I’ve been hanging out in Canada again, eh? Just last week, I snuck over the border to meet with some of our insurance customers in the Greater Toronto Area (affectionately known as “GTA”). This was my fifth trip this year and I’m pleased to say that not only have I mastered the language, but I have also learned how to get through passport control without getting whisked over to the dreaded immigration line (which happened once – I’ve never felt so guilty about nothing in my life). I think the red flag word is “consultant,” so don’t ever mention that if you’re traveling there on business.

I did a little tally this month and I’ve visited over 50 insurance companies across the US, Canada and Mexico over the past year. It’s been an amazing experience to work with these companies of all shapes and sizes, and all different lines of business. There are different cultural and geographic flavors as well – there are big differences in the organizational cultures and attitudes of insurers on the West coast compared to the East coast, or in the US compared to Canada.

Of all the companies I’ve spent time with, I’ve especially enjoyed working with the insurers in the GTA. What’s different about them? First, their market size is a little smaller than the insurers I typically work with in the US – on the property and casualty side, many of the insurers are under $2 billion in annual premium (as a point of reference, the largest US insurers bring in $25 billion and up annually). Their usage and maturity in the realm of predictive analytics is on par with the US for that market segment (i.e. lags behind the larger insurers). Based on my vast unscientific research, however, I have noticed a critical difference. Typically, when I visit a Canadian insurer, we meet with both the business and IT. Together...In the same room…At the same time…Making decisions…Imagine!!!

I actually hadn’t thought about the relevance of that until a colleague of mine asked me the other day about ways that we (SAS) can continue to help the business and IT have productive and meaningful conversations about business intelligence and analytics – there’s still a huge divide in many organizations. At my last meeting in GTA, we spent two hours with an executive team (encompassing several business functional areas and the technology group) discussing analytics. One of the follow ups from the meeting was going to be a deep (technical) dive on our insurance data model. The technology executive began inviting his business counterparts to this next meeting.

When we left their offices, the sales executive I was traveling with turned to me and said, “Maybe he shouldn’t have invited the business to that meeting – they’ll be bored.” I said, “No, inviting them is the best thing that could happen! Even if the topic is not completely interesting to them, they’ll appreciate being part of the process. Let the business people decide if the meeting is too “technical” or not.” This is a critical point – if the technology group makes a decision on their own because the topic is deemed too technical, then the business won’t have ownership in the outcome. How many times have you met business people who are upset with technologies that don’t meet their needs? I’ll bet you’ve heard this story zillions of times! On the other side, how many times have business people made bad technology decisions that IT has to live with (or disowns) – just as many.

Many companies could learn a lesson from my GTA friends – the business and technology groups should define a framework for making key technology decisions jointly. The business has a responsibility for articulating the business need, and the technology team has a responsibility for understanding that need and clearly setting expectations on managing the outcome of any technology purchasing decision. Find a common language that you both understand. Invite each other to meetings and share ideas and concerns. Make decisions together.