9Nov 2018How different is insurance industry compared to other sectors?I believe most industries have their own challenges when it comes to digital transformation. Some have done a good job of building products focusing on their customer first. I believe that insurance industry is behind from that standpoint. Often, we focus on the products we believe, have a market for and then figure out how to sell them to our customers. The insurance industry needs to "Think like a customer, act like a startup." That is the message I consistently try to drive to my team.What are some of your strategies to steer the company forward?To begin with, there is no such thing as an IT project. If you are working on a technology project, there should be a business value to do it. We need to think big but execute fast and small. Often we think big and execute big ending up taking several years to accomplish something. By that time, the technology has changed, the business demands have changed, and we end up losing the pulse of reality. That's the core cult I'm trying to drive.How to identify right partnerships?Obviously we cannot do it all on our own. We need to partner on two fronts.First, a partner that has the capability to make your vision into reality: I focus on the cultural alignment of a vendor/service provider and their ability to execute, before working with them to build a healthy partnership. I look for partnership that is willing to help us with few critical things that help us achieve 80 percent of our strategic objectives, not those who try to boil the ocean. I look for partners that effectively help me dump my technical debt and build technology wealth to the organization, not help me by holding on to our past.Second, partners that will help us with our explorer strategy: I look for thought leadership, where our partners help us with identifying macrotrends in technology that could potentially disrupt our way of doing things today. Given the activity level in the industry and the number of start-ups, it is always challenging to identify the right partner to achieve this. I focus on creating an environment that is nimble to capitalize on opportunities that we come across.
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