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INSURANCE INDUSTRY NEWS
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FOR INTERNAL DIGITAL USE ONLY
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Issue 2
December 1990
Welcome to the second issue of the Insurance Industry News. This
newsletter is for those people in Digital's Business, Sales and Sales
Support organizations who target the insurance industry. The Insurance
Competitive Exchange has been unbundled from this publication and will be
distributed under separate cover.
There is no prescribed format for this publication. We can take it
anywhere the readership wants to go. Please provide feedback on what you
would like to see on these pages. Send all comments to your editor:
Bob Leonard @FMT
DTN 383-4542
All issues of the Insurance Newsletter are posted to the Insurance NOTES
file (see Note #111). In addition, Tracy Elkins is archiving each article
of each newsletter by topic. You may request these articles by subject
(e.g. image wins) by contacting Tracy @MKO, DTN 264-5110.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Table of Contents... |
| |
| |
| Sales Message from Dan Harrington p. 2 |
| |
| WINS p. 3 |
| |
| Workflow Partnership with Phoenix Mutual p. 6 |
| |
| Applications p. 7 |
| |
| Events |
| LIMRA p. 8 |
| SERVE-NET Roadshow p. 9 |
| LOMA p. 9 |
| EXPO 91 p. 11 |
| ILF 91 p. 11 |
| |
| Insurance ACT Resources p. 12 |
| |
| Insurance NOTES File p. 13 |
| |
| Training p. 14 |
| |
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SALES MESSAGE
Our Insurance Sales performance continues on a strong YTD track. Thanks
to all of you for your fine efforts. Let's keep our good thing going.
Digital faces many challenges at this time, and as a company we're
committed to implement the changes necessary to improve our
profitability. As Insurance Account Managers we can all help. Digital
needs our commitment to profitability. There will also be an accelerated
move towards an accounts-oriented Sales organization. As soon as
possible, we'll shift the key measurement of account managers towards
account profitability. Why wait for new measurements? Let's start
thinking and acting profitably now.
I recently visited Jackson National Life, (JNL), the account you'll see
referenced in the Wins section. The JNL story proves there are exciting
things going on in this industry. JNL's success is nothing short of
phenomenal. They were founded in 1961 with the objective of being the
low cost producer of high dividend insurance products. Their compound
growth has been over 30% for the last 5 years; they added $34B in new
policies to the books in 1989. What's their secret? It's simple: JNL's
expense ratio is less than 4%, while the industry average exceeds 15% and
some of the largest life insurers are at 16-20%. JNL translates this
cost effectiveness into excellent commissions for their 85,000
independent agents, and into products that consistently outperform the
competition.
Digital is proud to have been chosen to help JNL maintain their
incredible cost effectiveness through their recent period of rapid
expansion. You won't see them at industry conferences - "we don't want
to learn their bad habits" says one executive. JNL collected $2B in
premiums in 1989, and they have done $2.5B YTD in 1990. While other
insurers say the economy is slowing them down, JNL says they can exceed
$3B in CY1991.
Somewhere in this JNL story is the essence of a great one minute
executive elevator call. It's JNL's low cost structure and low cost
culture that has captured confidence and repeat business from their
85,000 independent agents and their policyholders. They're not a
Financial Services Supermarket; they do one thing, they do it very well
and they do it differently. They didn't try to beat the big insurance
companies by using the same hierarchical systems structure. Unlike other
Life insurers, JNL has 17 regional sales offices that service, support,
and grow their independent agents using Digital systems and
Digital-developed application software.
JNL is a testimony to what can happen if the culture of an insurance
company is focused on low cost, best value, and customer satisfaction.
Insurance companies that think this way are willing to change their
hierarchical culture, rethink their IS strategy, and consider Digital
products and services.
When the economy is down, great sales representatives come through.
Selling in a down economy plays to our strengths, because customers have
to rethink their IS expenses. As profits shrink, new executives arise
with a charter to 'make changes'. I'm not surprised to hear from many of
you that you're getting audiences today with executives you couldn't get
to before.
If you haven't had that audience, it's time to go after it again. I hope
the experience we've had with JNL energizes you and helps you realize
that your customer needs you and Digital Equipment Corporation. Call
high and call often. Believe me, they no longer think they have all the
answers. Now's your opportunity to convince them that only with you
leading the Digital Team, do they have a chance to compete against the
new standards of performance being set by JNL and others.
Good Selling,
Dan Harrington
_________________________________________________________________________
WINS
Digital Builds on Success at Jackson National Life
It all begins with credibility, credibility gained by successfully
solving a customer's problem. That's what caused Lansing-based Jackson
National Life (JNL) to present Digital with a $2.5M contract to automate
its Underwriting department - without even asking for competitive bids.
The new portions of JNL's system, to go live in March of 1991, will
support more than 120 users in the Underwriting department, 20 users in
the Agent Licensing department, and another 20 users in the Life Client
Services department. Users will be able to view, track, and modify
client information on a distributed DBMS.
Today's success has its roots in FY88, when Digital began working with
JNL to deliver a Regional Office Management system (ROMS). JNL wanted to
develop a corporate-wide system that would help agents track clients,
applications, claims and payments. Digital won the business because we
proposed a turnkey system that would run across the entire VAX family,
enabling JNL to implement small MicroVAX systems for the 10-user regional
offices and larger VAX systems for the 50-user regional offices. Digital
also won the business because we were able to design ROMS so that it
could be managed by one person at the Lansing headquarters. Neither IBM
nor HP, the other vendors contending for the business, could provide that
combination of customization, flexibility, and compatibility in a
distributed solution.
To say that ROMS worked well is an understatement. Between 1988 and
1990, JNL has grown from 10 regional sales offices with $2.5B worth of
whole life, term and annuities products in force to become the eleventh
largest insurance company in the country. They now have 17 regional
offices and more than $100B of policies in force. Yet during this time
they have not dramatically increased their head count. One person still
manages the ROMS systems, and when JNL sets up a new regional office,
this individual flies out and installs the ROMS system before the office
officially opens.
The success of ROMS has brought to light a bottleneck in the
organization's method of processing claims and applications. While
information was coming in fast and furious from the field, JNL's 100
underwriters were still processing claims by hand, moving stacks of files
from one part of the organization to another. In the field, ROMS kept
track of pending cases, and after a certain amount of inactivity ROMS
would flag the field agent, who would check with the system to find that
the case had been hung up in Underwriting. Hurry-up phone calls began
arriving from the field with alarming frequency.
With JASnet, the new solution that Digital is building for JNL, a 56kb
Wide Area Network, developed with LiTel, will link the corporate and
regional offices, and a MicroVAX 3500 and a VAX 6410 will support the
corporate office. The underwriters will receive information directly
from the regional office, act on it, send it to Policy Issue, and then
transmit it back to the regional office electronically. JASnet will also
provide enhanced management reports, enabling JNL to see productivity by
region, sales by line of business, and many other views of their
business.
"They're a great reference site," says Sales Manager Don Glisky.
"They've got a nationwide system that's based on scalable VAX systems, a
powerful network, and mission critical business applications that have
been designed, developed, and installed by Digital. Their business goal
is not to be on the forefront of technology; their goal is to be on the
forefront of expense control and agent and customer satisfaction, and our
solutions are helping them do that. We've proven our solutions work."
Digital Beats IBM and HP at Shand, Morahan
Even with the plumbing in place for a water-cooled IBM 3090 system,
Digital scored big at Shand, Morahan. The Chicago-based Liability and
Malpractice insurer was bringing all their lines of business in house
after a long tenure at EDS, where they were using part of an IBM 3090
batch system. All the applications had to be re-written, and all the
data had to be converted. IBM went after the business with a 3090
solution like the one Shand, Morahan had been using at EDS. When the
former VP of Finance became President of Shand, Morahan, the project went
on hold. It seemed to him that replacing the EDS 3090 with a Shand,
Morahan 3090 was NOT going to solve the problems he wanted solved. The
carrier came up with six specific business objectives and asked the
consulting firm of Bricker & Associates to help them meet those
objectives. Bricker then contacted Digital.
IBM continued to talk to the president about solutions, their alternative
to the 3090 was a set of RISC 6000 machines, and the president did not
see those meeting Shand, Morahan's need for distributed application
support. By the time Bricker brought Digital into the picture, HP was
gaining the president's attention, focusing on the speed and
price/performance of their systems. The question for Digital Sales Rep
Jim Fanella was whether to go straight to the president to check the
advance of HP, or to work closely with Bricker & Associates.
Fanella chose to work with the consultants and to emphasize Digital's
ability to meet Shand, Morahan's specific business objectives. "At every
presentation I went to," he says, "I brought up those issues again and
again and again and again." HP he says, continued to talk to the
president, not the consultants, and continued to speak impressively about
feeds and speeds.
When the the proposals finally appeared, they looked very different to
Shand, Morahan. HP proposed a solution based on their high speed
Speedware hierarchical database; Digital proposed a solution based on
Rdb. Each configuration required a substantial amount of disk space, and
since HP's disks are priced lower than Digital's, the HP proposal looked
good to the decision-makers at Shand, Morahan.
But Digital clinched the deal in the demonstrations of the solution
prototypes. Fanella showed how the Rdb solution could be changed on the
fly, and argued that flexibility, not speed, was the key to meeting the
published business objectives. He then suggested that Shand, Morahan ask
HP to change their hierarchical database during THEIR demonstration, and
HP proved unable to do it.
"The customer says we won the business for three reasons," says Fanella.
"Our choice of database proved to them that we were listening to their
business objectives. They were impressed by our dedication; we were
there EVERY day. We had a tight team of 12 people, and it paid off.
Finally, they said, when you compared equivalent systems, and not the
apples and oranges that were first proposed, Digital's solution was
clearly the price/performance winner."
The first phase of the Shand, Morahan sale netted Digital $650,000 and
consisted of a VAX 4000, several MicroVAX 3100s, VT340 and VT1000
terminals and, as Fanella points out, this is only for the data
conversion and application development portion of the system. The actual
production system is still being finalized.
Actuarial Win at the Hartford Insurance Group (HIG)
In an effort to cut internal chargeback costs, to modernize archaic
applications, to enable ad hoc reporting, and to create some new
competitive applications, the Corporate Actuarial Research organization
at the HIG recently moved from a PL/1 mainframe environment to a VAX 6420
system. The new system employs SAS for statistical reporting, VAXset,
Rdb, CDD+, and Datatrieve. It links the Corporate Actuarial department
with HIG's IBM installation via Digital's Channel Attach SNA Gateway and
SNA Transfer facility, providing the actuaries with the capability to
download massive amounts of data from the glass house. The new solution
also employs PCSA for MS-DOS, allowing HIG to integrate its existing PC
installation.
On the European Scene....
There's a great deal of activity on the Insurance scene in Europe, with
major sales campaigns underway in Belgium, the U.K., Italy, France,
Spain, Switzerland and elsewhere. Prospects range from $500K claims
processing applications to $30M branch automation projects. Programs
are underway to develop an Insurance Underwriting Architecture and to
work with customers and third parties to produce Life & Pensions
Administration Systems, as well as Branch Automation and Networking
programs. Watch this space for more information on Insurance Wins in
Europe and GIA!
_________________________________________________________________________
Phoenix Mutual and Digital Team Up on a Workflow Controller Project
In a keynote speech at the ADAPSO conference, November 6, in Phoenix,
Arizona, Bob Fiondella, President and Chief Operating Officer of Phoenix
Mutual Life, sighted a cooperative project with Digital that enables
Phoenix to respond quickly to new business opportunities by using a
unique software architecture that integrates data, applications and
hardware from many different vendors.
"We went to Digital looking for a partner, not a turnkey applications
provider or a systems integrator," said Fiondella. "Digital's role was
to create an architecture that supports our existing and new business
applications."
"Instead of simply automating the existing processes at The Phoenix,"
stated Fiondella, "we first carefully analyzed the essential workflow in
the critical parts of our business. Once we identified these processes,
we looked for a technology company that could work with us to develop an
approach that could manage these processes. We also needed an approach
that allowed us to respond quickly to changing business needs."
Digital responded to The Phoenix with a workflow controller project based
on an open systems software architecture that is independent of
applications, systems, and hardware. With Digital's software controller,
applications can be upgraded, processes can be rearranged - all without
rewriting the applications.
Fiondella continued, "We needed a partner that would let us become the
systems integrator. Digital worked with us to develop one software
architecture with a single user interface that can be used across all of
our disparate computers."
Digital's software architecture is based on open standards which allows
software development in a multivendor environment. Digital's Network
Applications Support (NAS), Compound Document Architecture (CDA), and
standard interface tools like DECwindows were unique to Digital's
approach in the Phoenix Project. With Digital software architecture,
applications don't need to be rewritten. Digital's single user interface
(DECwindows) brings data, image, voice, and video together into one
common screen display with multiple windows. Because the applications
can be applied across the network and across multiple computer
architectures, Digital's NAS is unique in the industry.
"Digital has set a new standard by developing a software architecture
that allows our customers to support new business-oriented systems in a
multivendor environment," says Sandy Thomas, Vice President, Insurance
Business Unit. "We believe our customers can be applications and
business integrators, if they choose, or we can offer this as a service
through Digital's Enterprise Integration Services (EIS)", says Thomas.
"This open systems platform approach protects our customers' existing
investment and saves us and them an immense amount of time in software
development."
_________________________________________________________________________
APPLICATIONS
Insurance Investment Management
One of the new Applications groups in the Insurance Business Unit is
Treasury and Investment Applications comprised of Don Bracken and Jerry
Martin. This group was formed in recognition of the substantial
opportunity for Digital in the Treasury and Investment departments of
insurance companies.
During FY91, the principal focus of the group is on Investment Management
applications. The Investment Management function has been a great door
opener for Digital in many large insurance accounts, and represents
abundant potential for broadening Digital's presence in existing
accounts.
During the last few months, working with investment specialists from the
DCC, Don and Jerry have put together plans for an exciting sales campaign
focused on winning business in FY91. Some of you saw a preview of this
campaign at the October Sales Rally.
II-NET Campaign
The recently-announced II-NET (Insurance Investment) campaign will
showcase Digital's wide range of solutions for Investment Management,
including the new IA-LINK solution for linking Investment Accounting
systems to front office decision support systems for traders, researchers
and portfolio managers.
The campaign is targeted at accounts with the best near-term potential
for closing FY91 business. Account managers for these accounts have
already been invited to a workshop on January 3. At the account workshop
they'll meet their 'tracking consultant' from the II-NET Team and develop
plans to get their customers to attend the II-NET Event (similar to the
SERVE-NET Event) at the Hartford ACT in February and March.
The II-NET Event will feature presentations and demos of Digital and CSO
products, emphasizing that everything is available for immediate sale.
The II-NET demos will show how IA-LINK can be closely integrated with a
selection of decision support applications from Digital's many CSOs in
investment management. You'll see investment professionals working on
PCs and workstations, easily accessing data that has been extracted from
an IBM-based investment accounting system and linking that data to
analytical tools for portfolio decision-making.
Further, at the LOMA Event in early March, we'll be featuring many of the
II-NET demonstrations.
There never has been a better time to sell to the Investment Management
departments of insurers. Here's a sample summary of the key points that
you can use to get your customer interested in exploring opportunities
with you in Investment Management:
Sample Pitch
Today, Investment Management for insurance companies means a lot more
than creating a safe haven for reserves and pension accounts. It has
become a leading line of business and, for many companies, the largest
profit center.
Competition for funds to manage has meant increased competition to show
the best performance. That means finding and seizing the
highest-yielding investment opportunities within all categories of risk.
The speed at which these windows of opportunity open and close, as well
as the increasing complexity involved in recognizing the opportunities,
has caused a surge in the importance of technology as a basic investment
management tool.
Like other asset managers, insurance investment professionals have spent
a lot of capital on analytical tools to help researchers, portfolio
managers and traders make smarter investment decisions. But those PCs
and analytics programs depend on fast input of accurate investment data:
not only where the market seems to be going, but what kind of investment
position the company is currently in, and how is that changing as the
market changes?
Today's technology can deliver market data almost instantaneously: that's
the kind of access that insurance investment managers need regarding
their own investment positions. Critical information about your
investment position is now locked in your Investment Accounting system,
usually requiring precious programming resources (and even more precious
time) to retrieve, verify and analyze.
Digital offers a range of solutions to this problem. Digital can
immediately build a link between your existing investment accounting
system and the analytical tools used by your investment professionals,
without disturbing the way you do business. Or Digital can supply a wide
range of new analytical and data access tools for traders, researchers
and portfolio managers, along with that critical back office link.
Finally, replacing or rebuilding the investment accounting system to make
it more accessible could be the ultimate answer.
These are the kinds of solutions that Digital has supplied to many of the
world's largest insurers: Investment Accounting at Aetna, Investment
Decision Support at Transamerica, Asset Allocation at Nippon Life.
Let's put this experience to work for you.
_________________________________________________________________________
EVENTS
LIMRA Supports the Life Insurance Industry; Digital Supports LIMRA
More than 600 Life insurers from around the world submit data to the Life
Insurance Marketing and Research Association (LIMRA), where a cluster of
VAX systems captures it for analysis. Information resulting from this
analysis assists the dues-paying member companies in their marketing
activities.
This year's LIMRA conference was held in Dallas in late October. Digital
sponsored the message center and was featured as a major vendor through
LIMRA promotional materials. Digital's Joe McCormick, Senior Sales Rep,
and Al Hayes, Sales Unit Manager, along with the Insurance Business Unit,
co-sponsored the Digital message center.
This was the fourth consecutive year that Digital has participated in
this event. The conference drew 1200 attendees, mostly officers, from
LIMRA's member companies. A video tape about an enhanced Agent Testing
service developed through a partnership of Digital, LIMRA and the
Southern New England Telephone company (SNET) was screened.
The following Sales tools are available:
LIMRA Success Story brochure - EA07/43
LIMRA/SNET video - available from the Corporate AV Library
on videotex
SERVE-NET Roadshow Availability
The software environment for the SERVE-NET Roadshow is nearing
completion. The expected availability date is 1/1/91. The Roadshow
version will contain the four IPW stations of the Hartford version.
These are: the Mailroom, Underwriter, Claim and Legal workstations.
The kit will include all the application software but not the system
layered products that are required (i.e. Rdb, VMS, DECwindows, etc.). It
will be the responsibility of the field location to make available the
hardware, disk space and layered products necessary for operation.
The package will include a list of all necessary system software and
versions as recommended, the application software on tape, the script and
basic installation instructions. The intention is that with the Roadshow
package, a District team can demonstrate SERVE-NET at any remote location
on just two workstations or DECwindow devices and a server.
When the package is ready for distribution, full details will be posted
to the Insurance NOTES conference. You may contact Jim Lawrence at
383-4523 for assistance after the 1/1/91 date.
LOMA SYSTEMS FORUM UPDATE
Work is now actively underway to make the LOMA Systems Forum, (March
10-13, 1991 in Orlando, Florida) a major focus for Digital insurance
sales activity. Make certain that your customers are aware that we will
be there, with third parties, and that they will have the opportunity to
see demonstrations and hear presentations about the capabilities that
created such strong industry interest at DECworld 90.
The list of demonstrations we will be showing, which will be supplemented
by discussions with experts in the field, includes:
Using the Insurance Professionals' Workstation Platform to Improve
Insurers' Operations
These project based offerings will be shown as they could be applied in a
number of different business settings, each one requiring integration of
many different technologies and capabilities:
o scanning and indexing documents
o folder management and use
o underwriting Life policies (based on demonstrations shown at
DECville)
o Property & Casualty claims processing (the DECworld
demonstration)
o litigation support (the DECworld demonstration)
o customer service (using CIT - a new addition to the demonstration
portfolio).
Executive Information Station
This demonstration, which is similar to the one seen at DECworld, will
highlight our executive information capabilities based on Digital's Data
Warehouse approach.
Investment Management
This demonstration suite will feature a new Digital offering (IA-LINK) to
link front and back offices. Demos will show how IA-LINK can be closely
integrated with a selection of decision support applications from many of
Digital's CSOs. Investment professionals will be seen working at PCs and
workstations, accessing data extracted from an IBM-based investment
accounting system, and linking that data to analytical tools for
portfolio decision-making.
CASE
The COHESION portfolio of software development tools will be
demonstrated. Netron, one of our CMPs, will also be at LOMA, and will be
showing how applications can be developed on a VAX for execution on IBM
mainframes, VAXs, and PCs.
Workflow Management
Discussing various workflow options including:
o Work group workflow management capabilities as embedded in IPW;
o Under customer non-disclosure agreements, off the exhibit floor,
we will provide presentations on the capabilities of the
(unannounced) enterprise-wide workflow manager which is
currently under development and field test. Details of the
process and procedures for enrolling customers in these
non-disclosure presentations will be available shortly.
DIDDLY
DIDDLY, which was shown at DECworld, is an eye-catching demonstration of
the integration of many technologies (image [full motion and still],
voice recognition, speech synthesis, database access, etc.) around a
simulation of a brain surgeon preparing for an operation.
This demonstration will be positioned at the front of the booth, and is
intended to draw interest to the rest of the Digital demonstrations.
In addition to the Digital booth, there will be a number of our third
parties at the event including:
o DISC - who offers a highly competitive VAX based Health Claim
processing system;
o NETRON - who offers a Digital (or PS2) based CASE system that
permits highly efficient development (and maintenance) of COBOL
applications which can be automatically tailored to compile and run
on IBM mainframes, VAXs or PCs;
o Arthur Andersen;
o Comshare (whose products are used in the executive workstation);
o Kodak.
Formal invitations to the exhibit and the Digital hospitality suite are
expected to be available in early January, along with more details
about the demonstrations and third parties.
It is not too early to talk informally with your customers, determine
whether they will be going to the event, and outline the kinds of things
that Digital will be doing. Account Managers will be asked for
information about customers who will be attending, so that we can tailor
activities and discussions to improve their specific sales opportunities.
In January, track consultants will start to work with Sales
Representatives to position specific activities for customers at LOMA.
If you know that your customers will be attending, please contact Tracy
Elkins @MKO, DTN 264-5110.
EXPO 91
EXPO 91 is to be held in Sydney, Australia, from April 9 through 12.
Whereas EXPO 90 focused exclusively on Banking (Capital Markets,
Corporate, International and Retail), EXPO 91 will focus on both Banking
and Insurance.
ILF 91
The Insurance Leaders' Forum 91 will be held in April at Kiawah Island,
South Carolina. The program will start with a reception on Tuesday
evening, April 23. Wednesday, April 24 will begin with a series of
speakers in the main tent in the morning, continue with breakouts,
demonstrations and recreation in the afternoon, and end with an informal
dinner in the evening. Thursday, April 25 will feature speakers in the
morning. The event will end at 1 p.m. on Thursday.
The forum is directed at the CIO and the CIO's business peers. Service
Excellence is the theme. A major topic of discussion will be
Opportunities for Insurers in Europe in the '90s. The speaker list is
comprised of outside consultants, Digital customers and Digital
executives. There will be ample time for your customers to discuss
issues of interest during the forum.
Kiawah Island is located 30 miles south of Charleston, South Carolina.
The facility has three golf courses. Other activities include
sightseeing, tennis, and swimming.
Nominations should be submitted to Tricia Baglia @OFO. Questions
regarding the program should be directed to Paul McMahon @FMT.
_________________________________________________________________________
INSURANCE ACT RESOURCES
Listed below are the members of the Hartford (Insurance) ACT with a brief
description of their responsibilities.
Jay Borden Assists Sales in resolving customers' immediate
networking needs. Advises clients regarding their
future networking needs to support new applications
and enable growth. Demonstrates and explains
Digital's Network Management and IBM
interconnectivity capabilities.
Maureen DeSena Supports all Office and Imaging products. Assists
Sales in qualifying opportunities, building account
strategies, and positioning products. Works with
third parties to develop the right solution to meet
customer needs. Delivers Office and Imaging PIDs.
Demonstrates Office and Imaging products.
Dave Dove Supports all customer demonstrations of desktop
integration and multivendor interoperability;
ULTRIX/RISC, Mac, DOS and OS/2 machines. Performs
network management for the ACT facility. Delivers
all PCSA and NAS PIDs.
Ed Farrell Provides on-site needs analyses in collaboration with
customer management. Organizes and leads customer
seminars focusing on strategic planning and
technologies (e.g. CASE, distributed computing,
architecture selection, etc.)
Mike Forrest Is currently enrolled in the Technical Development
Program. Upon completion he will specialize in
ULTRIX support.
Nancy Fuller Coordinates all aspects of customer visits - room
availability, stated hardware and software
requirements, audio/visual equipment, demonstration
resources, and catering. Functions as the Insurance
Help Desk for the Account Support Network. Is the
Digital Video Network (DVN) Coordinator and the
contact for all DVN broadcast information.
Monica Grey Is currently enrolled in the Technical Development
Program. Upon completion, she will specialize in
Office Systems support.
Linda Parker Maintains all ACT equipment to latest versions of
Digital and third party software. Tests and debugs
all new software installs. Is the resident VMS and
layered products specialist. Is currently training
to provide technical support for Imaging products.
Lynn Thomas Installs Digital and third party hardware and
software for customer demonstrations at the ACT.
Performs systems management for all VAX machines and
the SERVE-NET demonstration suite. Demonstrates
Excalibur's PIXTEX.
_________________________________________________________________________
Insurance NOTES Conference Access
The Hartford ACT maintains a NOTES conference about the insurance
industry. Various issues concerning sales, marketing and support are
discussed. On-line notices of interest are generally posted (e.g. trade
show happenings, SERVE-NET information, etc.) This is the appropriate
vehicle for topic-specific dialogue with internal personnel around the
globe. Anyone with interest in the industry is invited to participate.
All you need to do is add the entry to your NOTES notebook. The command
from the NOTES prompt is:
ADD ENTRY FACT01::INSURANCE
and to open it:
OPEN INSURANCE
If your node doesn't recognize or find the conference, then you can try
using the node number instead. Try using:
ADD ENTRY 36021::INSURANCE
then:
OPEN INSURANCE
If this fails, contact your System Manager for assistance as one of the
above should always work. The system that supports the conference is
occasionally down for maintenance.
_________________________________________________________________________
INSURANCE TRAINING EVENTS
When Topic Place Contact
Jan 3 Investment Accounting Hartford ACT Tracy Elkins
Workshop*
Jan 15 Asset Management 201 Chicago Jean-Pierre Angel
@MKO
Feb 11-12 Investment Accounting Event Hartford ACT Tracy Elkins
(II-NET) Staff Training
Feb 14 II-NET Executive Briefing Hartford ACT Tracy Elkins
March 9 Staff/Sales Training for Orlando, FL Tracy Elkins
LOMA Tradeshow
*This workshop is open to specific accounts.
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INSURANCE INDUSTRY NEWS
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FOR INTERNAL DIGITAL USE ONLY
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Issue 3
February 1991
Welcome to the third issue of the Insurance Industry News. This newsletter
is for those people in Digital's Business, Sales and Sales Support
organizations who target the insurance industry. The Insurance Competitive
Exchange has been unbundled from this publication and will be distributed
under separate cover.
There is no prescribed format for this publication. We can take it
anywhere the readership wants to go. Please provide feedback on what you
would like to see on these pages. Send all comments to your editor:
Bob Leonard @FMT
DTN 383-4542
All issues of the Insurance Newsletter are posted to the Insurance NOTES
file (see Note #111). In addition, Tracy Elkins is archiving each article
of each newsletter by topic. You may request these articles by subject
(e.g. image wins) by contacting Tracy @MKO, DTN 264-5110.
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| DCC Message from Tony Dionisio p. 2 |
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| WINS p. 3 |
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| New Advertising Campaign p. 7 |
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| LOMA 91 p. 7 |
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| ILF 91 p. 8 |
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| Track Consulting p. 10 |
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| SERVE-NET Roadshow p. 11 |
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| LIMRA p. 12 |
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| II-NET p. 12 |
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| Insurance Customer Advisory Group p. 13 |
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| Keeping up with chnages in the marketplace p. 15 |
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| Training p. 16 |
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DCC Message
The Insurance component of the Services DCC began as an organization in
1987. Our primary objective is to provide field-level support by
bringing marketing, sales, software and engineering together at the
account level. The focus is on providing quality, integrated solutions
for our customers.
The Insurance Segment is comprised of two existing groups (the
Insurance Resource Center - Northeast, and the Hartford ACT) and two
new entities (the Insurance Application Center, and the Insurance
Resource Center - Midwest). What follows is an account of what each of
these groups is goaled to do in support of the Insurance Sales teams.
Insurance Resource Center (IRC) - Northeast
This group is managed by Dave Wheeland who has 25 years of direct
experience in the insurance industry. Dave was the SWS Financial
Services Unit Manager for the Boston District prior to taking this
position. The IRC is comprised of seven business and management
consultants, each of whom has several years experience at major
insurers and/or insurance software providers. The group supports
accounts in the East, with most of the emphasis placed in New York,
Hartford and Boston.
Application Center for Technology - Hartford
For the past four years, this ACT has been capably managed by Jane
Emerson. This facility focuses on the insurance market. It is staffed
with five IS and technical consultants and an extremely competent
operations staff headed up by Brian McKie. Five of the insurance
consultants also reside here. Insurance account teams use this ACT
extensively to demonstrate Digital technologies and solutions to their
existing and prospective customers.
Insurance Applications Center (IAC)
Dave Wheeland is also the acting manager of this unit. The IAC
consists of eight solutions architects. These people have insurance
industry experience coupled with a high level of technical expertise.
Insurance Resource Center - Midwest
This unit is a start-up and is under the direction of Ed McDevitt. Ed
has 25 years of direct insurance industry experience and joined Digital
four years ago as a member of the Insurance Field (Sales) team. This
group currently has two consultants who provide industry expertise to
Sales units outside the geography serviced by the IRC Northeast.
The Insurance Segment of the DCC has been established to be the prime
sales support entity (beyond the district) for insurance account teams.
The Insurance Segment provides Sales with the following:
* Account Development
Business consultants help uncover opportunities by meeting with
client business executives. Relationship building and
penetration strategies are possible follow-up activities.
* Opportunities
Assessment and development of client opportunities are one of
our prime thrusts. Both business and technology consultants
will work with Sales teams from the identification stage to the
CERTing of a win.
* Technology Events, Discovery Seminars, PIDs,
The Hartford ACT provides all of the traditional activities of
such a facility. In addition, the resident consultants have
developed programs which feature Digital technology that solves
customer business problems. A process has been implemented to
allow all such events to be exhibited at any ACT in the U.S.,
making it more convenient for customers to attend.
* Programs and Industry Events
These are critical to increasing our visibility and credibility
with our insurance industry customers. We exerted a major
effort at DECworld 90 and will be prominent at industry events
such as LOMA (3/91) and LIMRA (4/91). We are also driving a
Digital-sponsored Insurance Leaders Forum scheduled for 4/91.
A subset of the Insurance Segment of the DCC and the Insurance ABU
develop industry solutions that are appropriate for a wide spectrum of
insurers. The first of these solutions was SERVE-NET, which depicts a
day in the life of a Digital-enabled Commercial Lines carrier.
Currently under development are a Life version of SERVE-NET and II-NET
(Insurance Investment).
These state-of-the-art demonstration suites/business scenarios have
sensitized our clients to the fact that Digital understands the
business issues that they face, and has the tools and technologies to
solve them. During the next two quarters we will be announcing more
new programs, events and solution sets that will enhance your ability
to sell to the insurance industry.
We look forward to working with you and your clients.
Image/Work in Process Win at Hartford Life
The Asset Management Processing and Reporting System (AMPRS) is a
strategic win, a future reference site for state-of-the-art Digital
technology, and an example of how working closely with a customer over
time can result in a successful solution.
Back in 1988, the Life Division of the Hartford Insurance Group used a
Service Bureau to handle their processing. Their internal processes
were inefficient and paper-based. They were continually hiring more
clerks to keep track of their multiplying paper folders. They launched
an evaluation study and determined that they needed to bring their
processing in-house to remain competitive. They focused on imaging as
the technology to solve their problems.
Dave Bourque, the Digital Sales Rep on the account, recognized that
image alone would only convert an inefficient paper-based process to an
inefficient electronic process. After a long uphill battle, Dave
convinced the customer to examine their workflow and to shift their
focus from image alone to image coupled with workflow management.
Hartford Life developed a work in process architecture and then began
looking for an outside consulting partner. They would not deal
directly with a vendor for fear of a self-serving bias toward that
vendor's platform. Wang, the HIG's primary office automation vendor,
brought in Arthur Andersen. Digital brought in Nolan-Norton.
Nolan-Norton collaborated with Hartford Life on their cost/benefit
analysis. Imaging is difficult to cost justify on the basis of hard
benefits alone. Dave Bourque states that "you must help the customer
do cost/benefit analysis. Give them the information they need and
educate them."
Hartford Life wanted a building block architecture that would allow
easy changes. When put out to bid, it had the following configuration
in mind: a vendor to supply the hardware only (Digital, IBM or Wang);
a software house to develop the work in process controller; FileNet
to supply the image component; and internal developers to build the
line of business applications in Oracle.
Digital submitted a proposal for the entire project using EDGE as the
work in process controller and DECimage Express for the imaging
component. To sell the proposal to HIG management, Dave secured the
necessary hardware and a DECimage Toolkit to build a proof of concept
prototype. As Dave says "I don't know very many people who will buy a
car without driving it." Steve Allen, a Digital Sales Support
Specialist, led a group of HIG personnel in the development of the
prototype. Hartford Life liked the scalable design and Digital's
networking capabilities, and they knew they could rely on Digital to
make it work.
$1M will be certed in FY91 for this project, the total will run
somewhere over $10M. This includes a workstation for each knowledge
worker, consulting services to do integration between DECimage and
Oracle, ALL-IN-1, VTX and VAX servers. In FY92, AMPRS will be fully
deployed at 15 remote offices and will support 150 users.
AMPRS is a field test site for both EDGE and DECimage Express. It is
estimated that this project will become referenceable some time this
fall.
Aetna EBD LTD Win
On April 7, 1989 the Long Term Disability department within the
Employee Benefits Division at Aetna issued an RFP to replace their
claims processing system. They were processing claims on a
Prime/4-Phase/IBM system with microfilm media. On that same day, some
of EBD's technical people attended an 'Image Day' at the Hartford ACT.
A few weeks later, the CIO of EBD listened to a presentation about
Imaging given by Christine Hughes from the Gartner Group at ILF '89 on
Kiawah Island.
Upon returning to Hartford, the CIO invited Ms. Hughes to speak to his
staff. She positioned Digital very favorably. In May of '89, the
Digital team (led by Sales Rep Sue Renehan) delivered their proposal to
the LTD department. They then invited the appropriate Aetna personnel
to the Hartford ACT to see demonstrations of all the technologies in
the proposal.
Aetna awarded the project to Digital and placed their first order in
Q1 FY90. This first order was for consulting (Tom Slade from the Image
Resource Center and a database programmer) and some VAXstations. The
customer had planned on using Powerhouse as the development tool, but
they fell in love with DECwindows/OSF/Motif during the initial phase.
The decision was made to do all development in C.
A 154 node LAVC will support the home office users for this custom,
true client/server project. There are currently five Digital
consultants on site. The image piece is scheduled for production this
April. The claims processing modules will be in production by the end
of this calendar year. The installation includes 150 VAXstations, 50
PCs and Macs w/ Pathworks, a VAX 6510 application server with three
boot nodes: two 3400s and a VAX 4000; a Sony Juke Box and a Kodak
ImageLink 900 Scanner.
Aetna is so pleased with the LTD application that they are piloting it
in a regional Health Benefits claim office using PC clients instead of
VAXstations. If the pilot is accepted, it will be rolled out to over
50 field claim offices country-wide.
$3.5M has been certed so far. The total win is estimated at $5M for
LTD with a forecasted $10M from future Health Claims business.
Moreover, this project has helped to open the door for Digital to
become Aetna's preferred image technology vendor. Aetna is scheduled
to review Digital's imaging strategy and products in mid February and a
decision will follow in the spring timeframe.
First Win at General Reinsurance
Digital's first installation at all-blue General Reinsurance Company,
the number one reinsurance provider in the country, is a swaps trading
solution for General Re's new financial subsidiary. The $2.2 million
solution provides General Re with a complete development and production
environment built around a Digital VAX 6510/VAX 6410 backend VAXcluster
and distributed frontend MicroVAX systems. "General Reinsurance
Financial Products is developing analytics, trading tools, and portfolio
management tools," says Holly Neumann, who spearheaded the sale out of
Digital's Rocky Hill office. "They're not part of the insurance side of
the house, but they're doing swaps for the company. We needed to find a
niche within the company where we could compete, and this was it."
Finding the niche in General Re was not easy. Not only is the
reinsurance industry devotedly blue, but the president of IBM Europe
also sits on the board of General Reinsurance itself. However, the
swaps system was a new system, and General Re did not want to be vendor
bound. Digital proposed a solution based upon a VAXcluster backend,
supporting MicroVAX frontends in Tokyo, New York, and London, each of
which supported a local network of IBM PS/2 systems via PCSA. Neumann
brought in local transaction processing expert, George Matthews, to
demonstrate Digital's Rdb and CASE tools and convinced General Re that
applications written in C would provide them with the level of
portability and vendor independence they sought. General Re bought the
idea, hired a staff of developers familiar with the Digital environment,
and set to work developing their system. Six months later it is up and
running.
"We've opened the door for them to do business with us," says Neumann.
"Moreover, we've opened the door for other reinsurance companies to do
business with us, too. The solution is living up to all the
expectations we set, and General Re is amazed at how easy the systems
are to operate. They're still in shock at how easy it is to manage the
systems."
Neumann's experience at General Re opens up new ways to look at the
insurance and reinsurance markets. "If you're trying to sell into the
insurance segment," notes Neumann, "look at the investment area in case
the company is considering doing their own trading. You've got to find
a niche, and that could be the one you're looking for."
Digital Places a $5M Solution at Factory Mutual Engineering
Factory Mutual provides engineering services for its three parent
insurance companies - Arkwright Mutual, Allendale Mutual and Protection
Mutual - and it recently committed to upgrading its VAX 8200 systems to
VAX 4000 systems. Resident in each of Factory Mutual's 17 district
offices will be a VAX 4000-300 system, with multiple RF72 disk drives,
volume shadowing, ALL-IN-1, the EARS routing and tracking ASSETS
package, and loss prevention reporting and scheduling applications that
Factory Mutual has written. The new VAX 4000 systems will be linked to
the MicroVAX 3800 systems Factory Mutual purchased last year in a
dual-host cluster configuration. Each district office will be part of
a Wide Area Network that links Factory Mutual with its three parent
companies.
"Factory Mutual wanted high reliability and availability at the low
end," says Account Manager Carol Mitchell. "They were very impressed
with our dual-host configurations and our volume shadowing
capabilities." At the same time, Mitchell notes, Factory Mutual
installed 'systems with headroom' so that they can look at the
applications they have and consider which applications they will need
in the future.
"They've got 1,000 engineers in the field," notes Mitchell, "and they
have not been collecting their information in an automated manner.
However, the new IS director of Factory Mutual is the former IS
director for Data General, and he's got a lot of innovative ideas.
They're talking client/server. They're looking at using imaging more
aggressively. They're evaluating tools to support the people in the
field. Our messages about flexibility, information exchange, and open
systems are being really well received."
The ALL-IN-1 mail system that links the 17 district offices and the
parent companies is one of the most prominent demonstrations of
Digital's ability to move information between platforms. The new
system at Factory Mutual has raised the awareness of Digital in all
three parent companies, says Mitchell. "The system is providing better
communications between Factory Mutual and its parent companies - each
of whom relies on Factory Mutual for crucial information. The better
they're able to deliver that information, the better they look. And
that reflects well on Digital."
Europe and GIA Update
There are encouraging signs of interest in the Spanish insurance
market. A recent Digital insurance seminar ran for nearly 11 hours,
with considerable audience interest in Digital's branch office
strategies and European third party solutions. The market appears to
be such that Digital will be installing a permanent demo of the
underwriting platform in the Madrid offices; the demo will be showcased
at an insurance executive seminar planned for March.
The Insurance Newsletter contacted Norio Murakami, the Services
Marketing Manager for Japan, to find out what is going on in Japan's
insurance markets. Murakami-san would say only that an aggressive push
is underway in Japan and that he would share more news with us as it
develops. "Can you tell us whether Japan is doing anything special?
Anything that might be useful to other reps selling into the insurance
segment?" we asked. Said Murakami-san, "if our efforts prove to be
successful, we will be happy to share them with you." Stay tuned to
this space for more on insurance in Japan.
New Insurance Advertising Campaign!
Digital is launching an advertising campaign aimed at insurance
industry customers. The campaign focuses on image and workflow, and
office solutions. Eventually it will transition into a campaign that
positions Digital as the open systems leader.
The ad campaign will appear in seven targeted insurance publications.
Complementing these ads will be a London Life testimonial which will
appear in business publications (e.g. Business Week). The London Life
ad focuses on Digital's ability to solve customer service problems with
Network Applications Support (NAS). A package with copies of the ads
and how-to-sell information will be mailed to Sales at the end of
February.
Watch the following publications for the insurance ads:
Best's Review (P&C and Life versions), Insurance Technology,
Business Insurance, National Underwriter (P&C and Life versions),
and Resource (published by LOMA).
LOMA 91
March 10-13 at Orlando - an Opportunity to Accelerate the Sales Cycle
The 1991 LOMA Systems Forum is shaping up as one of the key sales
enhancement events of the year. At the event, the Digital exhibit will
be attracting attention through presentation of the DIDDLY
demonstration (originally seen at DECworld 90) and the presentation of
the NAS Video "Educating Peter".
The exhibit itself will include:
* The SERVE-NET Demonstration, including the integration of
Computer Integrated Telephony and Voice;
* The II-LINK (Investment) demonstration suite;
* COHESION;
* Actuarial Solutions;
* NAS desktop integration capabilities (including Mac and PC);
* The new 1200-I terminal and MD410 scanner;
* Client/Server operations.
There will also be a number of identified Digital third parties present
(DISC, Netron, Arthur Andersen, etc.).
Interested clients can meet with Digital Executives (Sandy Thomas, Dan
Harrington, Ron Hevey) or experts in specific fields (Image, Workflow,
application of technology to the industry). Arrangements for these
meetings can be made through Tracy Elkins (DTN 264-5110 at node
SELL3::ELKINS). To ensure that you get the maximum leverage from your
customers' interaction with our booth, a customer information sheet
should be completed and sent to Tracy. Copies of these sheets are
available from Tracy.
Account trackers are working with their Sales Reps to make certain that
Digital's presence is understood by customers and that they are
directed to the demonstration or discussion areas that will have the
most impact on current sales opportunities. If you haven't yet shared
our activities with your customers, you are urged to do so promptly.
Detailed information can be obtained from Bob Leonard in the form of
the LOMA Event Guide. Liz Steinberg, Sales Rep on the MONY account,
has written a high-level subset of the Guide. This is suitable for
distribution to customers and is also available from Bob Leonard @FMT.
Let's all focus on this event to maximize the success of our
participation, using it as a way of speeding up sales cycles and
enhancing Digital's credibility with clients.
ILF 91 Update
The Insurance Leaders' Forum for 1991 (ILF 91) is progressing well.
This is the premier event for Digital in the insurance industry. Many
of you should have received invitation letters for your customers in
the last few days. We are still accepting nominations. The quality of
the nominations has been excellent - which makes the task of selecting
the customers to invite more difficult.
We are sending out a separate ILF 91 (Kiawah) Newsletter to provide you
with the detailed information you need to present the event to your
customers. Here is some summary information to help you position the
event.
The theme is "TIME, THE COMPETITIVE EDGE. A new paradigm: Compressing
time - increases service - reduces cost". This theme complements our
efforts in selling solutions for insurance field organizations. Most
of our customers have gone through the cycle of cutting costs which
degrades service, which then reduces volume, which then reduces
profitability, and the cycle starts all over again. Tom Hout,
co-author of "Competing Against Time" and a Vice President of Boston
Consulting Group will tell our customers how they can cut the time to
process transactions and at the same time improve service and decrease
costs.
All of the speakers will deliver concepts and ideas from a variety of
sources and viewpoints. Tom Johnson, Nolan-Norton, discusses image
technology and its use as an enabler. Mike Cullen of Price
Waterhouse's London office will present new opportunities that are
developing in Europe. Each of the customer speakers will present a
perspective on the use of technology in support of a service strategy.
Lou Abdou, Dave Annis and Lou Londono of Hartford Life will present a
report about implementing leading edge systems. Lou Abdou is the
Information Management (IM) Vice President who is responsible for the
automation efforts of Hartford Life. Lou will discuss the IM
perspective on supporting his aggressive leading edge users. Dave
Annis is the user Assistant Vice President for Group Life and Health
Administrative Systems and the project manager for the Group
Information Processing and Reporting (GIPR) project that has Digital
equipment installed. Dave will present the user perspective on the
GIPR system. Lou Londono is the user Director of Asset Management
Services Strategic Systems (AMPRS) project which is in the process of
installing Digital equipment including image and work in process. Lou
will discuss the user perspective of the AMPRS system.
Steve Doucette, CEO of Milwaukee Insurance, will relate his experiences
in taking his company from a functional organization to a team
organization. Steve will discuss staff and organizational changes, the
development of new systems and the implementation of a change strategy
in his company.
Dr. Tom O'Sullivan, Principal from Dupont IEA, will speak at a breakout
session on the methodology used by Cortex at Milwaukee Insurance to
develop the applications needed to change the way Milwaukee does
business.
Jim Miller, Executive Vice President, Massachusetts Mutual Life
Insurance, will present his perspective on the benefits and
productivity gains from the Group Claims system that MML has
implemented. Jim will also comment regarding his perspective on
European opportunities. MML has opened a claim processing operation in
Ireland.
Kelly Butt, CIO for London Life, will speak about their field office
system.
Mark Steinkrauss has agreed to make a presentation reviewing Digital
and discussing our future. Mark is the Digital Corporate liaison to
the financial community.
Jay Borden, Network Consultant at the Farmington ACT, will conduct a
breakout covering network considerations of imaging.
Thornton May of Nolan-Norton will be running Image Workshops during the
breakout period.
Dan Geacik of the Cross Industry DCC has committed to presenting Demand
Printing during the breakout period.
Speakers in Negotiation
We are working with an outside consulting firm to identify and engage a
speaker with expert knowledge of the issues facing the insurance
industry in the U.S. We are also scheduling a speaker on Digital
Technology and architectures who will tie it all together for our
customers.
Demonstrations
* SERVE-NET,
* Recovery Services.
The final list of demonstrations is still being determined, but this is
representative of what we will be showing.
Track Consulting for LOMA 91 and ILF 91
What's a Track Consultant? Many of you know the answer. The Insurance
Segment of the Services DCC generated the concept for DECworld 90.
Track Consultants are Digital Insurance Consultants who track a number
of assigned accounts. The role of the Track Consultant is to get to
know the Sales team assigned to the account and provide that Sales team
with information about the event. The Track Consultant also uses his
or her industry knowledge to help the Sales team penetrate the account.
We are using the Track Consulting approach for both the LOMA 91 and the
ILF 91 (Kiawah) events. Track Consultants have been contacting the
Sales teams and letting them know what the content of the events are
and how best to take advantage of the event.
In the case of LOMA 91, the Track Consultants are helping Sales set up
customer meetings and scheduled visits at LOMA. LOMA is a sales event.
Sales people need to find out which customers are attending LOMA; then
invite them to a meeting with Digital executives followed by a demo
tour. Information on who attended LOMA 89 and how to schedule meetings
is available from Tracy Elkins, DTN 264-5110.
In the case of ILF 91, the Track Consultants have been helping the
Sales teams identify the customers to nominate. Now that the
invitations have gone out, the Track Consultants will be working with
the Sales teams to convince the customers to attend. The Track
Consultants will be providing the latest information on ILF 91.
If you need more information about Track Consulting, call
Nancy Fuller, DTN 383-4525, (203) 674-4525, @FMT.
SERVE-NET Roadshow Announcement
The SERVE-NET event for insurance customers, initiated in May of 1990,
has been a great success with both clients and the Sales teams. There
has been an increasing demand to extend the SERVE-NET demonstration to
local field locations around the U.S. and the world. The Insurance DCC
is pleased to announce the availability of the SERVE-NET Roadshow. You
can plan NOW to bring your customer to a SERVE-NET event at your ACT or
Sales office.
What is the SERVE-NET Roadshow?
It's a specifically tailored customer visit that targets insurance
business problems. In this three part event, the client will hear
Digital's 'vision' presentation of insurance industry trends and
problems. They then participate in a tour of our model insurance
company: Freedom Life and Casualty. Here they see many of Digital's
key technologies as well as many third party products removing
information roadblocks, reducing paper and enhancing customer service.
This is followed by a high level technology overview that explains
those key technologies, provides the customer with information about
Digital solutions, and may open doors for you at the account.
This event is specifically targeted to the senior level executives in
both the user and information systems areas. The event's demonstration
concentrates on how the business problems of Freedom Life and Casualty
are addressed through technology. The scenario is a Property/Casualty
one, but the technology is readily extended to any insurance
environment.
What will be shown at the SERVE-NET event?
The actual demonstration environment includes four key insurance
applications that show your customer how Digital and third party
technologies can improve service delivery and provide total access to
information regardless of its location. The applications include an AI
assisted Underwriter's workstation, an Electronic Mailroom, a Claims
Adjuster's workstation and a Legal workstation, all highly integrated.
The SERVE-NET event shows how to use technology to improve the
efficiency and effectiveness of key professionals in the field,
regionals or home office.
If you are familiar with the full SERVE-NET event, the Roadshow
eliminates the Agent and Executive stations, policy printing, FAX
serving and scanning. The main impact of the technology integration
is still evident.
How can I sell using this event?
The Insurance DCC has developed a Sales Readiness program to get both
you and your customer prepared for the event. This program will help
us focus the event for your customer and will help you understand the
potential areas of opportunities within your account. We will discuss
with you the applicability of a SERVE-NET event to your selling
situation. We can answer any questions you might have about the event.
How do I get started?
Just contact the Insurance DCC organization. If one of our consultants
is currently in contact with your account, that is your primary
resource. Otherwise contact Jim Lawrence, Hartford Insurance DCC:
Jim Lawrence @FMT, CTOAVX::JLAWRENCE
DTN 383-4523, 203-674-4523
To arrange for a pre-install kit of hardware/software requirements,
have your local technical resource contact Jim Lawrence at the above
address. This will specify the demonstration environment requirements.
You may or may not have the hardware to support the event.
The Insurance DCC is pleased to bring this great new selling tool to
the field.
LIMRA
Digital has been invited to participate in the Life Insurance Market
Research Association (LIMRA) Marketing Services Conference scheduled
for April 17-19 in Denver, Colorado. Representatives of the service
side of insurers' marketing operations attend this conference to
discover creative, cost effective ways to accomplish more in less time.
Most of the 150 attendees oversee product design and development,
market planning, advanced sales, training or sales promotion for their
companies.
We will be presenting a workshop and participating in a discussion
group on the topic of "How Will Future Technology Affect Key Company
Functions?". In addition to a presentation to all conference
attendees, we will be demonstrating how to integrate the information
needs of a Sales organization through the use of the Sales and
Marketing system currently resident at the Chicago ACT. This system
will be modified to suit the audience's needs and shown on various
desktop devices.
II-NET
Preparations for the II-NET Event are moving ahead rapidly! Demo
development is on schedule. The script and slide presentations are
nearly complete. Staffing is fully scheduled. Letters, invitations
and brochures have been distributed to tracking consultants and account
reps. ACCOUNTS ARE ALREADY STARTING TO RESERVE DATES! Don't miss out
on bringing your customer to the premier sales event of FY91.
[For those who haven't seen the II-NET Event Guide, here's an excerpt.
For the complete guide, contact Don Bracken @PDM, DTN 291-0234.]
What is it?
The II-NET Event is a series of half-day corporate visits for target
investment management accounts. The event focuses on business issues
facing insurance investment management groups (especially those using
an IBM mainframe-based ISA OSCARS or PRISM system as their investment
accounting database), and it spotlights Digital's solutions for
addressing those issues.
What is its purpose?
The purpose is to prove through demonstrations that Digital can deliver
solutions that make internal portfolio holdings information more
readily accessible; improve the productivity of investment and IS
professionals; improve the profitability of insurance investment
operations; and ensure that insurance investment technology works FOR
investment professionals and not against them.
What is the sales objective?
The objective is to accelerate the sales cycle to help you close
high-ticket business during FY91.
What does the event consist of?
The event features presentations and a demonstration of Digital and CSO
insurance investment solutions available for immediate sale, as well as
an individualized business meeting at which you and your customers can
discuss their specific technology-related problems.
When is it being held?
The II-NET Event opens Feb. 27, 1991, at the Hartford ACT in
Farmington, Connecticut. (Feb. 27 is set aside as a special 'preview'
for Digital staff; contact Tracy Elkins @MKO or Alicia Bagdon @PDM to
register for the preview).
The following dates are reserved for II-NET customer visits:
NOTE: These dates are different from those originally announced; the
event has been spread out over a longer period to allow for more
flexibility in setting up customer appointments.
February 27-28
March 5-7
March 19-21
March 25, 27-28
April 2
April 9-11
Digital's Insurance Customer Advisory Groups
Over the past three years, Digital has been operating two insurance
customer groups, both of which are designed to enhance our understanding
of real needs and attitudes of our insurance customers, and to obtain
candid opinions about Digital, its capabilities and the ways that it
satisfies (or fails to satisfy) customer expectations. The comments of
both these groups are HEARD AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS IN DIGITAL. To
maximize the effect of these groups, confidential minutes are shared
with key Digital senior executives. In many cases the comments of these
groups have made a material and significant difference to our direction
and investment.
These groups, each of which currently meets annually, are:
* The Digital Insurance Advisory Board, with a membership consisting of
CIOs and CEOs from key insurance accounts. This Board operates like
an informal board of directors for our Insurance Business Unit,
meeting with senior officers of Digital such as Ken Olsen, Win Hindle,
Pete Smith, Bill Steul and Sandy Thomas.
During the meetings, we share our strategic and tactical plans for
activity which may impact the insurance industry and receive frank
feedback on the way that those plans and tactics, coupled with
members' experience of Digital's behavior, mesh with the real needs of
customers and the insurance industry.
* The Digital Insurance Architectural Advisory Group, with a membership
consisting of technical and system directors from the insurance
industry who report to CIOs (and in some cases CIOs themselves).
This group meets with Digital technical product management, receiving
detailed product and activity information and providing candid
feedback on its applicability to the insurance industry.
Because of the nature of the comments, and the non disclosure provisions
under which the groups operate, all notes from the meetings are
confidential and have a highly restricted distribution. There are,
however, general comments that are not confidential which will be useful
to Sales and Support personnel as they work with insurance clients.
The following points apply to both groups:
* No discussion of either of these two groups should occur with
customers without express approval from the Insurance Business Unit
(John Baker or Sandy Thomas).
* Membership in either group is based on the nature of the individual
member; the way he or she is viewed by peers in the insurance
industry; his or her personal qualifications and experience; and the
nature of the company he or she works for. It is NOT appropriate to
consider offering participation in either of these groups as some sort
of reward for purchasing Digital goods or services.
* Neither of the groups is in any way used, or to be used, as a way of
improving sales to a specific customer. This is exceedingly
important, since many of the members have clearly and unambiguously
indicated that if there is an attempt to sell them something, the
value of the group (to them and to Digital) will be substantially
diminished.
* Because of the confidential nature of the meeting process, we will
never associate comments or criticisms with any one individual or
company. It is our view that, with some minor exceptions, the
comments of members of these groups (unless challenged by other
members) represent legitimate observations that may well apply to a
significant number of customers and prospects.
In future copies of the Insurance Newsletter, we will be publishing
pertinent remarks abstracted from the minutes of both of these groups.
The remarks are expected to assist Sales and Support personnel in
understanding the opportunities, ideas and activities of the insurance
industry and to be better able to approach their customers on specific
opportunities.
Keeping your fingers on the pulse of change in the marketplace ...
Changes in the tax laws and insurance regulations force changes upon
insurance companies that often force changes in their information
systems operations. In most cases, there are both up and down sides to
these changes: the down side may be that changes in regulations force
insurers to change their plans, which can, for instance, cause the
cancellation of projects that you're bidding on. The up side, however,
is that insurance companies are anxious to find the loopholes in new
regulations; these loopholes provide them with an opportunity to develop
new products, and these new products can lead to new opportunities for
you to sell solutions. For new product opportunities, Digital's CASE
tools, robust development environment, and ease of application
portability across the entire range of systems are compelling reasons to
look to a Digital solution.
The following list of publications can help you keep your finger on the
pulse of regulations that affect the insurance marketplace. Not only
will they better help you to stay up on what's going on in this
marketplace, but they'll enable you to work proactively with your
accounts when the regulatory environment is in flux.
Best's Insurance
Management Reports - Regular coverage on four key areas: the
financial scene; the outlook in Washington;
statistics covering various aspects of the
business; and analysis of current developments.
Weekly. $195. A.M. Best, Ambest Road, Oldwick
NJ 08858. Tel (201) 439-2200.
Best's Review
Life & Health - In-depth coverage of marketing, legislative and
financial trends, comments on developments of
industry-wide significance, new products,
company reports, market share studies.
Monthly. $18. See previous for subscription
address.
Best's Review
Property/Casualty - In-depth coverage of marketing, legislative and
financial trends, comments on developments of
industry-wide significance, new products,
company reports, market share studies.
Monthly. $18. See previous for subscription
address.
Business Insurance - Risk management, employee benefit issues,
commercial insurance and reinsurance market
developments. Weekly. $52. Crain
Communications, 965 East Jefferson Ave.,
Detroit MI 48207. Tel (800) 678-9595.
Employee Benefit
Plan Review - Current developments in corporate retirement
plans and health care programs including
pension, profit-sharing, ESOPS, medical, life,
disability, dental, PPO, HMO. Monthly. $86.
C.D. Spencer aqnd Associates, 222 West Adams
St., Chicago IL 60606. Tel (312) 993-7900.
Insurance Industry
Newsletter - Current information on insurance activities.
Weekly. $77. Insurance Field Company. PO Box
18630, Louisville, KY 40218. Tel (502)
491-5857.
Insurance Technology - 10 issues per year. Free to industry
employees, otherwise $36. International
Computer Programs, Inc. 2 World Trade Center,
New York, NY, 10048. Tel (212) 869-1300.
MarketFacts - Life Insurance Market Research Association
periodical includes articles from industry
leaders re distribution strategies,
productivity, market trends, etc. Bi-monthly.
$46 (special Digital rate). LIMRA, 8 Farm
Springs, Farmington, CT 06032. Tel (203)
677-0033.
National Underwriter - Market trends, new products and services,
competitive insurance info, reinsurance, risk
management, employee benefits and legislative
developments. Weekly. $55. Tel (513)
721-2140.
Sales Training
Subject Dates Location Contact
Intro to Insurance Self-paced --- Local
(101) EY-F624E-PO Instruction Training
Coordinator
Investment Management:
II-NET Event
Overview Training Feb 27 Hartford ACT Tracy Elkins
Account Workshop May - TBD Chicago Don Bracken
Asset Management 201 March 27 New York Tracy Elkins
Insurance Solutions Training
for Sales and staff:
LOMA Event March 9 Orlando, FL Tracy Elkins
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INSURANCE INDUSTRY NEWS
***************************************************************************
FOR INTERNAL DIGITAL USE ONLY
***************************************************************************
Issue 4
June 1991
There is no prescribed format for this publication. We can take it
anywhere the readership wants to go. Please provide feedback on what you
would like to see on these pages. Send all comments to your editor:
Bob Leonard @FMT
DTN 383-4542
All issues of the Insurance Newsletter are posted to the Insurance NOTES
file (see Note #111). In addition, Tracy Elkins is archiving each article
of each newsletter by topic. You may request these articles by subject
(e.g. image wins) by contacting Tracy @MKO, DTN 264-5110.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Table of Contents... |
| |
| |
| Message from Dan Harrington - NMS p. 2 |
| |
| MetaPower - uniform look and feel p. 2 |
| |
| Insurance in Europe - update p. 3 |
| |
| NAS in Insurance Briefing / USERLINK Announcement p. 4 |
| |
| Recent Press Coverage - p. 4 |
| publications run stories about Digital in insurance |
| |
| Advertising Campaign p. 5 |
| |
| Marketing Programs for FY92 p. 5 |
| |
| LOMA - Digital presence at this major insurance event p. 6 |
| |
| ILF 91 Debriefing p. 6 |
| |
| New Legal System Information Sheet p. 6 |
| |
| Insurance Architectural Advisory Group - p. 7 |
| valuable customer input |
| |
| |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
Contributors: John Baker, Tony Emerson, Dan Harrington,
Bob Leonard, Reginal Londergan, Paul McMahon
Message from Dan Harrington
Digital's year to date revenue and profit position make a compelling
imperative: We all need to become more bottom line oriented! The New
Management System (NMS), and the accounting processes that support it,
are designed to give P&L control to the Account Selling Teams. By
setting revenue and net margin objectives for each account, NMS gives us
direction and guides our range of investment alternatives. Of equal
importance to NMS is how Account Managers get their job done. NMS does
not reduce the importance of knowing and solving our customers' business
problems.
Account Managers tell me that NMS is exactly the environment they need to
be successful and satisfied in their work. That's great, because NMS was
intended to create an environment where success can flourish and be a
source of personal satisfaction and reward. We need Account Managers
committed to profitability, team leadership and penetration of their
accounts. Focusing on profit puts our sales efforts and quality programs
in perspective, it doesn't replace them. Nothing happens until somebody
sells something.
Thanks for the great year we've had in Insurance! Finish FY91 strong -
I'll see you at the Insurance Training Rally September 30 through
October 3.
Good Selling!
MetaPower - A Uniform Look and Feel for Multiple Mainframe Systems
Needed Now - Available Now
The insurance industry is under stress from a number of directions.
Maintaining profit margins, maximizing investment income and reducing
investment risk, unmet customer expectations, and low productivity are
all key pressure points. Low productivity is complicated by significant
problems in training, employing and retaining qualified knowledge
workers. While there are many different elements to solving these
problems, one that has been identified as key is improving employee
productivity, by providing knowledge workers and clerical personnel with
easy access and a UNIFORM LOOK AND FEEL for any system that they use in
performing their responsibilities.
This uniform look and feel should include not only workstations or PCs,
but mainframe systems as well. This is a real problem for insurance
companies. Almost without exception, insurers have different mainframe
systems for each product. These systems are typically of different
generations and have different interface requirements. For a customer
with an Auto policy, a Variable Life policy, a Universal Life policy and
a Homeowners policy, four different systems have to be accessed to get
the customer information on all products. What is required is a way for
the end user to quickly, easily and uniformly access and update all of
this information, regardless of its physical location, underlying
application or computer system.
This need can now be met through the use of a VAX/VMS based integration
platform called MetaPower from Bell Atlantic Software Systems (BASS).
MetaPower is a database and applications integration platform that allows
easy interface to multiple databases from multiple vendors. It is used
to develop integrated applications while preserving a customer's
investment in existing systems. It is particularly useful in
multivendor, mainframe environments where data is not easily shared due
to islands of applications. This platform can complement our SmartFolder
and SmartFolder/Imaging offerings by integrating and rationalizing all
the mainframe system interaction in the same way that SmartFolder
integrates the folder management. In addition, MetaPower is an ideal
interface mechanism for Computer Integrated Telephony applications in
insurance, since it insulates the customer from the variations of the
mainframe backend systems.
A MetaPower solution consists of two basic components. The first is a
platform that integrates the data elements residing in existing
applications into a unified, virtual relational data model, and the
second is the new application that is built on the new unified model.
This unified relational data model approach allows the customer to easily
share data, synchronize databases, add new functionality to existing
applications, or gracefully migrate data from old applications to new
ones.
BASS's Strategic Account Manager is Dan Doherty @OFO (274-6853). David
Dines @LKG (226-7113) and Kathy Hughes (226-7701) are the
Telecommunications Marketing contacts. Metapower is currently available
as a field test.
Insurance in Europe
Francois Seidner, the DCC Manager for France, has been named the DCC
Insurance Manager for all of Europe. Most countries have a Market
Manager responsible for the insurance segment:
Patrick Gerome @FCO France
Jennifer Jarrett @RDL UK
Urs Kaeser @THR Switzerland
August Lammersdorf @FRN Germany
Europe will ship more than $500M in insurance business this year, a
substantial increase from last year. The UK has implemented an
integrated demonstration incorporating ALL-IN-1, several third party
applications, imaging, and an innovative interface to DECwindows called
the DialogBus. France has installed upgrades in hundreds of AGF branches
and is developing relationships with a number of new third parties.
Germany just sold a VAX 6000 system to a subsidiary of Factory Mutual.
Switzerland has built an application demonstration based on SmartFolder.
As the unified European Market approaches, the insurance industry is
undergoing substantial change. This results in a myriad of opportunities
for Digital.
NAS in Insurance Briefing
USERLINK Announced
A NAS in Insurance Briefing for press and consultants was held June 19 at
the Hartford ACT. This is the first in a series of industry briefings to
follow the June 3 Open Advantage/NAS announcement.
During the briefing, Jacqueline Kahle, NAS Group Marketing Manager and
Sandy Thomas, Vice President, Insurance Business Unit, positioned
Digital's NAS approach in the insurance industry. Rick Krohe, Manager of
Technology Architecture at London Life Insurance Company, told the
audience how his company improved customer service and saved $2M using a
NAS solution.
A specific solution for insurance industry Investment professionals,
called USERLINK (formerly IA-Link) was announced at the event.
Over 30 consultants and press attended the meeting representing firms
such as Andersen Consulting, Price Waterhouse, CSC Partners, Deloitte
Touche, Tillinghast, Nolan Norton, and publications such as Insurance &
Technology.
Recent Press Coverage
Digital in insurance is 'in the press'. Several customer case studies
and interviews with Sandy Thomas have been printed in the Insurance
publications.
A recent issue of Insurance and Technology included a case study of
Phoenix Mutual with CEO Bob Fiondella citing Digital as their partner in
developing new business using a workflow controller. The latest issue
profiled Digital along with other major vendors to the insurance
industry. In this article, titled "Go Blue or Go Where?", Digital is
positioned as one of the four main competitors in the insurance market.
Our NAS strategy for multivendor integration is the main focus of the
Digital module.
National Underwriter recently ran a story titled "DEC Boots Up to Take
Bite of Huge Insurance Market". Business Insurance recently published an
article about expert systems for underwriters which included an interview
with Sandy Thomas. In Digital News, a case study was published about
CIGNA and its Digital Networked Publishing capabilities.
You should have received a copy of these articles during the first week
of June. If you need copies call Alicia Bagdon @PDM (DTN 291-0198).
Advertising
Changes are happening as we speak in Digital's advertising strategy. In
June, Digital announces the Open Advantage campaign with new and
boldly-colored ads being a central part of the campaign. The ads tout
Digital 'opening' hospitals, banks, manufacturing plants, to name a few.
Showing Digital's leadership position in open systems, the ads focus on a
new strategic position for the company with Network Applications Support
(NAS) being the main point. These ads are effective sales tools for your
insurance customers since the NAS approach allows Digital to penetrate a
heavily IBM-oriented industry.
The open advantage ads are being placed in all the major business and
computer newspapers and trade magazines.
Specific ads for insurance are also running in the insurance publications
including Best's Review, National Underwriter, Business Insurance, and
Insurance and Technology. The current ad focuses on image and workflow.
Response to the insurance ad has been very good.
Starting in late July, a new testimonial ad on London Life Insurance
will appear in the major business (Business Week, Fortune, Forbes) and
computer publications (ComputerWorld, InfoWeek). In this ad London
Lifes' President, Gordon R. Cunningham, says "We enhanced our IBM
mainframe by investing in Digital's MicroVAXs in the field. Digital's
NAS allows us to integrate different database applications running on the
MicroVAX servers and our IBM system."
Leads from ads are being delivered directly to Sales.
Marketing Programs for FY92
Plans are being made for FY92 Marketing Programs for advertising, public
relations, events, etc. These plans will be reviewed with the National
Sales Manager, European and GIA Managers, and the Account Managers over
the next month. If you have any feedback/input around Marketing
Programs, contact Regina Londergan @PDM (DTN 291-0250).
LOMA Debriefing
Digital was a key vendor at the March '91 Life Office Management
Association (LOMA) trade show in Orlando. Several marketing activities
gave Digital a dominant presence at the meeting. Prior to the opening of
the event, Sales and Sales Support personnel were trained on the Digital
solutions being shown. During the event, Sales meetings were held with
selected customers; a large, high-profile Digital booth housed insurance,
DIDDLY and CASE demonstrations; and non-disclosure presentations and
demos of our Workflow product were given. Executives from three Digital
accounts (The Hartford, London Life, and Phoenix Mutual) spoke at the
event and positioned Digital favorably.
Several Account Managers have reported successes at their accounts
directly attributable to LOMA. The LOMA Systems Forum is held every two
years. The next one is scheduled for the spring of 1993.
ILF 91 Debriefing
The Insurance Leaders' Forum for 1991 took place at Kiawah Island, South
Carolina on April 23-25. We had an excellent customer turnout and have
received many positive comments. We are reviewing the critiques provided
by Sales and customers. We would also like to hear from attending
Account Managers about any sales or opportunities that were opened due to
this event.
The theme for ILF 91 was "Beyond the Expected - Time, the competitive
edge." This theme was selected to highlight the key opportunity for
Digital in the insurance market - the automation of customer service.
Most of the speakers supported this theme in their presentations. Those
who attended should take some time to review the slide copies that were
handed out so that you can leverage the preconditioning of your customers
provided by the ILF 91 speakers. You also should take the time to read
Tom Hout's book - "Competing Against Time" as it will give you some new
approaches to justifying customer service automation. If you did not
attend, please borrow the materials from your peers who were in
attendance.
As a followup, articles based on the presentations are being written for
publication.
New Legal Info Sheet
A new information sheet is available for the Corporate Legal departments
of insurance companies. Corporate LawPack, the only software system
designed for insurers' litigation departments, has been implemented by
more than 50 major corporations nationwide. Order the new information
sheet from Northboro, part number EC-F1220-34.
Insurance Architectural Advisory Group
Discussions with customers are one of the best ways to find out where
their interests (and our opportunities) are. Knowing this helps us to
focus our attention on real sales and avoid areas where we could spend a
lot of time in fruitless pursuit of elusive opportunities.
To assist in this process, we have extracted some of the points made
during a recent meeting of the Digital Insurance Architectural Advisory
Group, the technically oriented insurance advisory group. The Insurance
Architectural Advisory Group was formed with the primary intention of
making the needs and concerns of insurance customers directly known to
select product groups.
NOTE: The following comments are those of the customers, and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the author.
SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT
Modeling and prototyping to "fine tune" the user interface are becoming
the norm for successful systems projects. New and better tools are
needed to make the user interface and operation of systems simpler to
develop and model.
NOTE: This kind of concern opens the opportunity to review the new
Cohesion offering with customers. It includes an integrated tool
kit for design and development of multivendor applications. When
used in conjunction with Netron's CAP product, software can be
efficently and swiftly developed for multivendor (including IBM
mainframe) environments.
APPLICATION OF RELATIONAL TECHNOLOGY TO PRODUCTION (BATCH) SYSTEMS
In spite of wide availability of relational database technology, and its
advantages in efficiently analyzing and relating information in different
ways, many companies continue to use flat files for their batch
production operations.
Two causal factors were identified:
* The performance penalty that many of the relational database
products exact;
* The cost and complexity of rewriting and/or converting current
flat file systems to relational technology.
This condition leads companies to off load their flat databases and set
them up on a relational model for reporting and ad hoc analysis.
NOTE: Given this direction in the industry, there are wide opportunities
for use of the Digital 'Data Warehousing' approach to database
management and analysis. Opportunities in this area have already
been shown at industry events (LOMA for example) in the Actuarial
and Investment management application areas.
CUSTOMER COMMUNICATION/UPDATING
Digital still needs to work on its communications with customers. Some
customers feel unable to obtain information on Digital's real
capabilities and positions in specific areas, and indicated that this
tended to limit Digital's opportunities. The area mentioned during the
meeting was availability of information on actual implementation of
OSF/OSI standards in Digital's client/server products. Customer
observations left the impression that general information followup (both
solicited by customers and unsolicited) was something that continued to
need attention.
UNIX
Unix is seen by members of the insurance industry as a major opportunity
to be vendor independent, and considerable attention is being paid to it.
Initial areas of use are in applications such as actuarial and financial
analysis which are not considered production activities.
NOTE: POSIX standards have been created to provide a portable environment
for software. With Digital's commitment to POSIX for VMS, RISC
technology will be available for both VMS and Ultrix operating
systems.
WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT & MODELING
A critical need is emerging for tools that manage workflow in a
heterogeneous and variable environment. This capability needs to be
flexible, easy to use and easy to model. The modeling capability is of
special importance in order to determine that the flow and process meets
the business goals established and to optimize operations prior to
implementation.
NOTE: Digital has a number of offerings in the workflow management area,
including capabilities offered by third parties. The selection of
an appropriate workflow controller is dependent on the specific
applications involved, the environment and the future plans of the
customer. Contact John Kelly (DTN 264-3477, @MKO) for product
information on workflow management. Contact Paul Faix (DTN
274-6210, @OFO) for consulting services.
IMAGING
While imaging continues to be a critical technology for most companies in
the insurance industry, there are some ongoing legal (mostly state level)
concerns about the acceptability of stored images as legal documents.
These issues have caused some companies to consider maintaining paper
files of legally important scanned documents (policy applications,
claims, etc.) for at least 7 years (statute of limitations). This
approach has the impact of reducing the savings from imaging
applications, thereby reducing short term opportunities for high volume
imaging applications. The strategy for most companies is to undertake
major image pilots, with the expectation that the lingering legal
concerns will be resolved soon.
NOTE: For the most part, these lingering legal concerns have not stopped
companies from moving ahead with major pilots and some significant
image based production systems. In handling legal documents, they
are often taking a conscious risk and destroying them. Even when
the paper original is retained, many find that the reduction in
processing time, the low frequency of accessing the paper original,
and the improved clerical performance provide substantial benefits.
A key consultant in the field, Nolan Norton, states that the
technology works and that pilots are a stalling tactic to avoid
a decision. They encourage their customers to launch directly into
phased implementation of full production imaging systems.
For companies interested in imaging, submit an unsolicited proposal
offering a 'production pilot' based on SmartFolder Image or
DECimage Express (depending on their exact needs), in anticipation
of advanced production platforms and EIS solutions as follow-ups.
Contact Russ Carr (DTN 274-6207, @OFO) for consulting services.
EXPERT SYSTEMS
The four reasons for installing expert systems are:
1] Maintaining Expertise;
2] Increasing the quality and consistency of decision making and
action;
3] Addressing situations where the scope and complexity of decision
making is rapidly expanding;
4] Evaluating options at a strategic level.
The majority of failures involving expert systems result from not meeting
the stated business objectives (30%) and from organizational rejection of
the system (70%). Clearly, the human factors associated with expert
systems require much more attention than they are currently receiving.
Expert Systems are most likely to succeed if:
1] They are functionally oriented;
2] They contain not more than 300 rules;
3] Where more than 300 rules are required a set of linked expert
systems are used, each with not more than 300 rules.
Digital is working with other major expert systems vendors to address the
issue of standards in expert systems through an organization known as
IMKA (Initiative for Managing Knowledge Assets).
Neural networks are in limited use in the insurance industry. Typical
applications are in analysis of conditions where the number and nature of
the variables is unknown, and where the identification of patterns that
results in specific conditions is required. Examples are analysis of
health loss situations and evaluation of experience in underwriting
classification.
Digital solutions in the Expert Systems field include SYMMOD (a business
modeling tool) and Market Data Navigator (a marketing data organization &
analysis tool).
There is a clear need for productivity shells, specifically in the area
of knowledge engineering, which is a major concern at this time.
NOTE: As noted above, determining the appropriate use of expert systems,
and the development techniques for expert systems (especially
knowledge engineering) are the critical issues in this field.
Digital has training offerings, and will shortly be announcing
additional development tools. EIS also has skilled and experienced
personnel to assist customers in these areas.
CLIENT/SERVER STRATEGY
Client: Requests work to be done.
Server: Executes work requested by client.
Client/Server strategy is a key component in distributed computing, which
in turn is a tactical direction for many insurance companies.
Reasons for interest in client/server technology include: the ability to
size hardware based on actual usage and workload; flexibility in mixing
and matching specific services end users require; transparency in calling
conventions; the ability to balance loads without disrupting end user
operations; the ability to operate in multivendor environments.
Digital's strategy of becoming the premier vendor in client/server
technology for multivendor environments fits well with the needs of the
insurance industry.
Digital's support of OSF/OSI standards is well known, but customers are
not clear about the specific implementations of these standards in our
products. They are keen to find out how real our professed capabilities
are.
Translation between protocols is sometimes compute intensive, and as a
rule a customer should do extensive piloting and analysis before
implementing client/server capabilities that require this kind of
translation. Failure to pilot can lead to production disasters!
The industry needs extensive high volume multivendor translation and
interoperability capabilities. One example was cited where images
resident on FileNet, IBM, Digital and Wang systems needed to be shared,
implying bidirectional movement and translation. No vendor appears to
have this capability (for images) at the moment, and imaging standards
are still embryonic.
NOTE: Digital's Client/Server approach has captured the interest of the
industry, and represents an architectural approach that many
companies wish to follow in new development. The concern is that
the full capabilities they wish to use are still emerging. In
spite of this, you can sell the direction and the capabilities we
have now, with the opportunity for them to evolve to new
capabilities as they are announced.
INTEGRATED VOICE STRATEGY
The key reason for business interest in voice technology is that it
permits efficient interaction using the most ubiquitous technology - the
telephone.
Digital's thrust is to treat voice in exactly the same way that image is
treated - as just another data type.
Current implementation of voice technologies among participants included:
a mutual funds customer service application; a personnel attendance
system; a customer inquiry system for policy information; a Flexible
Benefit plan system (permitting employees to walk through the selection
of specific options). Voice mail is typically installed in companies
(although it appears to be shunned by most executives).
Voice response systems are seen as an important supplement to providing
service on well defined business information requests. The more variable
the requests, the less appropriate voice response systems are.
Voice recognition is generally viewed as an emerging technology, and not
one that is ready for production implementation (except in very
constrained conditions). Once this technology is proven to be reliable,
speaker independent, and has a reasonably broad vocabulary, then it can
be expected to become critical in servicing customers information
requests.
Capturing and foldering voice information (in the same way as images
etc.) was seen as having application in some areas (Legal - for
depositions; Claims for initial reporting of accident claims;
professionals annotating records; etc.)
After it was explained to the members, Computer Integrated Telephony was
seen as a potential way to enhance customer service and marketing
functions. It was not an area where any of the members were aware of any
current activity in their companies.
NOTE: Voice response capabilities (with access to databases for retrieval
of information) are selling well in the insurance industry. They
are being used for client service, agent service, access to money
market fund information and a number of other point applications.
There are many opportunities to get started with simple voice based
applications which take advantage of our multivendor data access
strategy. Digital also has a unique strength in this field: its
ability to integrate voice response and CIT with our database
access and management tools. This combination can be used to
create a total service environment which maximizes customer service
capabilities while at the same time providing flexibility and
effective use of critical personnel.
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