Off the critical path

It's obviously no fun to have to worry about having your IT job offshored or outsourced. But now you have something else to worry about: the possibility that you may be removed from the critical path.  That was sort of the suggestion in a email subject line I came across today. Actually, it read: "Removing IT from the Critical Path with Service Oriented Architectures."

It was for an upcoming webinar sponsored by Solcorp. (an EDS subsidiary) and Insurance and Technology Magazine. As the piece explained, "Flexibility, speed-to-market, process transparency and revenue growth are consistently identified as top priorities within the insurance industry, but many carriers still lack the capabilities to achieve these goals. They continue to be bogged down by disconnected and inefficient processes and systems limitations that not only impede effective and efficient product development, but also can impede regulatory compliance, sales/marketing initiatives and competitive analysis. In fact, often IT itself is an impediment to an improved product development process, due to siloed legacy systems and outdated methodologies. To perform in today's more intensely regulated and competitive financial services environment, insurers must be able to rapidly define new product characteristics with minimal time and expense -- which means overcoming traditional systems limitations."

There you go. That's one reason there is so much resistance and teeth-gnashing in the Talkback section of this blog. Who wants to be thought of as a mere impediment on the critical path to revenue growth?

Fortunately, this free, one hour webcast promises a way to escape these trolls, particularly the nasty ones who make life so very unpleasant for insurance companies. "[Y]ou will learn how adoption of a component-based architecture can help insurers shift from the traditional disconnected and inefficient approach to product development to a more integrated, collaborative and reliable strategy that can be deployed in increments to achieve immediate results. Hear how leading insurance companies that have committed to component architectures are gaining accelerated time to market (including pricing, calculations and testing), systems transparency, more effective project discipline, and improved collaboration and internal communications between business units and IT."

Check it out if you are interested in improving processes, increasing governance and introducing more flexibility.  Sit in on the event if you are interested in reducing cost, complexity and risk in the product development process. As for all you IT trolls, you have been warned. You come out from under that bridge again and you are dead.