Sascha Ohler, CIC, ICDP, Senior Product Manager, Financial Services Solutions, ImageNow by Perceptive Software

“Whoever manages to integrate data intelligence and end-user knowledge most effectively will gain a significant competitive advantage.”

Welcome to our forum Sascha. What would you say separated the successes from the failures last year?

Scope management was a key element in the projects that went well. Large scale implementations can be successfully completed by breaking up the process into manageable units. This helps to ensure delivery that is on-time, on-budget, and with measurable ROI. The availability of tools to support both the real-time exchange of transactional data between the major ERP systems (SAP, Lawson, PeopleSoft) and our ECM solution and the integration with existing portal environments (SharePoint) in support of self-service initiatives had a significant impact on the insurance implementations we completed in 2007. More and more insurance clients are looking to the ECM vendors to function not only as the document repository and workflow engine, but as the data exchange agent for data sharing between the various enterprise applications.

Your advice on next steps?

From an organizational standpoint, the breakdown of internal silos. In order to effectively facilitate change and further automate the enterprise, both cultural and budgetary silos need to be bridged within insurance organizations. From a technology standpoint, the effective exchange of transactional data between Enterprise Content Management (ECM), business intelligence, and Line of Business (LOB) systems needs to improve.

Exciting technologies?

SOA and all of its promises are starting to become more than a buzzword with insurers. Several large carriers have already implemented SOA successfully and many of the mid-tier carriers are beginning to define a clear strategy for the move off of legacy systems. The release of Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is another step toward easing integration and data exchange.

What is your message for insurance companies?

Embrace change. Insurers need to effectively facilitate change in order to build the consensus between IT and business needed to develop a winning strategy in a soft market. Whoever manages to integrate data intelligence and end-user knowledge most effectively will gain a significant competitive advantage.