Common Characteristics of Successful Insurance IT Initiatives

Our fifth annual Novarica Impact Awards are underway, which recognize impactful IT initiatives executed by insurer CIOs and their teams. More than 30 initiatives qualified for this year’s Impact Awards across data, digital, core systems, and IT best practices. Case study subjects include AIG, CSAA, Everest, Great American, GuideOne, Homesite, Merchants, NORCAL, AFLAC, MetLife, Prudential, The Hartford, Trustmark, Unum, and more. Among the qualifying initiatives, some commonalities emerge that reflect the changing state of IT in the insurance industry.

Executive Support

A consistent factor in successful projects was support from executive leaders. Strong executive support ensured the coordination and communication necessary to execute complex cross-departmental projects. The vision of executive leaders was also important in clearly defining project goals and benefits for all departments within a particular carrier.

Training

A key component of many projects was ensuring that employees received necessary training. In some cases, this was practical: users needed to know how to use a new feature effectively. However, many projects needed to overcome resistance from prevailing corporate culture and reluctance to embrace change.

Effective Communication

In order to overcome internal resistance and ensure cross-departmental coordination, clear communication was essential to many projects. In many cases, demonstrating the benefits of new technology was a key factor in overcoming resistance to change. Many projects also required interfacing between multiple internal carrier departments as well as frequent coordination with external units.

Agile Development

Insurers whose projects used Agile development methodologies realized gains in time to delivery, project costs, transparency, and improved communication between IT and business units. Agile helped many teams manage large projects while staying flexible. In particular, Agile helped kept multi-part projects on schedule, as distinct project components could be completed in parallel. Agile also helped project teams adapt on the fly to changing requirements during the development process.

Voting is currently open to members of the Novarica Insurance Technology Research Council, and winners will be announced in the fall. To learn more about the Research Council, check out http://novarica.com/council.

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