There are three levels of work force mobility in the insurance industry, according to Rod Travers, senior vice president for the Robert E. Nolan Co. The first is mobile functions—work functions performed by employees away from a fixed-office location. The second layer is mobile computing—work functions performed by employees away from a fixed office and using a mobile computing device.
Many insurers have mobile functions, and some also do mobile computing, Travers explains, but few carriers have reached the third level of connected mobile capabilities—work functions performed by employees away from a fixed office and using a mobile computing device with an Internet or network connection.
Analyst Chad Hersh asserts one of the reasons for a lack of connected mobile capabilities is more discussions on mobile and wireless functions are taking place in the home than in corporate offices. “It’s little things such as unlimited minutes,” says Hersh, a principal with Novarica, a Novantas company. “People are getting comfortable with the fact a cell phone can replace a land-line phone, data plans that actually make sense, and unlimited broadband speeds. People have this for their home use. They can check their personal stuff online any time they want from just about anywhere in the country, yet the carriers don’t provide them with tools for wireless. It doesn’t make sense.”
Individual users will lead to the change, Hersh believes. “It won’t come from the carriers—they don’t understand the need for this stuff—but agents and consumers will drive them there,” he says. “It hasn’t quite carried over into the critical areas where it is needed, but it is getting higher up on the carriers’ radar.”
The question being asked in the insurance industry, notes Travers, is how much time should be invested in trying to create a standardized way of disseminating data to off-site audiences, or should a carrier opt for one-off projects to serve the individual user? “I think there is a fascination with standards, and it’s the right mindset,” he says. “But the practical application of data transaction standards—things such as ACORD XML—to address these different types of audiences is going to take a long time. It’s the right thing to make an investment in and pay attention to, but when it will become practical in terms of all these different kinds of trading partners and data users, I can’t say. It’s not [at the point] where you walk into a carrier and it says it is fully exchanging data by using XML transaction standards and pushing the data out to a PDA or an agent’s laptop in standard formats. It’s a long way from that.”