Stephen Korow
Vice President, Technology
Decision Research Corp.

Great to have you with us again, Stephen. What have insurers struggled with most?

Given the current accelerating pace of change in technology, it is difficult for insurers to have confidence that new tools and architectures will still be relevant down the road. That is why programs such as the Insurance Value Chain are so valuable. The creation of agreed upon standards of integration between software products creates a clear path that insurers can follow when selecting software products. It provides a minimum basic requirement in technology products so that insurers have a level of confidence that a new software product will integrate with existing and future technology purchases.

Key steps for 2007?

One thing the insurer should not do is try to piece together software products from multiple vendors and create proof of concept projects to see if they will be compatible. The vendors should already have relationships in place between technology, marketing, and support departments to take that burden off of the insurer.

A good data integration strategy?

Data integration strategies that work encapsulate and abstract the data and processing into an easily accessible package. It should provide a standardized and consistent homogenizing layer to the overall system. Think of the telephone system. You can access it from anywhere, there is a consistent interface that is only as complex as it needs to be and as you add new capabilities, the existing capabilities don’t break. As long as people follow a set of standards, they can quickly add their phone to the system and be gaining value from the connection. Data and services integration similarly requires a widely accepted standard to enable quick integration of additional data and new capabilities.

Straight-through processing?

Consensus among technology leaders and adherence to standards is a fundamental requirement for future technology acquisitions. As services proliferate, the real work will come in piecing them together and making sure all are working together as advertised.

Tim Tallaksen
Industry Manager, Insurance
Hyland Software, Inc.

Tim, stumbling blocks for 2006?

For many insurers, the first step toward greater data integration is to capture paper documents as digital images. Once captured in digital format, the data can be more readily associated with and processed in sync with transaction records managed by data-centric line-of-business applications. Many carriers are still leveraging their long-term investments in custom, mainframe-based applications. Moving off those applications to standards-based systems developed on the Microsoft Windows platform or the .NET Framework will make it much easier to integrate systems and re-engineer their processes to meet dynamic market requirements. In the same vein, carriers are realizing that their first generation investments in heavily customized enterprise content management systems do not afford them the level of process agility they require to keep up with market demands and adhere to regulatory requirements.

Key steps for 2007?

A carrier’s records are its most important assets and come in various formats. By putting structure and metadata around unstructured content, you can exploit its value and manage risk. A robust, configurable ECM solution is critical to staying competitive. Once in place, carriers can take the next step to streamline processes and integrate content with other insurance applications. When evaluating solutions for managing content, it’s imperative to look for solutions that can expand across the enterprise, are easy to maintain, integrate seamlessly with other applications, and can handle the high-transaction volumes associated with the insurance industry.

A good data integration strategy?

End-user adoption is recognized as the single biggest success factor in any IT project. While use of standards such as Web services to promote data portability are critical, a good data integration strategy cannot be achieved without first understanding how people work. For instance, what sources of data do information workers need to make profitable decisions for the organization?

Straight-through processing?

Straight-through processing cannot be accomplished without understanding the dynamic relationships between enterprise content files and the discrete data managed in line-of-business applications. Understanding these relationships will result in processes that support greater throughput capacity per unit cost, better decision making, superior customer value, and significantly reduced organizational risk.