Big Data and Banjo Make the Perfect Pair
Thanks to the freedoms afforded by the 10th amendment, states are free to govern themselves. And regulations abound from state-to-state dictating how insurance agencies must communicate with their insured customers—both online and by mail. It’s no surprise that communicating in this environment is a daunting and complex task. Especially with millions of customers.
American Access Casualty Company (AACC) had that exact problem. A problem made worse by the fact that their traditional partners couldn’t solve it in a scalable way. Thankfully, our print automation tool, Banjo, is in no way traditional.
Initially, AACC was very skeptical that we could handle the complexity of the state-specific regulatory data variability. Especially given that the daily volume of mail was anywhere from 20,000 – 50,000 records. They had been trying for a few years with another partner and had not achieved the level of success required by the business.
Because of that experience, AACC moved slowly and deliberately. They put Banjo through its paces–testing it against their most complicated data and mailing scenarios. In the end, we proved we were up to the challenge. That’s when the real fun started.
Because of the sheer volume and complexity of the project, our Software Engineering team spearheaded the project. Engineers are great stewards of the unknown: gathering requirements to fill in any gaps, pondering all aspects of possibility, and narrowing the cone of uncertainty until as much of everything is known about the project as can possibly be known. In the same vein, engineers are notorious for their Agile methodologies and can adapt quickly to meet changing expectations along the way.
Ultimately, our team customized AACC’s Banjo instance to meet their very specific business requirements. We worked in conjunction with the AACC IT department to develop the metrics, alerts, and escalation paths to ensure the system’s operability.
In a world where the Big Data wave has crested, you must focus on unlocking the true potential of your organization’s data. You can continue building all the data warehouses and business intelligence dashboards you want, but if your investment stops at the harvesting or insight stage, you’re not capitalizing on it. Put simply, knowing more about your customers should ultimately provide them a more productive experience with your brand.
Today, AACC runs like a well-oiled machine. We send over 15,000 pieces of personalized direct mail daily across five states, each with unique rules and regulations. And we’ve programmed over 50 different templates to ensure that AACC’s forms are customized to each recipient in both Spanish and English.
“Our previous vendor was incapable of handling the complexity of our most important business requirements nor was it able to manage the volume effectively. Not only did the Banjo team demonstrate, within a matter of days, that they could meet our requirements, they also gave us ideas for improving our processes and enhancing our product value.”
John Finucane
Underwriting Manager, American Access Casualty Company