Smallwood Maike's Insurance Transformation, Shifting from Talk to Action

Looking at the business processes and capabilities necessary for today’s marketplace, most carriers are not positioned to support the changing expectations and demands from the customers, agents/brokers and shareholders. Today’s business processes for the connectivity between agents and underwriting are linear and sequential – many were designed as paper or phone-based single path processes. Additionally, exception handling has become more complex with “white outs” and overrides by both the agent and underwriter.
Over the course of many years with changes, enhancements and expansions in delivery channels (fax, electronic and internet), the processes have become brittle and complex and lack flexibility. Multiple business applications have been built over the years with point-to-point connectivity to back end legacy systems. Each channel is connected independently with hard wired mapping, processes and rules. This has led to different channels and systems and at times, different results and user experiences. This direct programmed connectivity has created inflexibility and costly systems to maintain. Few insurers have started to chip away at these challenges from a business perspective; many have assumed they were by implementing just technology which adds to the complexity.
Given the emerging trends, market leaders are looking at their business process differently. They look for innovative ways to fundamentally change their business models, and position to be agile, and flexible. They look to build their business process to dynamically respond to the information received as part of the process. This is a considered a “service oriented” mindset – or they look to “service” their customers based upon that individual customer or agents needs at the time the process is executed – to respond dynamically and be agile and flexible! They’re looking for mechanisms to provide their business users with compelling business insights quicker and the right tools so they can act upon them sooner
This is an excerpt from a recent whitepaper “Insurance: Realizing the Full Potential of Change Shifting the mindset to create dynamic business models by leveraging BPM and SOA as true enablers” authored by Deb Smallwood & Cindy Maike, Co-founders of Smallwood Maike & Associates and published and sponsored by IBM. Contact Deb Smallwood at dsmallwood@smallwoodmaike.com for a copy.