Reference Data Management supports the world’s largest collection of medical claim and pharmaceutical data.
The Situation
The health insurance provider holds vast amounts of medical claim and pharmaceutical data. To help US claimants, they rely on up-to-date, accurate information to effectively help their stakeholders.
The client first operated with an in-house RDM system. However, the system was not supported by IT, and no new features were being added. The situation made the in-house data architect look for an off-the-shelf solution instead and choose Ataccama in the end.
From the start of the project to today, the insurance company had multiple sources of internal and external data. Post-implementation the difference is that all this data can be viewed and used in one place.
The Challenge
At the claim level, different parts of the company could not be sure the same information meant the same thing.
Any inaccurate data found would result in an expensive and time-consuming re-run of data processing and this was not ideal, but Data Governance was not yet ingrained within the organization.
The Solution
A needs assessment was undertaken that saw Ataccama evaluated against several other similar vendors, with only Ataccama fitting into the company's architecture and processes and meeting the entire list of requirements such as:
- Versioning
- Workflows
- Automated imports and exports
- Incorporate DQ
- Enterprise-wide solution
Having built-in data quality processes within RDM was seen as imperative. The company had to ensure that there weren’t six versions of, for instance, the ZIP code table and that the accuracy, completeness, and format of data are consistent across the entire organization.
The teams worked together to socialize the need for common reference data across the organization and sought to eliminate redundant third-party data subscriptions. Culturally this was hard to achieve at first but was made possible by a passionate senior business leader advocating for under-valued reference data and the transformational impact it could have.
The Future
Since first implementing Ataccama ONE back in 2014, the data management exercise and the team have grown in every way:
- From 223 to 325 tables
- From 1 data steward to 20
- From 4 supported applications to 28
The same team is still involved today and cites the stellar support Ataccama gave them as one of the reasons for their continued success and investment in data management.
