IDC Financial Insights guides insurers worldwide on Digital Transformation (DX) journey

FINANCIAL

08 Jun 2016

New report offers business and IT executives of insurance organizations worldwide guidance on DX in order to stay relevant and remain competitive

FRAMINGHAM, Mass., June 8, 2016 – Insurers are facing obstacles in the race to stay competitive in the digital transformation (DX) era, including but not limited to: aging legacy systems, numerous manual processes, increased data protection and regulatory requirements, and more. IDC Financial Insights goes beyond technology investments in its latest report, ** IDC MaturityScape: Digital Transformation in Insurance ** (Doc #EMEA41302416). This IDC MaturityScape identifies the stages, dimensions, outcomes, and actions required for insurers to digitally transform their operations, organizations, products, and services.

"Insurers worldwide cannot afford to wait for the perfect strategy to kick start their transformation journey. The need of the hour is to build and deploy digital capabilities while also tackling the barriers," said Sabitha Majukumar , Senior Research Analyst for Worldwide Insurance Strategies .

According to the report, many insurers are investing in technologies that can help exceed customer experience expectations, create new revenue streams through agile business models, and maintain cost and efficiency.

But technology is only part of the DX journey. IDC has developed the IDC Digital Transformation MaturityScape to help the business and IT leaders of life and property & casualty (P&C) insurance companies understand and cope with the challenges and opportunities that DX can bring to their enterprises. The new report provides a framework for viewing stages of maturity across five key dimensions: Leadership, Omni-Experience, WorkSource, Operating Model, and Information.

IDC MaturityScape: Digital Transformation in Insurance is an important tool that enables both life and P&C insurers to:

• Assess their capabilities and stage of maturity in digital transformation.
• Enable a dialogue among business and technology executives about goals and actions relative to digital transformation initiatives.
• Identify areas of digital transformation capability that require strengthening.
• Establish standards for pursuing digital transformation initiatives.

Below is a sampling of the key guidance provided in the MaturityScape report:

• Assess the insurer's level of maturity and capability in each of the five dimensions of DX.
• Assess the current state of leadership and its ability to create and execute the vision for digital transformation of the business.
• Evaluate the insurer's strengths in each of the other disciplines and develop a plan and process for building necessary competencies.

A future IDC MaturityScape Benchmark report will summarize the findings of an IDC-run DX survey to be conducted with insurers worldwide.

IDC MaturityScape

IDC MaturityScape reports are used by IT executives and their enterprise partners to have a structured way to identify their current level of maturity, and the gap between where they are and where they want to be to maintain competitive balance or achieve industry superiority. Using IDC MaturityScape is a way to reduce the friction of change, to make more precise investments, and to identify the details of governance, process, technology, organization, and other factors that can derail the best-laid technology initiatives.