Business Intelligence - Battlecard - Insurance

Business Intelligence in Insurance

BI Market Trends / PositionA market in transitionThe BI market is moving from consolidation to expansion. BI continues to be at the center of information-driven initiatives in organizations. We expect faster category growth [through] 2013 as companies make catch-up investments as they come out of the deep 2008-2009 recession. (Dan Sommer, analyst) BI has been the #1 CIO priority five years running and is now seen as Mission Critical. As BI evolves, it is moving from a siloed, complicated and IT-owned model to an integrated, flexible, collaborative, business-owned model.Market dynamics among mega-vendors Massive mega-vendors investing in BI. Competitors are leading with vertical, analytical and ERP/CRM applications. Many now align full stacks of hardware and software appliances. Consumerization of IT plays out in BI with increasingly competitive mobile BI strategies, investment in intuitive interfaces, and buying decisions driven by end user experiences. In-memory going main stream. BI increasingly being bought as part of infrastructure. Increasingly well developed big data strategies.Microsofts Position A Magic Quadrant BI LeaderMicrosoft has held a solid position in the Leaders Quadrant of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms since 2008, with customers rating it above average across many key satisfaction metrics due to an attractive set of BI capabilities, packaging across Microsofts most ubiquitous products, and pricing.Other key Microsoft differentiators Best Value and TCO lowest cost entry point for BI (triggering viral adoption). One Admin Experience BI managed along with other major workloads (collaboration, search, sites, etc.). Managed Self-Service BI balanced proposition for both IW creativity and IT oversight strong end user capabilities with PowerPivot connected to IT managed data sources. Complete stack both self-service and corporate. Alignment with Office and SharePoint. Vertipaq the best in-memory BI engine in the industry. Strong emotional connection with users.Microsoft BI Value PillarsEmpowering Decision Makers The ability to create, access, and share business insights to effectively empower decision makers, while keeping BI ownership within the business, rather than the IT departmentKey benefits:Self Service: Empower all users to discover and manage their aspect of the business with the right information using familiar tools to create, analyze, and share facts. This can be done with minimal IT support, thus decreasing the time and effort required to make informed decisions. Work with Structured and Unstructured Information: Easily find and work with structured and unstructured information mashed up within the same environment.Share and Collaborate: Create and share critical business intelligence among colleagues and departments using familiar tools like Excel, Word, Visio, and web browsers. These tools make it easier to find and discover information, and significantly increase the velocity of information sharing. Improving Organizational EffectivenessAccess to the right information to translate strategy into accountability and driving improved organizational effectivenessKey benefits:Accountability: Manage, drive and define organizational success by aligning to key metrics and strategy with a single version of the truth.Transparency: Providing trusted access to the right information to the right people at the right time enables a consistent view across all business applications and data sources. This increased transparency allows companies to identify, isolate, and correct problems to drive better performance. Discoverability: Provide users with the ability to find the right information across all data sources and content types when and where they need it.Enabling IT EfficiencyEnabling the IT Department to create and maintain the infrastructure to effectively drive BI for the entire organizationKey benefits:Enterprise-Ready Platform: Scale up and scale out with a highly available, secure, and interoperable platform with a unified architecture, inside and outside the firewall.Robust Infrastructure Investments: Ensure performance and increase reliability with powerful system management tools and features. Reduce downtime-related costs with a resilient platform at all levels through database, application and web servers. Increased Developer Effectiveness: Easily create applications from a single development platform to meet changing business requirements. Reduce development costs through comprehensive out-of-the-box familiar components to reduce learning curves and development time. Additional benefits of Microsoft BI: Heterogeneous Connectivity connect to data across your heterogeneous environment (not just for SQL Server shops) with an industry leading ETL Tool. Data Integration and Data Quality integrate data and ensure data quality across your organization. Data Staging and Modeling prepare data and build models for end-user access with an industry leading OLAP tool. Insight and Oversight gain visibility and manage end user created content, allowing IT to scale and reduce backlog. Seamless Scale and Pervasiveness scale from the desktop to the datacenter with Vertipaq in-memory column store. Frictionless Deployment simplified deployment on-premise (via SSBI Appliance) and in the cloud (via O365).BI Competitive LandscapeSummaryThe competitive landscape includes BI mega-vendors and a number of fast growing niche vendors. However, none currently offer a solution that fully addresses all (organizational, end user, and IT) needs.Mega-vendors Mega-vendors continue to control market share, despite chronic customer dissatisfaction, by selling the stack into their installed base. They are slowly embracing business user needs by empowering them with the ability to model, navigate & visualize data. Tighter enterprise app processing and vertical integration within their information infrastructure stacks are current selling strategies. These traditional BI platform vendors are also offering data discovery alternatives. Microsoft is showing the most market traction and promise in this arena. Outside of IBM, SAP, and Oracle, SAS, Information Builders, and MicroStrategy hold leader positions in the Magic Quadrant for BI this year.Implications for MicrosoftStrengths: Tight integration with SharePoint means easy administration. Extreme scaling with SQL Server (to hundreds of TBs). Most advanced BI engine in the industry SSAS supporting UDM & BISM Central admin experience BI managed with other major workloads. OLAP strength large install base of satisfied customers. Uses the tools IWs are most familiar with its all in Excel. Microsofts strong brand as a business productivity platform.Weaknesses: Competition is out-investing Microsoft by 4-6 times. Niche players such as Qliktech or Tableau are gaining traction in industry verticals. Competition is ahead of Microsoft for mobile BI.Niche vendors Emerging competitors have established strong departmental footholds. Data Discovery tool vendors QlikTech, Tibco Software (Spotfire), and Tableau are in the Magic Quadrant but Advizor, Lyzasoft, and Endeca are competitors to watch as well. Solid niche vendors to keep an eye on include Arcoplan, Salient, and Corda.Win strategiesSelling approaches Platform-based Selling: Sell BI with Office EA renewals and SharePoint E-CAL deals. Project-based Selling: Sell Microsoft BI with SQL Server DW Surround existing applications/ databases with BI (incl. SAP, Oracle, Teradata). Side Stepping competitive discussions by showing how BI integrates with their existing investments in Microsoft infrastructure (Office, SharePoint)Position Microsoft BI as: The only solution that is truly focused on both End User and IT audiences - enables end user agility through Self Service BI while continuing to provide IT with control and visibility of end user created assets. Cost effective with a cost profile initially similar to SaaS vendors and closer to open source vendors in third and fifth year license cost comparisons. Uniquely positioned to reach information workers (a recent InformationWeek survey showed that Microsoft BI Products are the most widely used, have the highest planned usage, and is the most evaluated BI Product in the industry).Succeeding against IBM, Oracle, SAP Message to TDMs and IT about: TCO (including migration, licensing, and maintenance) being multiple times more costly with other vendors by leveraging existing Microsoft investments, particularly if they own Excel, SQL Server, and SharePoint. Broad connectivity and interoperation with third party data sources. Managed self-service. Argue lower TCO Message to business users about: Cube-less in-memory exploration with minimum IT reliance. PowerPivot (pilot Microsoft BI stack in small projects to prove story). Leverage planning and data mining partners and those with competitor migration experience. Further BI compete materials: http://infopedia/Pages/Microsoft-Business-Intelligence-Competitors.aspxHighlight BI agility & control Built to work across heterogeneous data sources (and not just for Microsoft or SQL Server shops). Provides best in class tools and technologies for ETL, OLAP and Collaboration (without charging separately for these capabilities as other vendors do).Analyst & Customer EvidenceAnalyst perspective (Gartner Jan. 2011)Microsoft is the only vendor that has been deeply focused on solving for both of these audiences, be it the IT Professional via products such as SQL Server and SharePoint Server, or End Users via capabilities delivered through Excel. (Gartner 1) Customer evidence Best in class Data Access, ETL and OLAP tools enabled Mediterranean Shipping Company to build Mission Critical systems on the Microsoft BI Platform. Microsoft enabled a Traditional BI customer, Mediterranean Shipping Company, to transition to empowering its end users with Self Service BI while freeing up IT bandwidth to prioritize other projects.