Relying on Narrow Subject Experts will Ruin Insurance Technology Projects: X by 2 Official

By Rajani Baburajan
TMCnet Contributor

According to K. Ram Sundaram, senior principal of X by 2, a Michigan consulting firm specializing in enterprise and solution architecture for the insurance industry, several insurers have sacrificed their technology transformation projects by heavily relying on narrow subject experts.

"When tackling major technology upgrades, most insurers rely heavily on subject-matter experts – fine-grained specialists," Sundaram writes in Insurance & Technology's blog. "But when specialists are asked to assume generalist and even leadership roles in major initiatives, they often don't have the broad vision needed."

Relying on specialists results in long delays and huge expenditures. It’s like putting up a building without a lead architect, Sundaram points out.

Insurance executives often assume that the more product and technical specialists they have on their teams, the better the overall outcome. But, according to Sundaram, the opposite is true because the coarse-grained generalists bring a more holistic and enterprise view of the initiative to the table.

"Fine-grained specialists are often uniquely qualified to support and maintain the carrier's status quo platforms. Unfortunately, they are also just as uniquely unqualified to manage and execute a major upgrade or change to those platforms," Sundaram adds.

The specialists lack big-picture leadership, which leads to poor team integration and effectiveness, ineffective communication, individual priorities that compete with those of the team, and a decided lack of ownership and accountability.

To be successful in their insurance technology projects, CIOs should seek out these coarse-grained generalists, and place them at the center of their most strategic and impactful initiatives.

X by 2 provides architecture design, planning, oversight, and turnaround services on transformative enterprise-scale business technology initiatives.

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