Business Intelligence in the Database Marketing – A Case Study of a German Insurance Company

Abstract

We perform a case study in order to analyze the BI practices of the database marketing departments of insurance companies and hone in on the challenges they face. More specifically, we take a look at the database marketing department of one of the biggest German insurance companies by executing three guided expert interviews and enhancing the information gathered through a document analysis. Among our findings regarding the department’s BI process are that the department collects customer data solely from internal sources and that the collected data is mainly analyzed through SQL queries. The department’s greatest challenges involve including internal and external data sources that are currently not used in their analyses, gathering and understanding all the data that the company already has — since it is stored in different database tables and in heterogenous formats across the company — and measuring the success of their BI activities.