portal for insurance exec brief

8/3/2019 Portal for Insurance Exec Brief

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Portal solutions for the insurance industry

Executive brief

November 2005

Improving customer satisfaction and

operational efficiencies with a proven

portal solution.


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Improving customer satisfaction and operational efficiencies

with a proven portal solution.

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Contents

2 Executive summary

2 Insurance trends

4 Portals help address the

challenges of the insurance

industry

6 Creating the ideal

infrastructure for portals

10 The business value of portals

11 A trusted provider of

technology in insurance

solutions

Executive summary

Increasing market competition, heightened customer service expectations

and the need to build competencies that stand out rom the competition are

some o the key challenges acing the insurance industry today. In response,

insurance companies are expanding and enhancing oerings, and searching

or new customer segments. Theyre ocusing on better servicing o existing

customers by improving response times and improving the exchange o inor-

mation. All o these eorts require that insurance companies do a better job o

sharing inormation across business units that traditionally have been isolated.

This executive brie shares how IBMs portal solution, IBM WebSphere

Portal sotware, when built on a service-oriented architecture (SOA), provides

the integrated user environment that insurers need to address the unique

challenges acing their industry. With an integrated environment custom-

ized by user role, insurance companies can help to improve employee

productivity thereby enhancing customer satisaction, increasing business

responsiveness and driving new revenue opportunities.

Insurance trends

Insurance companies today are acing sti competition due to a sotening

property and casualty market and a at lie insurance market. Insurance pre-

miums only rose by 2.3 percent rom 2003 to 2004.1 To maintain profts and

provide shareholder value in this environment, insurance companies are more

aggressively trying to acquire competitors customers.

At the same time that demand has slowed, insurance customers have increas-

ingly higher expectations or service. Other industries have raised the bar by

providing customers with greater responsiveness (in large part because o

Web-based options), more highly personalized interactions and customized or

targeted oers or products and services.


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To separate themselves rom the competition, some insurance companies

have responded by changing the game. Theyre improving their core pro-

cesses to extend their capabilities. They are providing customers with instant

online and comparative quotes, Web-based documentation and aster claims

processing, and are bundling products according to customers needs.

The key to bringing in more business, improving the service to the business

you already have and improving your core capabilities is to bring people,

departments and systems together that were previously disconnected. Insur-

ance companies need to help providers, underwriters, business partners

and agents share inormation and capitalize on opportunities to better serve

customers. Products must be exible and interchangeable, the processes

necessary to deliver them must be integrated, and the technologies that sup-

port both must support the ree ow o inormation.

Portals provide a centralized repository o inormation that can be customized or each user andaccessible rom a Web browser.

growing proft in a mature busi-

ness such as insurance requires

reducing costs.

David Kennington, vice president oInormation Systems, Prudential

Browser:Agent/Broker

Branch/Agency

Phone

Webservers

Channel

applicationservers

Businesspartners

Core systems

Browser:Service requests

Browser:New business

Internet Callcenter


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Page

Portals help address the challenges of the insurance industry

To meet the challenges acing the insurance industry, many companies are

turning to the exibility and varied capabilities o portals. A portal is a single,

personalized interace that integrates people, processes, applications and

inormation. Personalized portals can help customers, employees, agents,

brokers, vendors and partners gain easy access to inormation. Portals can

also help employees gain access to data crucial to perorming their particular

jobs, thereby helping to improve overall productivity, increase customer satis-

action, enhance business responsiveness and maintain a competitive edge.

To address these challenges, IBM has developed IBM WebSphere Portal

sotware, a member o the IBM Workplace amily.2 IBM WebSphere Portal

sotware provides the ramework insurers can use to build and deploy portals

personalized or a users role, preerences and profle, and the security needs

o the enterprise. With IBM WebSphere Portal sotware, organizations can

integrate business applications, workow, content and presence awareness

in a single, role-based environment, enabling users to gain easy access to

inormation and resources, collaborate with other portal users inside and

outside the company, and respond more quickly to customer needs.

You know that your ability to increase revenues and reduce costs is directly

related to your ability to make the right decisions. To collect relevant inorma-

tion or better decision making, WebSphere Portal sotware brings together

highly customized views, using a single inrastructure to collect applications

and inormation, and to support your business decisions. The collaborative

capabilities o the portal, such as instant messaging, can also improve the

decision-making process by putting users in touch quickly with the people

most able to help them make a decision.

Insurance customers are enjoying

a much richer experience with

Prudential. From our highly

available Web portal, they can tap

an array o inormation resources to

plan their fnances.

David Kennington, vice president oInormation Systems, Prudential


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Portals also oer increased competitiveness through operational efciencies.

You can actually increase levels o customer service while simultaneously

reducing costs and gaining potential or greater return on your technology

investments. In a customer service scenario, static, commonly requested

inormation or account management tasks, such as change o address, claim

orms and benefciary changes, are easier to access and process by cus-

tomers themselves through a portalat lower cost to you. The portal also

assembles inormation that traditionally has been kept separate, such as

policyholder inormation or disparate policesproperty, lie, autogiving

agents a clearer picture o their customers.

What a portal is notis a replacement or any channel: portals are an enhance-

ment o all channels. They support integration with your customer relationship

management systems and your call center activities. Because it connects sys-

tems and processes, the portal provides your agents with lead generation and

other activity triggers that might otherwise all through the cracks. Portals also

give insurance companies a vehicle or delivering tiered oerings to aggrega-

tors and independent underwriters according to volume or other criteria.

Beore implementing an IBM portal solution, Prudential Insurance presented

its policyholders with a dierent Web site or each line o business, and

account access was not consolidated. There wasnt a common look and eel

or any personalization capabilities. Today, an IBM WebSphere Portal solution

provides a single platorm or deployment o integrated Java technology-

based and non-Java applications. Now Prudential policyholders can access

their updated account inormation in real time and across products, learn

about various Prudential oerings, fnd market inormation and read commen-

taries rom Prudential analysts. Theres also a transactional component to the

site that allows policyholders to pay bills, saving customers time and saving

Prudential money.


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A service-oriented approach oers aster and more responsive integration o applications andbusiness processes.

Creating the ideal infrastructure for portals

To employ a portal solution eectively, insurance companies must have the

proper inrastructure. An SOA is the ideal oundation or an insurance portal.

An SOA is a technical architecture that takes everyday business applica-

tions, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems or claims

processing, and breaks them down into individual business unctions and

processes, called services.

Ater an insurance company defnes its competencies, each one can be

executed as a service and then combined and recombined to support the

dierent activities and changing needs o the insurer. A service could be a

business unction such as confrm policyor a system capability such as log

in user. The role o the portal is to act as the delivery mechanism or services,

aggregating them and exposing them to each unique audience in a highly

secure and personalized way.

Portal

services

SOAPservice request

B2BinteractionsService

flow

Data

Existingapplications

New

servicelogic

Enterpriseservicebus

Common

runtime

environmen

t


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An example o an insurance agents portal, where customer histories, sales activities, corporate mes-sages, product inormation and other relevant inormation are assembled in one place

A common unction o an insurance portal is to customize an agents view o

his or her business. The portal can provide quick access to the applications

most needed to do each job, such as fling claims, pursuing new business,

sharing application inormation with underwriters and checking the status

o payments. Just as important, the portal flters out inormation that is not

relevant, such as products not oered by the agent because o licensing or

prohibited by law in a particular state or country.


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Each audience requires unique inormation throughout the claims process. The portal gathers the neces-sary inormation rom back-end systems or third-party services, and creates customized ront-end views.

To urther improve productivity and streamline business processes, multiple

portal applications, or portlets, can be choreographed to acilitate the execu-

tion o an end-to-end process (which can be especially useul when multiple

people are involved in a single business process).

In the case o an auto claim, or example, dierent portlets and personalized

portal pages can be created or the individual users in the process: the customer,

the agent, the adjuster and the service provider. The seemingly simple act o fling

a claim or an auto accident initiates a sequence o coordinated activities, wherein

dierent users interact to execute specifc tasks. To perorm these tasks ef-

ciently and make quick, accurate decisions requires access to key inormation.

1. Claim filing

2. Coverage verification

3. Repair estimation

4. Repair approval

5. Repair scheduling 6. Repair and billing

7. Payment

Customer Agent Adjuster Service provider

Collaborativeportal

Claims

CRMPolicy


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The customer must fle a claim with access to orms and policy inormation,

such as coverage and deductibles. The agent may then need to perorm policy

verifcation and confrm payment status. Adjusters need to be assigned to

claims according to their territories and workloads, and they need access to

inormation about preerred service providers, such as body shops. Finally, ser-

vice providers need access to billing processes and reimbursement resources.

Each audience can then use the portal or a variety o purposes, yet the portal

captures and delivers inormation relevant or each user.

The componentization o business processes allows insurers to extend those

processes (in the orm o services) to customers, partners and suppliers as

warranted, or recombine them as new market opportunities arise.

Users are provided with inormation based on their roles and according to their responsibilities in aprocess. In this case, the policyholders need or a rental car triggers a connection to an external rentalcar agency.

1. Claim filing

2. Coverage verification

3. Repair estimation

4. Repair approval

5a. Rental selection

5b. Repair scheduling 6a. Repair and billing

7a/b. Payment

Customer Agent Adjuster Service provider

Collaborativeportal

Claims

CRMPolicy

Car rental agency

6b. Rental booking


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Page 10

The business value of portals

Portals can deliver signifcant business benefts that go beyond improved

productivity. The productive and collaborative environment enabled by portals

can help an insurance company achieve greater business exibility and agil-

ity, hallmarks o an On Demand Business. As defned by IBM, an On Demand

Business is an enterprise whose business processesintegrated end to end

across the company and with key partners, suppliers and customerscan

respond with exibility and speed to any customer demand, market oppor-

tunity or external threat. IBM WebSphere Portal sotware provides dynamic

access to inormation and applications, thereby enhancing collaboration

between users and enabling insurers to respond in real time to changing

market conditions.

An integrated portal solution can help insurers realize the ollowing

business benefts:

Cost savings build and deploy applications and services aster; consoli-

date the procurement o hardware and sotware; and reduce back-ofce

sta and administration costs

Operational efciencyenable internal employees and external partners to

communicate through one channel; link event-based, cross-unctional busi-

ness processes; increase data accuracy; and speed decision making

Revenue generation provide more cross-selling opportunities to employ-ees; leverage knowledge experts through enhanced collaboration and

learning; expand market share; and move into new markets

User satisactionincrease customer retention through enhanced service

capabilities; improve productivity with easier access to inormation; and gain

a competitive distinction by enabling superior customer service


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A trusted provider of technology in insurance solutions

In todays highly dynamic market, insurers need to improve their productivity

as a means to enhance customer satisaction and increase business respon-

siveness, and optimally leverage their human and IT assets to dierentiate

themselves and maintain a competitive edge. With IBM WebSphere Portal

sotware, insurance companies can integrate their electronic user environ-

ment to become a single, cohesive interace and provide employees with

easier access to the inormation and resources they need to be more produc-

tive. Insurers can eel confdent that IBM can help them achieve their business

initiatives with integrated and proven portal solutions.

For more information

To fnd out more about IBM WebSphere Portal sotware, visit:

ibm.com/websphere/portal


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1 Deborah M. Smallwood, Taking a Pulse on Insur

ance 2004. TowerGroup.

2 IBM WebSphere Portal sotware is a single com

ponent o the IBM Workplace amily o oerings

Copyright IBM Corporation 2005

IBM Corporation

Sotware Group

One Rogers Street

Cambridge, MA 02142

U.S.A.

Produced in the United States o America

11-05

All Rights Reserved

IBM, the IBM logo, the On Demand Business log

WebSphere and Workplace are trademarks o

International Business Machines Corporation in

the United States, other countries or both.

Java and all Java-based trademarks are trade-

marks o Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United

States, other countries, or both.

Other company, product and service names may

be trademarks or service marks o others.

Reerences in this publication to IBM products

or services do not imply that IBM intends to

make them available in all countries in which

IBM operates.

The inormation contained in this documentation

is provided or inormational purposes only. While

eorts were made to veriy the completeness

and accuracy o the inormation contained in this

documentation, it is provided as is without war-

ranty o any kind, express or implied. In addition,

this inormation is based on IBMs current product

plans and strategy, which are subject to change b

IBM without notice. IBM shall not be responsible o

any damages arising out o the use o, or otherwis

related to, this documentation or any other docu-

mentation. Nothing contained in this documentati

is intended to, nor shall have the eect o, creating

any warranties or representations rom IBM (or its

suppliers or licensors), or altering the terms and

conditions o the applicable license agreement

governing the use o IBM sotware.

GC28-7713-00

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