Managing and mitigating risks is the core of the insurance industry. Understanding those risks lies in data, which must be trustworthy. To build trust in your data pipelines, data lineage details the origins and movement throughout the data lifecycle. But, no matter what you’ve heard to the contrary, all data lineage tools are NOT the same. Some data lineage platforms only work with specific data catalogs, are unable to integrate with your existing tech stack, or simply don't take a deep enough dive into your data. 

You need help to choose the right data lineage platform for your business from the start. So, we decided to cut the humble-brags and tell you exactly why Manta is the best data lineage provider and how we can help you succeed in the insurance industry. 

How to Choose the Best Tools for Data Lineage

Before we dive into the reasons that Manta’s data lineage platform is the best choice for your business, we want to cover a few of the criteria for evaluating data lineage tools in general. 

You’ll need to make sure to consider: 

5 Reasons to Choose Manta as your Data Lineage Vendor for insurance

Information is easily the #1 asset for insurance companies, including health insurers. How that information flows around your business is, thereby, a necessity.  

In the insurance industry, you’re likely grappling with massive amounts of protected data. At the same time, you may be moving away from legacy platforms and trying to handle migration and modernization projects. These projects are only ramping up, and for good reason -- insurance companies that modernize their IT core structure have a 41% decrease in IT costs per insurance policy compared to those with legacy IT systems, according to McKinsey & Co. While managing these IT changes, you are likely also tasked with tapping into your data to accurately assess, and mitigate, risks for your customers and business. 

That’s a lot of work! 

But, it doesn't need to be manual or cumbersome. 

Let’s take a deep dive into why Manta is the best choice to help you tackle these challenges including risk mitigation and assessment, data migrations, and data governance for the insurance industry.

1. Manta is Purpose-Built for Data Lineage

We need to level with you about something. 

Are you ready for it?

Data lineage is complex.

I know, I know. We’re supposed to tell you it’s effortless. That it’s one click, and BOOM! All of your wildest dreams will come true.  

But that’s just not the reality. If someone is telling you otherwise, that's marketing jargon.

Why am I telling you this? Because some lineage tools will require a lot of time and effort to capture your data's lineage. And yet they still won't provide the completeness and granularity you need. 

However, that does NOT mean that data lineage itself isn’t worth it. For example, Manta can reduce your project costs by 30%, lower time spent on impact analysis by 95%, and boost DataOps team productivity by 60%. The difference in expectation versus reality lies in whether or not your lineage tool is purpose-built FOR lineage. 

By that, we mean that some lineage tools, while good in theory, don’t take into account what is needed for success in practice. For example, a lineage tool with too few scanners may mean you’re limited in scope with your current tech stack. A lineage tool tied to one data catalog, rather than an enterprise-wide data lineage solution, can make you miss critical information during migration projects, mergers, or acquisitions. The lineage project will wind up unsuccessful because the tool being used to do it isn't up to the task and expectations between the vendor and customer are misaligned.   

Now the good news: Manta is a purpose-built lineage platform.

We don’t believe that lineage is an afterthought or a “nice-to-have” but a must-have. We have over 50 supported scanners (the most in the industry!) and we can help you get your project back on track even if you started with a tool that made an already complex situation overly complicated. And since we've been solving data lineage challenges for nearly a decade, we have the expertise you will need for your projects to succeed. 

2. Manta Unlocks Critical Context into Data 

While data gets more and more attention on all levels in every organization, there is something that many people, unfortunately, don’t yet value enough: metadata. It’s also referred to as data about data – or context. Metadata is everything. It can help you answer questions like:  

• What business meaning does the number I see in my report have?
• Is it PII / classified data?
• In which databases, tables, and columns is it stored? Using what data type?
• When was the number last updated? How was it calculated?
• What is the quality score associated with the number?
• What data sources did it come from?
• Which of my colleagues are using the same metric / feature? How?

Metadata is essentially every piece of information about our data. Whenever you need to find something, metadata is the key to doing so quickly and efficiently. Additionally, in insurance, metadata can help you trace critical data elements that can reduce insurance fraud. For example, if you receive a fraud report, metadata can help you understand and trace when or where this data originated and who last manipulated the data. 

Now the big question: why does Manta care about metadata?

At Manta, we’re experts in data lineage and helping you activate your metadata. We strongly believe that the key to unlocking the true potential of metadata is an intelligent and open standard for metadata exchange and integration. We've worked hard to make sure that our data lineage tool helps you get the most of your metadata in a secure way. 

3. Manta has Data Lineage for Data Governance & Compliance

Remember when we said that information is #1 asset for insurance companies? Regulators think so too. 

The insurance industry deals with a large number of personal identifying information (PII). This data is protected under a variety of laws, both within the US and internationally. Knowing which data is regulated is the first step in protecting it. Manta’s customizable, color-coded active tags can help you call out regulated data in the context of your data pipeline so that you can make sure it is compliant with regulatory requirements. You can use this to highlight information relevant to you in the context of the data pipeline. With active tags, you can also draw attention to specific data privacy and quality issues (or any other interesting or valuable characteristic within your data pipelines)!

Going a step further, Manta’s added semantic layer helps improve accuracy when doing regulatory reporting and conducting audits. It all comes back to instilling trust in your data, which you already know is critical for data governance and regulatory compliance strategies. 

4. Manta’s has Enterprise-Wide, Column-Level Lineage  

The insurance industry, specifically for those in health insurance, is constantly consolidating and changing. Smaller insurers are frequently acquired by larger ones, healthcare providers are continually consolidating creating a change in data chains, and the data that needs to be migrated becomes difficult to manage. This can quickly eat into cost before you’ve even had a chance to understand the data at all. However, Manta can help reduce migration costs by up to 30% by creating a comprehensive map of data flows and dependencies. 

But the big question is how? How does Manta create that comprehensive map? Through column-level lineage.

Column-level lineage, also known as attribute-level lineage, is the most granular level or layer of data lineage and supports the ability to trace data from an enterprise-wide perspective, as well as from table-to-table and column-to-column. That gives you the most detailed view of your data available. 

This detailed level of lineage is also critical in the calculations that help insurance companies understand risk. These calculations rely on trustworthy data and impact premiums and policy coverage. For example, insurance companies must make sure that the premiums being charged will cover claims they pay and operating expenses. So they take a look at historical data to calculate these risks -- but if that data is broken, missing, or incomplete, the calculations can be thrown off. Data lineage helps create better insight into the data so it can be used to most accurately assess risk and calculate premiums. 

5. Manta' Embraces Open Source Data Lineage Standards

Open source data lineage, OpenLineage, is growing in popularity. Our data lineage experts have spent a significant amount of time and focus learning and understanding open source standards and OpenLineage, which works to make lineage accessible to all businesses. If you already use OpenLineage, our OpenManta Scanner uses job facets to ingest OpenLineage metadata and enrich overall enterprise data pipeline analysis. 

It should be noted that OpenManta can also be used when an existing scanner is not available. Essentially, this empowers businesses to build their own lineage with access to Manta’s extensively built platform of customizations. 

There is a lot to discuss about this topic and we encourage you to start with this article on OpenLineage.

Take the next step with Manta

This all sounds great, but how do you know if Manta really stacks up to other lineage providers that might seem “good enough”? After all, it’s easy to say something in a blog, and another thing entirely to show it. So let us show you. Schedule some time to chat with our team and we’ll show you the proof in the pudding. You’ll be glad you did. 

You can also check out how we stack to other metadata management vendors on Gartner's "Market Guide for Active Metadata Management." Get your complimentary copy today!

P.S. This post was written by a human.