Insurance Distribution challenges

by Didier 27. July 2010 22:55

via Celent

Michel Michellod from Celent, an international strategy consultancy focused on the financial industry, has just posted a very interesting article which is very “aligned” with how we understand ourselves the current and coming insurance front-end challenges.

Some interesting strategic challenges highlighted in the post:

The direct channel requires an appropriate front end. […] This goal can be best achieved through the implementation of open and flexible front end systems facilitating interactions with potential customers, integrating modern communication tools for call center officers and allowing a high level of reactivity in terms of product, pricing and discount changes.

Communication with aggregators is key. […]  The second alternative consists in directing shoppers automatically onto the insurance online platform to perform the last step of the buying process (the effective purchase of the insurance product and its payment). This alternative requires an instantaneous transmission of customer and quote data by aggregators to insurers.

Insurers need to improve integration of affinity and bank channels. […] Insurers need to implement relevant portals allowing management and process of sophisticated insurance products.

Use brokers and agents in specific customer segments. […] I recommend insurers to implement sophisticated portals with rich functionality to provide point of differentiation.

Responding to multi-channel management. […] I believe insurers should prioritize sophisticated portals providing a single view of the customer based on service oriented architecture (SOA) with high level of automation.

As the insurance distribution landscape is changing fast and drastically, I expect this topic to be part of the European insurer’s top priorities in the coming years.

At Innoveo, we are exactly acting in this field and bringing a standard software product on the market – Innoveo Skye®– which allows insurance companies (life, non-life, health) to find an efficient, technology-proven and business-oriented answer to the different challenges raised by Celent.

Disclaimer: we were nominated by Celent as “Model Carrier” in 2007 for our effective usage of technology. See the report here.

Cross-posted on Didier Beck Weblog

Presentation Zeitgeist 2009 @ SlideShare

by Didier 17. January 2010 06:37

SlideShare has published its “ruling trends in the world of presentations for the year gone by”. Funny, interesting, well done!

Some highlights:

  • The average number of slides in a presentation: 19.3
  • The maximum number of slides: 1’375 (!)
  • Presentation typography: Arial 42%, Times New Roman 22% (!), Wingdings 17%
  • Average number of pages per language: max = French with 38 :-)
  • Presentation formats: PPT 61%, PPTX 17%, PPS 14%
  • Average number of pictures: 19, average size of picture: 205 kb
  • 7% of all presentations without a single image!
  • Average size of presentation: 5.4 MB

Cross-posted on Didier Beck Weblog

Laurent is a Certified ScrumMaster!

by Didier 6. January 2010 01:08

As you may know, we are more and more using Scrum as a team-based framework for developing our Skye® standard software product (front-end solution for insurances) at Innoveo.

What is Scrum? (ScrumAlliance definition)

Scrum: A team-based framework to develop complex systems and products.

Scrum is an iterative, incremental framework for developing any product or managing any work. It allows teams to deliver a potentially shippable set of functionality every iteration, providing the agility needed to respond to rapidly changing requirements.

The Scrum framework constantly challenges its users to focus on improvement, and its Sprints provide the stability to address the ever-changing needs that occur in any project.

These characteristics have led to Scrum becoming the most popular method in the world of agile software development.

We are consequently very proud to inform you that Laurent Kempé, who is acting as our Innoveo ScrumMaster besides being our internal “Scrum champion”, has successfully passed his ScrumMaster certification!

 

Congratulation to Laurent for this nice step and recognition.

Next step is now to apply for the next level: Certified Scrum Practitioner, as shown below (ScrumAlliance certification process):

cross-posted on Didier Beck’s blog

Best wishes for 2010!

by Didier 31. December 2009 19:52

Dear readers, friends, partners, customers, competitors,

The clock has started the final count down...

So best wishes to all for a happy and healthy New Year!

Your Innoveo Team

 

Innoveo 2nd anniversary

by Didier 1. October 2009 23:42

We could celebrate today our 2nd anniversary (already!) at Innoveo.

As usual, some great time with great people.

On top, we had a super weather in a super restaurant (Seerose - “we take care of nice people”).

A bit of time for us, after some extremely intensive and successful months!

     

Tomorrow, back to business!

Adcubum and Innoveo agree to a strategic partnership!

by Didier 30. September 2009 02:28

We are very happy to announce that we, at Innoveo, could agree to a strategic partnership with Adcubum, a Swiss product software company also focused on the insurance market, and developing a very complementary product, adcubum SYRIUS® (back-office), to Innoveo Skye® (front-office).

A step-by-step process, very solid, between the two companies, integrating both Boards of Directors, Executive Management Teams and operational experts, to be able to mature the cooperation model on a strategic and product levels. The first operational activities have started for exactly one year in September 2008, with the first contacts in spring 2008.

And, it is always better to announce this kind of partnership, when both partners have already won together a customer, which is the case for us ;-)

Some words about Adcubum

Adcubum was founded in 1998, is privately held, with more than 100 people, and a capital of 7.5 million CHF. Our colleagues have so far achieved 60% market coverage in Switzerland (health insurance) and 100% in Slovakia (social security) with adcubum SYRIUS®.

They are now expanding their activities to the important markets of Germany and Eastern Europe, and to the Property & Casualty (P&C) lines of business.

 

PRESS RELEASE

 Adcubum and Innoveo contract a strategic partnership to integrate the multi-channel distribution solution Innoveo Skye® with adcubum SYRIUS®.

St. Gallen, 30th September 2009 - Adcubum and Innoveo intensify their co-operation and agree to a product and strategic partnership. Goal of this agreement is the seamless integration of the multi-channel distribution solution Innoveo Skye® in the insurance core solution adcubum SYRIUS® as an optional module. Therewith, their customers are in a position to use the software for all lines of business and to holistically support respectively control their products and services sales. Moreover, with this co-operation Adcubum and Innoveo consolidate their complementary competences and experience in the insurance industry.

Like adcubum SYRIUS®, Innoveo Skye® is based on a state-of-the-art scalable 4-tier-architecture and is easily embedded in any portal solution. Innoveo Skye® comprises all lines of business in the insurance industry (health insurance, property and casualty insurance, life insurance) and supports various back-office systems simultaneously. Furthermore, Innoveo Skye® is capable of multi-channel operations, which enable insurance companies to quickly and consistently offer new products and services via different channels like branches, agencies, insurance brokers or via the Internet.

"The partnership with Adcubum allows to offer our complementary expertise and insurance solutions in one integrated product", says Nick Stefania, Managing Partner of Innoveo. "Customers benefit of a reduced time-to-market for their insurance products and we enable them to offer all insurance products and services for every distribution channel with one single module."

"We are already working together intensively with Innoveo in a customer project", says René Janesch, member of the executive board of Adcubum. "Insurance companies seek more and more for an end-to-end solution supporting the continuous process from the back-office management to the multi-channel distribution. Hence, the current point in time is most convenient for such a collaboration. Above all, we are able to considerably strengthen our know-how in the property and casualty insurance market."

Press release English / German

Innoveo corporate fact sheet English

 

Adcubum AG
Adcubum is a leading Swiss software manufacturer in the international insurance business. The core solution adcubum SYRIUS® is a modularly built back-office system for health, accident and property and casualty insurances based on the Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE) technology. The foundation for the successful company history was laid in St. Gallen in 1998. Since then, the product has been continuously enhanced according to customer and market requirements. At present the company employs more than 100 high qualified and specialised experts. Multiple millions of insured persons with more than 30 million claims are administrated by the core solution adcubum SYRIUS® - tendency rising.

Further information under: www.adcubum.com

 

Innoveo Solutions AG
Innoveo emerged as an independent software manufacturer from a spin-out of the Helvetia Group in 2007. It is characterized by a unique combination of technology expertise and insurance industry knowledge. The SOA/Java EE based agile insurance front-office system Innoveo Skye® is based on more than 12 years of experience in the implementation of flexible distribution systems for all lines of business as well as in the integration of any back-office and CRM systems as well as portals. In an increasingly diversified market a consistent, per distribution channel and insurance product configurable solution offers crucial strategic possibilities, considerable time savings as well as remarkable cost efficiency for the launch of new products.

Further information under: www.innoveo.com

Innoveo is a member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork

by Didier 23. September 2009 01:00

oracle[1] Innoveo Solutions enjoys its new membership to the Oracle PartnerNetwork, which is illustrating the long and successful deployment of our insurance frontend solution – Innoveo Skye® integrating Oracle databases.

Our partnership with Oracle helps us to leverage our expertise and build on the strong foundation that Oracle's technology provides.

Innoveo news.

Cross-posted on the Didier Beck blog.

Cédric nominated to the EOS Directory Advisory Board

by Didier 3. July 2009 19:24

I am very proud to announce that Cédric Walter, one of our colleague and founding member of Innoveo, is nominated to the EOS Directory (Enterprise Open Source Directory) Advisory and Expert Board. Cédric is a very well-known contributor of the Joomla community since 2004.

EOS Directory is a great catalog of more than 350 open source projects, that are listed, described and analyzed. It is today the leading online platform to help enterprises and organizations identify and evaluate Open Source technologies. Initially launched by Optaros, about two years ago, the platform has been recently handed over by Bruno von Rotz, initial sponsor of the initiative, well known Open Source specialist, and one of our Innoveo Board Member.

In support to strengthen the neutral approach to ratings and selection of the technologies, the new EOS Directory Advisory and Expert Board has been established over the last weeks.

The Advisory and Expert Board will be both instrumental in guiding the future development of the EOS Directory Platform as well as in making sure that the content is accurate, relevant and fairly represented. (Source: EOS Directory Blog)

Congratulations to Cédric!

More Information on Cédric’s blog and the EOS Directory blog.

Cross-posted on Didier Beck Blog.

LinkedIn vs. Xing

by Didier 17. May 2009 17:12

Fast comparison between LinkedInand Xing.

Xing

  • November 1, 2003 - 5 1/2 years old
  • 7 million members
  • 26’000 groups
  • 16 languages
  • 600’000 paying members
  • 240 employees from 22 nations

LinkedIn

  • May 5, 2003 - 6 years old
  • 40 million members, thereof 10 million in Europe and 800’000 in France
  • 300’000 user groups
  • 4 languages
  • 345 employees

My LinkedIn profile (member since March 2004, i.e. more than 5 years)

My Xing profile (member since November 2005).

The Innoveo LinkedIn profile and the Innoveo Xing profile.

Cross-posted on Didier Beck Blog.

Convincing TelePresence system from cisco!

by Didier 6. April 2008 18:58

Beginning of this week, Nick and I were able to assist to a business meeting with some people in Amsterdam - Holland, based on the last TelePresence system from Cisco. Below a picture taken just before the conference start in Zurich.

cisco telepresence

This experience, I must say, was absolutely great! You really feel the presence (good product name ;-) of the other participants thanks to the high-quality video (1080p), the fact that the 3 screens are reproducing the real size of the participants, and because of the quality of the sound (CD quality). The oval form of the table with each half-part on each side of the table is also a good idea.

More information: cisco TelePresence 3000 (pdf).

Below another picture from cisco. You see the both parts and a presentation projection just below the table (another good idea!).

 

cisco telepresence

Cross-posted on didier beck's weblog.

About Innoveo

Innoveo is a software company whose products, services and technologies enable its clients to create business value. Its expertise in architecture (SOA), software engineering, infrastructure, and the insurance industry ensures that the company remains a valued business partner over the long term.