Managing Data Sprawl After Mergers & Acquisitions: A Guide for the Insurance Sector
Mergers & acquisitions in the insurance sector, and the wider BFSI industry, is often considered to be a key strategy for growth. While M&As can present you with the opportunity to gain new competencies and explore better opportunities, it is not completely devoid of challenges. Data sprawl, or the uncontrolled growth of data, is quite common in such scenarios. Proper strategizing is essential or else you might miss realizing the true value of data. In the following article, we are going to discuss some of the key challenges in managing data sprawl after mergers & acquisitions and how our SharePoint for Insurance can help.
Why is it Critical to Manage Data Sprawl After M&As?
So, why is it so important to manage data sprawl after M&As in the insurance sector? You can always take your time in creating a new data structure and organizing documents accordingly. Well, it is not that simple! Based on the size of the merger, you will need to manage several terabytes of data, and you need to do it right. Here are some of the reasons why it is critical to manage data sprawl after a merger or acquisition.
Regulatory Compliance: The insurance sector and its various verticals is heavily regulated. With unmanaged data sprawl, the risk of non-compliance shoots up! Scatterred or duplicated data will not meet regulatory, which might attract punitive actions from the authorities.
Operational Inefficiencies: Merging data between different organizations can lead to redundant and siloed information, which can cause delays in customer service and claims processing. If you want to keep the merged entity agile, then you need to ensure that it works with clean, consolidated, and easily accessible data.
Security Challenges: Data silos and mismanagement, which are natural consequences of data sprawls, are often vulnerable to security risks. Managing data sprawls effectively reduces the risk of data breaches and cybersecurity risks.
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Why Choose SharePoint Solutions for Insurance?
At Evolvous, we offer innovative SharePoint solutions for the financial services and insurance sectors. We believe that SharePoint is the ideal solution for insurance companies looking to manage data sprawl after mergers and acquisitions.
Here are some of the reasons why our SharePoint solutions for insurance are ideal in such scenarios:
- Easy Centralization of Data: With SharePoint you have a centralized platform to store, manage, and access documents from both the entities. You can consolidate policyholder documents, claims and financial records in a single, shared SharePoint repository.
- Metadata and Version Control: This makes it ideal for merged systems. With metadata and version control, you can standardize data across the organization, making it easier for everyone to track, find and manage key information. For example, you can tag claims documents with information like policy number, claim type, status, and anything else that you might want.
- Integration with Microsoft 365: SharePoint seamlessly integrates with commonly used Microsoft 365 tools such as Teams, Power Automate, Power BI, Dynamics 365 CRM, and the likes. This not only makes it easy for operations but also saves you significant costs as well.
Key Challenges and How Our SharePoint Solutions for Insurance Solve Them
As said before, managing data sprawls in mergers and acquisitions in the insurance sector can throw several challenges. At Evolvous, we develop specialized, case-specific solutions to solve the challenges. Let us look at some of the common challenges that you can encounter in such scenarios and how our team solve them using SharePoint capabilities:
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Data Duplication:
The Challenge: Mergers and acquisitions in the insurance sector often result in the duplication of key data, as two or more systems merge. Needless to say, this results in confusion. This might include policyholder information, claims records, and other financial information.
Our Solution: As SharePoint consultants, we can help you design a centralized document management system (DMS) that avoids duplication, by leveraging the deduplication and version control features of the platform. At the same time, we can also help you implement custom workflows to identify and eliminate duplicate data, establishing a single source of reliable data.
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Data Silos Across Multiple Systems
The Challenge: Different insurance companies involved in the M&A often have separate systems for storing critical data. After the M&A process is completed, this can lead to isolated data silos that might hinder data access and integration.
The Solution: To eliminate data silos, we help you to execute SharePoint migration from different systems to a single SharePoint destination. At the same time, we create custom APIs or use other custom-built data connectors to connect with other systems like CRM and ERP systems, data analysis platforms and more.
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Meeting Regulatory Compliance Requirements
The Challenge: The insurance sector is heavily regulated, and M&As increase the risk of non-compliance with regulatory standards. The risk increases if the data is spread across multiple platforms without proper security or audit controls.
The Solution: Our team of certified SharePoint partners help you to utilize the compliance features of SharePoint to ensure that all the data stored on the platform conforms to regulatory standards like GDPR, PIPL, HIPAA as well as local insurance standards. They also implement permission-based access controls and advanced-level encryption to secure sensitive information
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Inefficient Data Migration
The Challenge: When you are unifying two systems, you need to migrate massive volumes of unstructured data. Inefficient processes can lead to data loss, corruption, or downtime, which might cause serious disruptions to business operations.
The Solution: At Evolvous, we use tried-and-tested migration tools like Migration Accelerator, thanks to our partnership with Proventeq. In some cases, we also use custom PowerShell scripts to execute SharePoint migration with higher accuracy. We also plan and execute phased migration, complete with data validation that minimizes downtime and streamlines the process.
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Data Classification and Structuring
The Challenge: Data from the merged companies are often stored in various formats and often lacks a consistent structure. This makes it difficult to categorize, search, and retrieve valuable information.
The Solution: We help you to implement metadata and taxonomy structures within SharePoint. This makes it easier to classify and organize data systematically. Our dedicated team can also help you create custom content types, site columns, as well as managed metadata fields. This facilitates search and retrieval of the required documents.
Why Choose Evolvous and Our SharePoint Solutions for Insurance to Solve Data Sprawl?
Evolvous is a certified Microsoft Gold consultant with extensive experience solving data sprawl during mergers and acquisitions for insurance companies, as well as other scenarios. Here are some of the advantages that you get when you choose us:
Our Extensive Experience with the Insurance Sector: We have experience in working with some of the leading insurers in Canada, US and across the world. This makes us aware of the unique challenges facing the industry and the compliance codes that apply.
Our Innovative Solutions: As a certified SharePoint partner, we are known for our innovative solutions to solve some of the most complex challenges. This ensures simplicity and efficiency, and we get the desired performance from your systems.
Minimizing Downtime and Impact: Managing data sprawl can also lead to significant downtime, which can disrupt your operations. With our solutions, we try to ensure minimal downtime and reduce the chances of any detrimental impact on your operations.
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