Balancing the Next Great Ideas vs. Exceptional Execution
By
Steve Discher
Executive Vice President
At a business breakfast recently, two clients and I had a roundtable
discussion sharing our thoughts about the latest and greatest ideas and
experiences in insurance industry technologies, organizational
constructs, sourcing options, and other topics. There were about 100
years of experience between the three of us. All of us had worked in at
least a few organizations; yours truly has worked in more than a few.
At first the conversation centered on a few recent successes with call
centers and what is being done to improve service, speed, outcomes, and
expenses. We drifted next into shared services and the issue of getting
the internal organization to take the first step of trusting their
colleagues to deliver. Throughout, there was plenty of discussion around
smart-sourcing; using labor arbitrage in the right places to optimize
the cost of labor when and where it makes sense. And, of course, layered
through the breakfast meeting was the topic of technologies including
stock-standard workflow engines, administration systems, business
analytics, electronic payments, voice recognition, and aerial imagery,
to name a few.
Toward the end of the discussion, we finished our coffee and started to
summarize what we all heard and agreed to:
