Six tips for scalable impact
1. Understand the urgency
Consumer expectations
Being data-driven is never a goal in itself, which means it isn’t for Achmea either. It is, however, an important enabler, which you need to remain innovative and competitive in our rapidly changing world. Consumers are expecting more and more, and insurers have to meet their expectations by offering more and making their services easier, quicker, cheaper, more flexible and more personal, preferably all at the same time. We can keep up with consumer expectations with innovative business models and smarter customer interaction, e.g. by personalizing services or setting up an omnichannel environment. It is just as important to increase operational efficiency by introducing innovative internal processes and decision-making.
Societal role
Data are also becoming increasingly important for the societal role we play as a financial service provider. For example, the effects of climate change are something we will have to deal with together. By ethically processing data, we can help protect consumers from the impact of regional, national or even global events.
Nothing changes without urgency
All these factors have made digital transformation a necessity, while "becoming data-driven" has become a major theme that is intertwined with business strategy, rather than a separate project. Making this a necessity is essential: nothing changes without urgency.
2. Be aware of your corporate context
There’s no one size fits all approach for digital transformation. CDOs, CoEs or hub & spoke models simply don’t work for everyone. Besides, Achmea is a large company with different brands and units, resulting in different missions and purposes, which is yet another reason that a more bespoke approach would be better.
To be successful, an approach has to fit an organization’s structure, culture and corporate context. Achmea has started working with single sources of truth to ensure that everyone has access to the same, entirely reliable data. Culture and diversity have to be open for discussion at all levels, from the company level all the way down to the division and individual level. It is essential that we continue to keep this in mind in the program, our various initiatives and in governance.
3. Measure your status and progress
To measure is to know, and things are no different in our data and analytics program. Achmea and ORTEC conducted a baseline measurement in 2019 to determine the starting point and to chart progress. To perpetuate the success of the program, we developed our own Analytics Maturity Model (AMM), which is aligned with well-known models in the market, but is still entirely tailored to Achmea’s specific situation. This makes the model much more useful than a generic market alternative, as well as increasing employee satisfaction. It is now a company-wide standard used for setting goals and monitoring progress, and it is subjected to regular audits.
4. Integral roadmap for business & IT
A data-driven approach requires close collaboration between business and IT, as rather than playing a supporting role, IT is increasingly becoming a key part of the value chain. In many organizations, collaboration between business and IT is not all it can be, which is why aligning plans and making the IT roadmap even more value-driven is a topic of major interest for Achmea. The value of this initiative goes beyond the roadmap proper and extends to the constant dialogue about the roadmap: learning to understand each other, collaborating more closely, and thus making more and more impact together.
5. Think big, act small
For ORTEC and Achmea, data are a means to create strategic value, and we want data to be a key part of both long-term strategy and day-to-day operations. Within the program, we therefore focus both on establishing a long-term strategy and on earning short-cycle wins. In three-month plateaus, we work on achievable goals and deliver valuable products. We then share our successes for a full month, while planning for the next plateau.
These achievable steps include, for example, launching new models (innovation), as well as making minor advances in terms of steps in analytics maturity (capability). This can involve adding new generic data roles in the organization’s job matrix, launching a new data training session or designing an improved approach, enabling Achmea to gradually transform into an organization that stands out in a competitive market.
6. Share your successes
Sharing successes is important to keep the momentum going, as well as ensuring that employees do not have to reinvent the wheel time and time again and can actually accelerate and escalate the transformation process instead.
At Achmea, deliberately sharing successes and lessons learned at different levels has proven to work a treat. As part of this flexible approach, success stories can be adapted to each layer’s needs: from management to the data teams. For the data teams, one of the program’s biggest successes has been the launch of a data community. This community now has more than 150 members and is run by a group of ambassadors from different divisions and branches who share successes and challenges and ask each other questions. On "Project Friday," they give each other tips and work together on inspiring, fun assignments.
Sharing successes sheds light on opportunities. Many verticals are facing the same challenges. By joining forces across the organization, roadblocks can be more easily removed, enabling Achmea to truly make more scalable impact.
And we’ve only just gotten started...
In this article, we’ve shared six of our lessons learned, but they’re just a small selection of everything that Achmea and ORTEC have done, accomplished and learned together. And we still have a long way to go. The journey we have embarked on together will only grow bigger and get more inspiring. Achmea remains committed to its own analytics maturity. Not as an end in itself, but as an important enabler for achieving strategic goals and fulfilling our role in society.
This interview is conducted by Arjan Gras, interviewer.
