Industry Reference Blueprint for Insurance
IRBI

Meta Model of the Industry Reference Blueprint for Insurance

What
A reference point for the insurance industry executives for allowing them to create a formal blueprint for their organization.

Why
Allows organizations to better manage the strategic, competitive, regulatory and social drivers and allowing predictable transformation.

How
Covers following five parts:

  • Introduction to leveraging blueprint approach to manage enterprise complexity
  • A reference business model of typical insurance organization
  • A set of information systems models for typical organization
  • A reference technology model to support the information systems
  • An approach for mapping the above three viewpoints to enable end-to-end visibility across the enterprise

 



Business Model:

The Business Model provides an organization’s decision makers with the schematic understanding necessary to properly make and justify decisions by providing the following:

 

  • Processes - ‘How’ the insurance organizations achieve their objectives
  • Locations - ‘Where’ the processes of an insurance organization are carried out
  • Roles - ‘Who’ participates in processes related to an insurance organization
  • Events - ‘When’ external events trigger processes in the organization
  • Information - ‘What’ data/content is used in the processes
  • Goals/Metrics - ‘Why’ insurance organizations do all the processes at different locations using so many roles and information while responding to various events

The above components of the business model can be referred as 5W’s and 1H of the enterprise. Knowledge of these 5W’s and 1H of Why, What, Who, Where, When and How; empower decision makers with the required context to make and justify their decisions.

Information Systems Model:

The Information Systems Model provides a logical grouping of information system components that are commonly deployed in an Insurance company. This section allows an organization to categories it’s existing assets and future needs of the information systems and map them to the business model and technology model for the required visibility in the strategic planning process. This model is comprised of two sub-models used to meet the information processing needs of an insurance organization.

 

Application Model
The Reference Application Stack provides a high-level grouping of system functions that support the business model. The reference application stack can be used be used for various purposes including:

  • Classifying application inventory of the enterprise
  • Mapping applications to the business model to produce traceability from applications to goals, process, roles, information, and events of the organization
  • Organize operational structure of the information technology department

The Logical Component Model provides a high level grouping of components that can be used to assemble the reference Application stack. The components group functionality in a way that is commonly observed while developing custom applications and also on how off the shelf components are commonly available in the market. It’s uses include:

  • Identifying the overlaps between various in-house and vendor applications that facilitate the reusability of components.
  • Producing a more precise mapping to the business model to identify capability gaps and drive the roadmaps with a consistent vocabulary and a visual representation

Information Model
Logical Information Model provides a high-level architecture leveraging the latest advances in technology in order to manage an organization’s data and allow for an analysis of its data. This model can be used as a guide to select technologies that can:

  • Provide operational, analytical and statistical reporting of data
  • Connect structured (RDBMS), semi- structured (like XML) and unstructured (like text, voice, documents) data to derive the maximum advantage of available data.
  • Enable the use of standard application technologies and also the latest technologies like ‘big data’ in one synchronized environment.

Conceptual Data Model provides a high-level taxonomy for organizing insurance data. This taxonomy can be used for driving various initiatives like:

  • Facilitating communication between various organizational units using a common representation on the page.
  • Identifying classifications of data used in systems & business process.
  • Driving master and reference data management initiatives.
  • Creating canonical, object, and database schemas.

Technology Model

The Technology Model presents logical groupings of technologies and tools used by the enterprise for the delivery of information systems. Given a constantly evolving technology landscape, managing its technology footprint is a constant challenge for most enterprises. The goal of the technology model is to enable an organization to catalog and manage this technology footprint. Managing the technology footprint involves cataloging technology in use and also the capability to determine value & priority of any technology changes in business value terms. Having a technology reference model solves the above needs of the enterprise.