| |March 20208DERIVING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE FROM DATA AND ANALYTICSBy Greg Firestone, Vice President - Data Science, AllstateAllstate offers an extensive batch of protection products through multiple brands and diverse distribution channels that includes auto, home, life and other insurance. I t's no secret that companies across all business sectors are investing heavily in data and analytics. The rapidly accelerating trend will pay future dividends in the form of in-creased efficiency, new products, in-novative customer experiences, and more. According to a recent study, 53 percent of companies were using big data analytics in 2017, up from 17 percent just two years before.Allstate recognized the value of data and analytics long before it was a widely established norm. In 1939, we became the first insurer to tailor auto rates by age, mileage and car usage--all key data elements still used in pricing today. Since then, Allstate has stra-tegically accelerated transformation across the en-terprise by researching and applying advancements in big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and proactive personalization to business opportunities.Over the last few years, we've invested heavily in our data and analytics capabilities, including bring-ing in new talent, developing technology to enable our analytics solutions and building programs to cre-ate a data-driven culture across the company.Deriving competitive advantage from data and analytics is not just about raw talent horsepower--it's about successful execution achieved through ef-fective partnerships between analytics and business teams, coupled with strong leadership endorsement. Leadership support and buy-in is what makes execu-tion happen, and will allow those companies who are doing it well to pull ahead of their competitors.A robust, multi-faceted approach to developing the data and analytic function at Allstate support-ed the formation of these partnerships. For exam-ple, we hired business consultants, project manag-ers, and communications experts to support data science teams and demonstrate the potential of their findings. This, coupled with clear alignment to busi-ness goals helped us fully leverage data and analyt-ic capabilities to influence business decisions at the ground level. Most importantly, we've made large investments in our people through training and development programs.We're already beginning to see our work have an impact on the business, all because of a close partner-ship between our team and the business partners we support. Examples of tangible business impact include retention-improving customer experiences built upon expert opinion
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