“You need to slow down to get there faster.” That’s the word from a reader to one of my other blogsites, in response to yet another survey report about how overworked and behind the curve IT departments are these days.
Such is the case across insurance companies where the pace to move to digital is quickening. There’s no shortage of discussion about real-time, the culture of “now,” the impetus to adopt new platforms and the shift to embrace big data flooding into organizations. As a result, there’s quite a bit on the plates of IT managers and professionals.
The problem, however, is that all the hype and attention to the new technology realm is creating expectations for overnight success — short-term thinking in tech. Sometimes, positive and progressive change takes a few years to really bloom and produce results.
Witness the movement to service-oriented architecture (SOA) over the past decade. SOA is an approach that separates key portions of applications and related business processes from underlying hardware and systems. It produced reusable services that were made available to anyone in the enterprise who needed them (i.e. a purchase order requisition or address lookup).
The catch is, SOA never delivered results overnight. It was never designed to. It is part of a long-term journey that takes years. As the journey progresses, the groundwork is laid for many of the things we now hear about, such as cloud and mobility. However, SOA was branded a failure mainly because of its failure to deliver results in a short time frame.
Managers and professionals need to be able to build, innovate and move their organizations forward. As the reader states, “It is better to take your time to do things right the first time, document, and create products with long-term maintenance and flexibility in mind. Allow workers to enjoy the creative process, give them time to read about new technologies and learn new skills even if those skills are not applicable to their duties right now.”
This makes a lot of sense. But it also flies in the face of everything we keep hearing — that change is upon us, and everyone must act at lightning speed. Many insurance IT shops may be too harried to really slow down and provide time to read and reflect on where things are headed. But it will pay dividends in the long run to take care to sow the seeds of long-term growth.
Joe McKendrick is an author, consultant, blogger and frequent INN contributor specializing in information technology.
Readers are encouraged to respond to Joe using the “Add Your Comments” box below. He can also be reached at
This blog was exclusively written for Insurance Networking News. It may not be reposted or reused without permission from Insurance Networking News.
The opinions of bloggers on www.insurancenetworking.com do not necessarily reflect those of Insurance Networking News.
