The Insurance Tech Guru

There is no doubt that there are incompetent vendors. There are also incompetent insurance companies.

But the major failure with technology implementation is and always has been poor communication.

I am an actuarial consultant, but I have been on both sides of the problem - I have developed and sold software. I have worked on the company side trying to help implement technology.

As a consultant, I have sat in on hundreds of meetings over my career where users and developers/vendors talk at each other. It is the norm for them to consistently misunderstand each other. I should not complain because a good share of my business often results from that miscommunication. I often describe my contribution as being a "translator" between two groups who speak different languages.

Both sides are generally to blame. Users do not know how to define their problems and ask good questions. The most common problem is to describe the solution they think they need instead of describing the problem that they know they have.

Vendors/developers on the other hand, often do not sufficiently understand how to read the user enough to draw out the real problems. To some extent, I blame the whole generalization movement toward object oriented type development. It may be a good thing overall, but I think it has led to the developer thinking that all problems are the same and that it is unnecessary to really understand the user's business.

It always makes me laugh when hearing about the language problems when talking to tech support overseas. We were already speaking different languages when it was based in the U.S.

Chuck

I'm new to selling p&c insurance technology & enterprise wide systems. However, 15 of 18 years prior to 2007, I was as a front line & management user of p&c insurer technology tools, having worked primarily in sales & underwriting, for direct writers and brokers both in personal lines and commercial lines.

Nothing like first hand experience on how "bad technology tools" make it hard to do business with customers, and as a manager not able to get the right information to make better decisions; in order to understand the pain many insurers' staffs live on a daily basis today.

As recently as 1996, I was managing a personal lines sales team that was still pulling rates out of a manual and handwriting everything onto a worksheet for entry by someone else, hopefully within a few days.

The tools available today have come a long way from what was available in 1996.

Technology exists to facilitate ease of doing business, to make business more profitable, to make it easier for front line staff to service clients, to automate the routine processes to allow staff to focus on the more complex issues, client file by client file or process by process.

An insurer can then redeploy the hard cost savings to other areas of operations in the interest of increased but profitable sales production, higher renewal rates, faster & more satisfactory claims service, and delivery of better loss control / risk management services.

If both sides keep these overriding themes in mind when looking at precise business processes, rules, and technology tools, things can and should go smoothly.

That said, I agree with another comment contributor, that it's a given that communication is key, even when working with an experienced p&c insurance industry vendor. The vendor's ability to listen & understand & ask the right questions, will move a technology migration project along more smoothly with the correct desired outcomes.

I'm a bit like Chuck; been in the business almost 30 years and have been the "translator" for hundreds (seems like thousands) of the conversations on both sides, just not an actuary. Chuck, you are so spot on that this blog discussion could end right here. As a matter of fact you've said it all, so I'll end my comments here!!!