conducted by ActiveOps into Financial services and healthcare organizations revealed that, on average, organizations are making decisions based on data that’s two weeks old. Only 10% of our respondents had access to real-time data. There’s no reason to suspect that the same isn’t true in insurance operations too.
Working off old data can be a symptom of a few things:
- It might be that your processes are labor-intensive, with lots of manual data entry at the end of a day or even a week. If your teams are reporting on work completed on a weekly basis, there’s no way you’ll be able to see what’s happening in real time.
- It might also be reflective of your ability to derive insights from data. Lots of organizations have large amounts of operational data – so much so that their managers struggle to make sense of it all in a timely manner.
Whatever the reason, with the pace of business as it is today, basing your decisions off old data is a risk.
Challenge 3: understanding your skillsets
Quite apart from the information about the work, understanding your current position also involves getting information about your people and what they can do. Blueprint Two will transform a wide range of processes and introduce new technologies to your operations. You need to know who has the skills to take on new types of work, or to switch to different types of work.
The problem is that skills matrices are still something of a rarity in operations, and those that do exist are often out of date as soon as they’re created due to the complexities of maintaining them. As a result, managers’ perceptions about skills in their teams dominate thinking, which can lead to mistakes when you plan out how work will get done.
Enter Decision Intelligence
At ActiveOps we’ve been championing the use of Decision Intelligence to transform operations management. Decision Intelligence is the use of high-quality and real-time data to make better decisions, faster – and our Decision Intelligence platform is the foundation of how we help organizations. Here’s how it works:
1: operations data goes in
We work with you to identify every source of relevant operational data across your business, and feed it into our platform. That could be via an API, or another automation process. Doing this makes sure that you’re capturing every piece of work that your team is doing, and brings and end to data silos – whether the silo is departmental or due to different methods of capturing data.
2: data is converted to a single view
Something that makes our platform special is that it gives you a single view of work and time across the whole operation. You can drill down into specific teams or even employees, and make meaningful comparisons across them all. In the context of Blueprint Two, this lets you see which teams are overworked and whether any are underworked – vital information when you are planning how to train teams on new systems or processes.
3: our data model makes the data relevant for ops
Based on our experience in operations management, or platform aggregates and converts the data into the metrics that ops leaders like you need to see. No more sifting through spreadsheets to get to the picture of your operations – our platform delivers it for you, instantly.
4: real-time metrics
No more working with data that’s days or weeks old. You can see how your operations are performing right now – making sure any plans you make for Blueprint Two will be as effective as can be.
5: AOM inside
The Active Operations Management methodology is more useful for further down the Blueprint Two journey, as we’ll see in future blogs. For now, though, it gives you the foundation for data-led operations management, which is crucial for both navigating change and continuous optimization of your operations.
6: blending AI and human intelligence
All the data the platform has taken in, processed, aggregated and analyzed is presented to you through powerful AI tools trained using our 20+ years’ experience in operations management. That means that you see the insights that matter to you when trying to understand your current operations model, and you get intelligent tools to interrogate that data and gain deep understanding, fast.
For the whole Blueprint Two journey
Our platform gives you access to Decision Intelligence that provides an instant snapshot of your operations. That allows you to:
- See what everyone in your operation is working on, giving you an accurate picture of all the tasks and activities that happen in your operations.
- Identify which work is interdependent.
- See what skills exist in your organization ahead of your Blueprint Two change journey.
This intelligence gives you a firm foundation for your Blueprint Two plans, making it more likely that your plans will succeed. And, as we’ll discuss in our next blog, Decision Intelligence can make the transformation journey smoother and more effective as well.
If you’re interested in learning more about how ActiveOps’ Decision Intelligence platform can help you get your plans for Blueprint Two off on the right foot, click below to visit our landing page for specialty commercial insurance organizations.
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