Joe McKendrick

As insurance companies increasingly digitize their operations, reach out to customers via apps and online services, and employ big data analytics for everything from telematics to fraud prevention, any hiccups in software delivery may mean delays and losses.

Many insurers are looking to redesigning systems to better support analytics, but it may be better to develop them as separate sideline to be tested and merged into the organization when ready.

Insurance companies are major consumers of IT outsourcing services, but there are hints that carrier CIOs are rethinking their outsourcing strategies.

Insurers clearly appreciate the greater insights into policyholder risk factors from connected cars and homes.

Half of surveyed software developers don't feel they can work with the Internet of Things. Can insurers take the lead?

IT leaders are spending too much time down in the engine room, when they should be up on the bridge helping to steer the ship.

Once a digitally savvy company from an “adjacent industry” such as web services has a wrap around your customers, what’s to prevent them from embedding their own insurance products?

With everyone interpreting what they feel as the be-all end-all description, perceptions of digital are filtered by the observer.

Technologies such as predictive analytics are not a slam-dunk. The business needs to decide exactly what kind of data matters, and how this may change day to day.

The user experience can make or break an application. Here are five ways to measure whether it’s positive or negative.

There are those who believe that favoring one channel or mode over another will lead to even more silos and dysfunction than we already have in many organizations.

More than half of companies are spending more on developing mobile applications -- but are they more efficient?

The user experience can make or break an application. Here are five ways to measure whether it’s positive or negative.

The idea that auto accidents will be almost obsolete is a nice thought, but robots still make their share of mistakes -- all that is needed is a faulty or incompatible software patch or update.

A State Street survey finds insurance companies are more likely to be further along in becoming “data innovators” than their financial services counterparts.

Relationship management 101 for keeping IT and business on the same page.

Only half of the devices in the IoT ecosystem will use keyboard-like input -- and insurers’ back-end systems have to be ready to capture and process all this new data.

For on-premises needs, the latest technologies, including flash, solid state drives, and in-memory computing offer new ways to provide rapid access to new data.

If you think of enterprises like collections of neighborhoods that need to be nurtured, you quickly see that architecture, not obliteration, is the key.

Going digital isn’t just something that can be accomplished by decree. It takes finesse to keep everything in sync.