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The New Faces of Mobile Management: Engagement and Strategic Information Application

Managing mobility in an insurance organization has come a long way: from primarily clerical cost control activities, to active participation in strategic planning.  And by all accounts, mobility is on a trajectory to become a critical element in most areas in of insurance organization.

We’d like to showcase the current thinking about this trend and get to know what you are seeing in your organization.

Ah, the bad old days …

For a time in the early part of this century,  I was responsible for managing a small fleet of mobile devices that were assigned to traveling professionals.  For most of the time it was boring, and for the balance it was annoying.

The boring part of the job was analyzing the monthly cell bills to look for cost savings. The annoying part came when some bored traveler decided to stream video while stuck in an airport in the Caribbean.

Then came Steve Jobs…..

Who took to the stage at MacWorld on 9 January 2007 and said, in all modesty, “Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. And here it is…”

He closed his remarks by channeling his inner Canadian, quoting Wayne Gretsky: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it’s been.”

The first half of the story is consumer engagement

The introduction of the iPhone leapfrogged corporate gatekeepers (like me) by going straight to the end user.  While technology managers still could control the devices that employees used, we could not control the devices that those same individuals used in their private lives.

Ultimately,the consumer adopted the new generation of smart phones, and businesses scurried to catch up in supplying content and marketing to the preferred devices.  Recent survey data from PHD Canada found that 35% of Canadian adults’ media time is spent using digital devices and over half this time is on mobile devices.

Virtually all business segments – including insurance – are factoring mobile into their marketing strategies to support customer engagement.  A recent IBM C-Suite survey found “84 percent of CIOs rated mobile solutions as a critical investment to get closer to customers, 94 percent of CMOs ranked mobile apps as crucial to their digital marketing plans.”

Now, the rest of the story….

Mobile is not a one trick business pony.  Certainly it helps insurance organizations reach out to consumers.  More significantly, Mobile can also empower insurance professionals to serve these customers in new, innovative ways.

IBM has been developing a construct it refers to as “The Individual Enterprise”.  A recent publication from the IBM Institute For Business Value provides a strategic picture of this construct and its application.

The short summary is this:  “By combining the power of analytics with the ubiquity of mobile, organizations have the opportunity to serve up rich data on location, within the proper context, based on user preferences and behaviors.”

These users are both customers and employees.  For the latter, the approach use mobile’s strengths to supports the users’ preferred workflow by serving the right information to the right person at the right time.

Insurance implications

The Individual Enterprise approach would seem ideal for insurance knowledge workers who can benefit from just-in-time information.  I would think that dynamic configuration of sales presentations would be logical applications.  Also bespoke applications for field underwriters, and context sensitive questionnaires for claims examiners come to mind.

And I am sure there are many more that don’t fit in my mind.

 What do you think?  What’s next?

I’ve only scratched the surface here.  And I’d like your thoughts on mobile management.

If you’re available, we can exchange notes at the 2015 Insurance-Canada.ca Technology Conference. There are several sessions focusing on mobile strategy including:ICTC-wheel-plain-r60

You can also leave a comment below.  Looking forward to input on this rapidly emerging area.