The connected home is getting more connected, with Gartner predicating that a typical family home could contain more than 500 smart devices by 2022. Connected energy and security systems, along with smart appliances, are all making home life more comfortable, efficient, and secure. Plus, homeowners are experiencing greater peace of mind, as they easily can control and manage their household systems while at home or away from their mobile devices.
But what about the insurance carriers that protect those homes? For them, the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart devices bring new opportunities for revenue growth, increased customer loyalty, and competitive differentiation. But along with these benefits come a few challenges that require a whole new approach to business.
Internal operations: Greater efficiencies and accuracy
Let’s look at the opportunities first. Thanks to the IoT, new intelligent insights can improve internal insurance operations, with benefits such as more intelligent risk assessment, greater accuracy in premium calculation, and faster and more efficient claims processing.
Intelligence from the connected home also provides insurers with the opportunity to create other value-added services. Real-time personalized products based on detailed information about usage, behaviors, and location can be created to make customers’ lives easier. And new services can be offered in combination with a network of trusted service providers and retailers to extend customer loyalty even further.
The road to more intelligent insurance
On the challenge side of things, insurers may need to adopt a business model that includes smart insurance solutions. To fully take advantage of the intelligence generated from a smart home, they will need solutions that improve customer engagement, core operations, and overall finance processes.
Innovative solutions from SAP in Big Data, analytics, mobile technology, and cloud computing allow insurers to modernize processes and transform operations. Using these technologies, insurers can streamline operations and improve productivity, agility, and service while controlling cost and risk.
Here are a few of the offerings from SAP that insurers can take advantage of:
- The SAP HANA platform leverages in-memory computing and powerful, scalable analytics to effectively manage, process, and analyze data from disparate sources and enable real-time decision making.
- Mobile technology solutions from SAP empower agents and brokers to productively engage with customers anytime, anywhere and give customers immediate access to payments, claims status, and policy information.
- SAP HANA Cloud Platform enables customers to build new apps or extend and customize existing ones with managed and subscription-based services. Cloud solutions from SAP provide the ability to move nonstrategic functions onto low-cost and low-risk platforms while helping to ensure security and integration across enterprise-wide business processes.
- For enhanced customer experiences, SAP Hybris Customer Experience, SAP Hybris Marketing, and SAP Hybris Commerce software provide insurers with a comprehensive customer-centric toolbox. With these innovative applications, insurers can not only offer existing customers a better user experience, but they can also use Big Data to find and attract new customers as well.
- In addition, with SAP Fiori user experience (UX), people can have a personalized, responsive, and modern experience with SAP solutions across all devices and applications.
For insurers that want to make the most of the IoT and the connected home, SAP offers a co-innovation model that can help kick-start a smart insurance solution. This initiative includes a design thinking workshop for business innovation that will help insurers explore the broad potential of the IoT and smart devices. For instance, working with SAP services, an insurer could create and test a product in a specific market segment and then expand its offerings from there.
To achieve greater operational efficiency and enhanced customer engagement, kick start your program today by visiting http://discover.sap.com/digital-insurance. Also, please check out our connected home video demo.
You can follow me on Twitter @Karsten_Fiolka to keep up with the latest innovations in smart insurance solutions.
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