IBM released its
The insurance IT executives in the survey place greater emphasis on risk management than the global sample, IBM reports (60% versus 50%). What's at the top of insurance IT agendas? The survey finds 71% of insurance CIOs cite self-service portals as a top visionary plan in the next three to five years, compared to just 57% of the global sample.
Some highlights:
Insurance executives tend slightly toward the “expand” mandate: Explanation: IBM says insurance CIOs are focused on employing technology that will help their businesses grow, versus simply gaining efficiencies or cutting costs. “Insurance CIOs often need to help re-engineer their organizations, making them fast, more flexible and better equipped to turn data into insights.”
Insurance CIOs want to shake up the established order: “Insurance CIOs report that they are especially focused on deeply changing the mix of capabilities, knowledge and assets within the organization (73% versus 14% who expect to maintain the current mix).”
Insurance executives are reaching beyond their enterprise walls: “Sixty-two percent of this group plans to leverage global integration by partnering extensively.”
Self-service, virtualization, business process management and risk top agendas: Along with a greater propensity toward self-service portals (mentioned above), “insurance CIOs have a slightly higher focus than the global sample: virtualization (70% versus 68%), business process management (65% versus 60%), and risk management and compliance (61% versus 58%).”
Where insurance CIOs agree with their counterparts in other industries: Insight and intelligence, client intimacy, client analytics, data warehousing, and master data management. Insurance CIOs are also on the same page as other CIOs on the top three ways to cut legacy costs: “radically and totally renewing IT environment, application portfolio rationalization and gradually altering hardware.”
The bottom line is that insurance companies are being swept by the same technology forces as other major industries. There's a lot that everyone can learn from each other.
Joe McKendrick is an author, consultant, blogger and frequent INN contributor specializing in information technology.
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