Back in August, INN reported on a Forrester Research Inc. study that predicted insurance companies will gradually move away from geographic and product silos, focusing more on cross-domain business processes.The report predicted insurance companies will identify processes that can be implemented with common systems and configured for local needs and this trend will increase the use of business process outsourcing (BPO) as carriers outsource nondifferentiated processes.
The report, "Process-Oriented Insurance Will Drive BPO," states the use of IT outsourcing and BPO is slowly growing.
The report cites a 2006 survey of North American and European businesses in which 64 IT decision-makers at insurance companies and 1,000 IT decision-makers across all industries were asked if they consider IT outsourcing or BPO a key part of their strategy.
More than half of the insurance respondents (55%) and 66% of all industries respondents said no. Asked whether they expect IT outsourcing or BPO to be a bigger part of the company's strategy during the next two years, 58% of insurance respondents and 66% of all industries respondents said no.
That was in August; we wanted to know where outsourcing stands with insurers now. So we conducted our own survey on our Web site, and below are the results from the Web poll questions we asked. To participate in our next poll visit www.insurancenetworking.com.
