Tying Web 2.0 technology to Business Objectives for improving ROI
Organizations are seeing Web 2.0 as a technology enabler to achieve business objectives to deliver results. Key to success is “collaboration” between business & IT in leveraging web 2.0 to achieve business objectives.
Some key business objectives of Insurance companies are around enhancing customer experience, revenue growth, minimizing operational expenses, improving employee productivity and distribution effectiveness. IT departments need to evaluate where Web 2.0 would be most effective to solve parts of the business problems once the business objectives are internalized. These business problems can be broadly structured around 3 key stakeholders – Employees (for Internal Operational effectiveness & Employee productivity); Customers (Customer experience, product development & revenue growth); Partners - Distributors, Suppliers etc (For Channel productivity and efficiencies).
Once the key stakeholders / business objectives are identified, organizations could start working on three key dimensions of change management – Process, Technology & people. Focusing on technology without focusing on business process and people can be disastrous. There are several examples where blogs, wikis, discussion forums don’t attract enough interest in the user community because the key business problems or issues are not addressed
Insurers that are conservative have tried to use Web 2.0 initially for Operational effectiveness through Employee collaboration (internal blogs, Wikis, discussion forums, podcasts) before venturing into investments towards Distribution & customers. This could be a good starting point to improve confidence in the business stakeholders to show early signs of ROI.
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