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October 1 - 3, 2000, The Westin Providence, Providence, R.I.
Zurich to Tie Global Units Electronically Zurich Financial Services has launched a sweeping program to realign and increase its business around the world, tying its global operations together at an electronic hub that will translate among diverse computer systems and maintain a central repository of data about customers' dealings with all Zurich units. Zurich will shortly realign its business around eight geographical centers, divided between personal and commercial lines, and has set a goal of tripling its customer base to 90 million and doubling the average number of products per customer to four, said Nancy Ballance, a vice president with Zurich's Farmers Insurance Group and head of Zurich's global e-business exchange. The group intends to provide access through multiple channels, including agents and brokers, call centers and the Internet, while ensuring that customers can go from one channel to another and find their account information readily available, Ballance said. For example, a customer may buy a policy online and call a minute later to check on its status; the goal is to have the data available at the call center that quickly, Ballance said. The system Ballance is charged with coordinating will have multiple layers, from the "integration infrastructure" that ties together systems at as many as 350 different business units, all the way down to the interfaces that customers see on the Internet. The integration component will use extensible markup language, or XML, to bridge the gap to the business units. Ballance acknowledged, however, that after "a little bit of a debate," Zurich decided not to force the integration on its subsidiaries. The company will be "going out and actively marketing to the business units, but not requiring" them to adopt the system. "It's got to be faster and cheaper for our business units," she said. Ballance was temporarily reassigned in July 1999 from her position with Farmers, where she has been vice president of business and technology integration and of information systems. She joined Farmers in 1995 after working as a consultant with IBM, supporting Farmers from 1984 to 1995 through the implementation of several key projects. Ballance spoke at "E-Fusion: Where Insurance and Technology Converge," a conference sponsored by A.M. Best Co. held Oct. 1-3 in Providence, R.I. Full coverage of the event is available online at http://www.ambest.com/e-fusion.html. |
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