In the last couple of years, insurance organizations have added new C-level titles, including chief data officer and chief digital officer. With technology and business transformation efforts being led by their peers, the CIO’s role was becoming murky. The COVID-19 crisis has brought CIOs back to the forefront as the “go-to” person on the executive leadership team. Barriers to transforming business operations and work environments evaporated overnight as CEOs expected the business to be up and running.
CIOs marshalled resources to enable work-from-home operations, demonstrating the agility of the IT team as bureaucratic barriers were eliminated. Roadblocks to digitizing business processes have also been removed as insurers understand the impact of having manual and paper-based processes in the middle of digital ones. Minimum viable products for rate reductions and process changes have been introduced into production without the usual long debates over day 1 and day 2 features.
Can this really be happening? Can it be sustained? CIOs have a great opportunity to leverage the nimbleness that many carriers have embraced during this time in future efforts. To address COVID-19, most organizations operated as a unified team to achieve business outcomes without silos. No one changed the organization or reporting structure, but everyone pitched in to get the job done. Isn’t that what we’ve been saying about Agile?
Positive Changes During the Pandemic
As business returns to normal, CIOs should be challenging the notion of “back to normal” itself. Now is the time to garner support for operating more nimbly during core system implementations or digital transformations. In times of crisis, insurers have adapted rapidly in a variety of ways:
- The notion of a perfect solution was eliminated because good enough was necessary.
- Teams focused on speed to market, test and learn, and refinement over time.
- Organizational and functional boundaries disappeared.
- Risk-based testing took precedence over testing everything.
- Actions were customer-centric, not organization-centric.
CIOs have the chance to continue demonstrating that technology can add business value quickly. A swift recap of how the organization operated differently before and during the crisis can be helpful to sustain these changes for the future. Be candid about things that didn’t work so well and what has been learned from those challenges. Now is the time to keep the seat at the table by showing how IT leadership makes a positive business impact.
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