(US and Canada) Srinivasan Sankar, Enterprise Data & Analytics Leader, The Hanover Insurance Group, speaks with Robert Lutton, Vice President, Sandhill Consultants, about building talent, value delivery, and showcasing ROI of data analytics investment.

A traditional company, Hanover has a lot of legacy systems and a 50-to-60-year-old mainframe. In his initial years at the company, Sankar educated himself on modern data architecture, information architecture, and the available tools and technologies. 

He says it is important to identify people within teams who are interested in taking charge of new initiatives and are eager to perform R&D and look at tools and use them as business solutions. 

Unlike most industries, there is no manufacturing, supply chain, or inventory involved in insurance. Everything is based on information and data. It is about making smart risk decisions that translate into value. Sankar notes that this must be achieved within the budget guard rails and there is always value tied to the budget.

He says predictive analytics led to improvement in claims expenses, fraud, modeling, and triaging. Similarly, the number of analytics end-users increased along with improvement in employee experience. Concluding, he says that the three-to-five-year outlook for ROI is about six times the data and analytic investments.