Push Me Pull You - Soundings from the Model Carrier and CIO Roundtable Events

Remember this character from Dr. Doolittle – the horse that has two bodies, joined in the middle and facing in opposite directions?That is what Team Celent and many our clients did together during the last two days in New York City.We looked back at significant achievement in insurance carriers over the last year with the Model Carrier Awards and looked forward into 2009 during the Insurance CIO Roundtable. If you were not able to join us, here are some of the highlights from the Model Carrier and Insurance CIO events.If you were with us, thank you for your participation!

On Thursday, over 120 people attended the Model Carrier Awards event.This was a recognition of selected insurance IT implementations that delivered significant business results in the past year in areas such as new business automation, data mastery, customer service, IT management, claims and policy automation.Jeff Goldberg, Model Carrier Czar, did an outstanding job of detailing where the chosen carriers excelled in their execution of their deliverables. Thank you to everyone who submitted a project and congratulations to the project teams that were recognized.(The Model Carrier report can be accessed by subscribers on the Celent website http://www.celent.com/PressReleases/20090129/ModelCarrier2009.asp).

In the afternoon, roundtable discussions provided an opportunity for the attendees to share their practical experience on core systems replacement/modernization anddistribution.Based on the amount of note taking going on, many gained valuable insights and some tricks and tips!Also for the first time, the attending vendors had a table to compare their notes and experiences.

In summary, Thursday was a time when participants across our industry reached out and shared approaches to common challenges and opportunities.It was a very interactive, valuable and exciting session.

On Friday, over 100 people assembled for the CIO Roundtable.Donald Light presented the results from this year’s CIO survey.Kudos to Donald for clearly synthesizing and summarizing the pressures, priorities and practices reported from the survey. Here is one example of the feedback: the top business issues for IT in 2009 are growing the business, cost reduction, and ease of doing business. (The CIO Survey report is available at http://www.celent.com/PressReleases/200901292/CIOSurvey2009.asp).

Following the presentation, a panel of four CIOs shared their opinions and experiences and also looked forward with a few predictions for the year.Craig Weber did a great Chris Matthews impersonation as he moderated the discussions covering numerous wide-ranging topics all related to the execution of business plans in these insurers. Many of the comments involved the special challenges faced given the current economic crisis.The panel shared information about their key initiatives, sourcing strategies, and IT/business compliance.An open question and answer session followed and allowed the audience to probe areas such as system integration, business intelligence/data mastery issues and IT management / process.

These sessions are annual events for the Celent community, so please make plans to attend again, or join us next year as we look backwards and forward at the same time!