As part of our focused drive to transform actuarial performance, we’ve been advocating that transformation should be approached as an incremental cycle of small, well-defined phases that release capacity and add measurable value to the process. This will not only achieve true efficiency and cost savings but will also generate the all-important change momentum.
In our APM Industry Benchmark Report 2022, Data Architecture was highlighted as one of the lowest-scoring APM enablers. This didn’t come as a surprise to us. We see in actuarial teams across the industry, data is being sourced, cleaned, validated, and transformed all within Excel, and these key data activities are intertwined with the calculations, summarisations or presentations that the Excel workbook was actually created for.
Many organisations have tried to solve this problem by looking for the silver-bullet software or system that will automatically unravel the complexity of their processes. This has led to numerous costly failed transformation projects and added to the statistics of the high failure rates of software implementations.
We believe that to solve the problem successfully, a clear and holistic understanding of the requirements is needed, and decisions on software or components should be delayed until a critical mass of requirements is available to inform the decision. We further believe that by using the software and components already in use, or at most introducing small proof-of-concept implementations of new components where appropriate, a small incremental change cycle can generate and surface invaluable details of the requirements and the constraints that lie within a set of processes.
Excel Power Query is well-positioned to bring about local, integrated, and automated improvements while fitting into a small incremental change cycle. Other options that are also worth considering, depending on the definition of the change cycle, include Alteryx Designer, Power BI, Power Automate, Python and R.
Our expectation is that Excel will still be around in actuarial processes in the foreseeable future. By tackling a change cycle in an innovative way, Excel Power Query can be used to create a very efficient and well-controlled process and, while implementing it, organisations can gather the requirements set that will contribute towards the consideration and implementation of future solutions.
Excel Power Query Key Benefits
- Existing software which is available immediately
- Easy to learn and use
- Connect to data from a variety of sources including files, folders, databases, SharePoint and websites (e.g. xe.com, EIOPA)
- Automate data process steps without VBA macros
- Add audit checks and controls
- Improve data validations with ease
- Mature tool – has been part of MS Excel since Office 2013!
Get in touch if you would like more information about Excel Power Query and the advantages of adopting an incremental approach to your actuarial transformation.
