Seguros SURA Latinoamérica to help businesses reduce strategic human resources risk with Microsoft Graph Data Connect

Seguros SURA Latinoamérica (Suramericana S.A.) is a major player in the insurance industry, with a presence in nine countries across Latin America. A part of Grupo Sura, the company has long held to its core principle of innovation in the insurance sector. That means that for customers looking to insure their vehicle, home, business, or person, Seguros SURA Latinoamérica regularly offers new and engaging ways to do so. 

Recently, Seguros SURA Latinoamérica set out to address strategic human resources risk, which it defines as the deviations that companies experience in the attraction, engagement, and development of the human resources they need to adequately design and execute their strategies. For example, if a company consistently fails in its ability to engage key talent, the company’s very existence may become imperiled. Because this kind of risk is difficult to measure and often accrues gradually, it has traditionally been extremely hard to insure against. “This is why we’re using Microsoft Graph Data Connect,” says Juan Sebastian Gomez Gomez, Strategic and Emerging Risks Manager at Seguros SURA Latinoamérica (Suramericana S.A.). “The insurance sector hasn’t been there for businesses when it comes to strategic human resources risk, and we aim to change that.” 

Microsoft Graph unlocks internal access to Microsoft 365 data for productivity, identity, and security. Microsoft Graph Data Connect gives developers the power to copy specific Microsoft 365 datasets at scale into Azure data stores without having to worry about security. “I work in the risk department of a business responsible for insuring and managing the risk of others,” continues Gomez. “When we first saw Microsoft Graph Data Connect, we knew we could use its capabilities internally to mitigate our own human resources risk. As that initiative’s success grows, we’re increasingly excited about sharing its benefits with our customers.”

Improving human insights with big data

To manage strategic human resources risk, you need to understand the myriad factors that go into human productivity, sentiment, and workplace satisfaction. In other words, you need massive amounts of diverse data over time and the capacity to make sense of it. “If you try to assess human resources risk factors traditionally, you’re likely looking at tools like anonymized in-person interviews,” says Gomez. “But those practices can take months to deliver results. They also often fail to unearth the types of issues that build up below the surface, like declining levels of confidence in a given initiative.” These traditional efforts also provide only historical snapshots of sentiment data, rather than current or predictive information.

Gomez and his team within Seguros SURA Latinoamérica found that many of these hidden issues were discoverable through Microsoft 365 data. When used in tandem with in-person interviews, metrics from interoffice interactions in Microsoft 365 not only provided a more comprehensive picture of the company’s human resources but also created the basis for a predictive risk assessment model. “It was incredibly surprising that we could use Microsoft 365 data to create a predictive human resources risk model,” says Gomez. “We’re already exploring the possibility of a prescriptive analytics model for the next phase of the project, which I find even more impressive.”

Gomez is quick to note that although the data sources used through Microsoft Graph Data Connect contain potentially identifying information, it is not the intent of Seguros SURA Latinoamérica or Microsoft to expose the personal data of any individual. The solution uses built-in Microsoft controls to help protect the confidentiality of every user, while surfacing aggregate sentiment and broad shifts in behavior through de-identified Power BI reports. “Along with the automated de-identification protections built into the solution, we have set numerous guardrails against the accidental sharing of individual opinions or sentiment,“ emphasizes Gomez.

Reducing risk and gaining a competitive edge

Gomez likens the mix of human expertise and large-scale analytics, now accessible to Seguros SURA Latinoamérica, to an “ocean of observations” from which key human resources indicators are constantly brought to the surface. In one use case, Gomez recalls his department needing to reallocate the working hours dedicated to a pair of major projects to increase its investment in high-value activities. “We were set in our ways as an organization at the time,” Gomez recalls, “so we began to use Microsoft Graph Data Connect to monitor the intended shift. What we saw was the real-time shift in project prioritization, and we could see how well we were adhering to our targets.” 

Seguros SURA Latinoamérica has also used the solution to identify which employee groups function as ideal disseminators of information across the company’s many organizational networks. Understanding which teams are the best connected helps the company better promote and accelerate organizational change. As a result, says Gomez, “We’re already better able to thrive in our competitive landscape, and I know we’ve only tapped into 1 percent of what this solution can do.”

Transforming risk management into net-new income

In the coming year, Gomez foresees Seguros SURA Latinoamérica taking advantage of the scalability and pay-as-you-go usage model of Microsoft Graph Data Connect to offer its human resources risk management solutions to customers. “I have yet to meet with a board of directors that doesn’t list understanding and management of human resources risk as a high priority,” he says. “What we’re creating is the ability to generate meaningful insights, along with predictive and prescriptive analytics models that are tailor-made for our customers’ businesses.”

Seguros SURA Latinoamérica is already using its new human resources risk assessment solution to drive toward efficiency gains, process improvements, and an overall increase in strategic focus. Gomez believes that these factors all enable increased human resources development and retention rates and that they can even lead to an increased capacity to attract top talent. “It’s important to allocate resources to human resources risk,” says Gomez, “but companies can only do that confidently when they understand the risk factors at play in their environment. With our know-how and the unique capabilities of Microsoft Graph Data Connect, we hope to help businesses of all kinds better understand, effectively manage, and, in the future, even transfer some of their human resources risk.”

Find out more about Suramericana S.A. on LinkedIn.