Unified Digital Strategy: Succeeding in the Digital Revolution

An SMA Research Report

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Author(s):

Denise Garth, Partner

Publication Date:

March 17, 2015

Number of Pages:

23

Price:

$995.00 USD

This report provides a deeper look into the Unified Digital Strategy component of the Digital Insurer Framework. A unified digital strategy recognizes that all business strategies and technologies touch the customer in some way. As customers gain market power, they are increasingly comfortable with technology, have a stronger voice, and are willing to use it to make their needs known.

Many insurers indicate that they are on the strategic journey toward becoming a digital insurer,making investments in new websites, smart-phone apps, agent portals, customer portals, or social media presence. Unfortunately, for many these are siloed and tactical approaches, lacking a strategic framework that cohesively brings together a unified digital strategy, with core and non-core business solutions and technologies to create and drive consistent, connected, and personalized customer experiences. It becomes the driver of market differentiation, business growth, innovation, collaboration, and profitability. 

Some insurers have begun or are well along on the digital transformation journey. The report provides examples of emerging digital leaders in the insurance industry and describes the emerging digital leadership role, the Chief Digital Officer, that forms the bridge between IT and the business.  

Unified Digital Strategy: Succeeding in the Digital Revolution answers the following questions:  

• Are insurers prepared for this digital revolution? How should they respond?
• How can insurers innovate to form new opportunities by fusing the physical and digital? What physical parts of the business will remain? In which areas of the business should they redirect investments from physical to digital? 
• Do insurers want to compete with the new technology-enabled companies that are growing customer bases faster in 5 years than insurers have been able to do in the last 50 - 100 years?
• Does an insurer’s vision and strategy reflect the new digital world with technology-fluent customers in control or a world of the past that is shackled with legacy business assumptions? 
• What medium or combination of mediums best reaches the insurer’s specific market segments, partners, and channels? How are they integrating these mediums into their core processes to capture engagement and customer information?
• Are insurers thinking and operating like Amazon or Google, by anticipating their customer’s needs?  

 

 

 

 

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