October 17th - 19th, 1999
Hyatt Regency Baltimore, MD

Building Customer Management into the E-Commerce System:
Robert McIsaac, VP, Strategic Planning, Prudential Insurance
Monday, October 18th, 4:00-4:50 p.m.

"Prudential Strategist: Going Online is Only Step One"

Bringing the Internet to a large, established organization such as Prudential Insurance Company of America means following a long and winding road that has many rewards but no clear end, Prudential's vice president for strategic planning told insurers.

The company is in the process of bringing its varied units and Internet sites together in a collective approach, Robert McIssac said at "Continuing the E-volution," A.M. Best Co.'s 12th annual insurance and technology conference. Currently, Prudential has 30 million customers, does business with 2,300 companies--including one-third of the 500 largest U.S. corporations--and has 60,000 employees.

The Internet was considered an interesting but optional technology until 1996, when corporate clients and prospective customers that operated retirement systems such as 401(k) and 403(b) plans asked Prudential and other companies soliciting that business if they were capable of providing online access. "If you said no, you got to go home right away," McIssac said.

After ramping up its Internet capabilities, Prudential's two main sites, www.prudential.com and www.prudentialsecurities.com, have seen an explosion in activity. For the first half of 1999, Internet traffic at those sites tripled, and the number of leads obtained rose 36%, with 1% to 2% of visitors requesting further information. One surprising benefit came through online recruiting: the company has received more than 12,000 resumes through its Internet site.

Handling online inquiries takes rapid, knowledgeable responses, McIssac said. "They're warm when they get to us and they get very cold very fast."

McIssac set out a series of key points to follow in integrating Internet capabilities into an existing organization, including:

• Establish the context of why a company is starting an online initiative. "We had a lot of questions right away from our people and we had to tell them quickly, 'No, we're not going direct,'" he said.
• Integrate online systems so they work smoothly with existing work processes and systems.
• Avoid channel conflict. For instance, whether someone makes contact by phone, mail or online, they should be able to obtain the same information.
• Provide information and access to producers--the field sales force first--or risk raising unnecessary concerns.
• Integrate the online effort with phone-based call centers and customer call centers.
• Always integrate "call to action" capabilities throughout various portions of Internet sites. That could mean a way to request mail, locate a field office or contact an agent.

McIsaac warned that becoming Internet-ready is more than just hooking up wires and developing Web pages. It means rethinking work processes and reinventing some functions. "It's not cheap and it's not easy," he said. "The development work may be the least expensive part."

By Lee McDonald
Executive Editor