How Data Governance is Happening at McKesson, Swiss Re, Kite, FINRA, and NCBA

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Data governance is rapidly becoming the glue that holds businesses together. Get this right and your business can unlock a host of opportunities.

We are living through an era of big data. In the space of a few years, digital technology has triggered an explosion in the amount of data businesses are processing. That data has enormous value and is being used to power insights, improve services and to underpin a wide range of business innovations, but only if companies can capture it, sort it and use it.

Here are several case studies of companies working with providers on data governance solutions:

Medical: McKesson

In the modern world of medicine, things are moving quickly. Consumers are more demanding and expect prescriptions and services to be delivered quickly and with the highest possible quality of service.

“The consumer expectations are changing,” says Andy Zitney, CTO, McKesson. “The expectation of the customer is real-time, always available in your hands. We need to change the architecture to meet those consumer expectations. The current environment does not allow that.”

That led them toward hybrid cloud architecture and Google Cloud. The first thing they had to focus on was protecting customer data. The cloud eliminates much of their overhead and allows them to deploy more of their resources to above-the-line processes that deliver value to their clients.

The cloud gives them all their data and a complete cycle from pharmaceutical companies and medial equipment manufacturers to the patient. That data can now be accessed and put to use to inform decisions, develop services, and help add more value to customers. It results in a better quality of health care, which in turn, leads to healthier patients.

Risk management: Swiss Re

As a company that provides risk management solutions to corporations, data management is crucial at Swiss Re. However, their legacy data management solution was inefficient and made it more difficult to understand the relationships between the customers and brokers. Data was opaque, making it challenging to identify new opportunities.

They wanted to analyze their data in one intuitive system that could be integrated into their native applications.

They created a new XEM system using Azure, Azure Databricks, and Azure machine learning (ML) to create an end-to-end system that could aggregate information, provide relationship insights, and deliver contact-level details to relevant users.

The result has been “transformational in addressing the inverse relationship we had with ‘data in’ versus ‘value out’ for our users,” says Paul Fitzgerald, global head of customer and distribution steering, Swiss Re.

Banking: NCBA

East African financial services organization NCBA has embraced digital technology to serve its 32 million global customers. However, its sales process was comparatively antiquated. Data was segmented and patchy, making it difficult to deliver a first-class customer service. 

“We wanted to engage with customers in a personalized way that would be relevant to them, to ensure that they remained with the bank for the long-term,” says Joseph Githinji, customer value management strategist for the consumer, digital business, NCBA.

“Oracle emerged as a leader in providing personalized marketing and customer experience that could help us achieve the customer longevity we were looking for and get a greater return on our marketing investment,” Githinji says.

To meet this challenge, they adopted multiple customer experience platforms, including Oracle Responsys Campaign Management, Oracle Infinity Behavioral Intelligence, and Oracle Data Management Platform.

These applications have enabled the bank to track the customer journey from start to finish, gain insights into customer behavior, and drive improvements for individual clients. Having gained control of its data, it now delivers a high level of personalized service for all its customers.

Agriculture: Kite 

As a leading provider of support solutions to the agriculture industry, Kite wanted to develop new solutions to improve the value they could offer farmers and businesses using their services. To do so, they turned to SAP to create digital data management solutions that could help farmers track key data and maximize their profits.

The result is an IT platform that collects, analyzes, and shares data. It brings everything together in a clear graphical presentation. With just a few clicks, farmers can see all the key data relating to every square feet of their land.

Farmers can see how their land is being used and maximize profits from every part of their operations. Having all this data filtered and presented in a manageable way, provides insights that can inform decision making and optimize the performance of their operations.

“With the help of SAP, we have data and analysis to help make customers’ farming systems more profitable and sustainable,’ says Leventa Szabo, CEO, Kite.

Finance: Financial Industry Regulatory Authority

The financial industry is harnessing digital technology to deliver transformative services, and financial regulators are doing the same to keep pace. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) turned to AWS to help it manage billions of transactions and offer next-generation oversight for the next era in the financial industry.

They receive billions of records every day. By migrating to the cloud, they were able to automate this process, enabling analysts to query vast quantities of data sets and improve their ability to monitor what’s happening in the markets.

In addition, they were also looking for a more cost-effective solution that could react to changing data volumes. Data volumes can expand and contract dramatically during the day. They wanted a system that could move to match real-time demand, ensuring they always had as much capacity as they needed.