Jeff Stoll was named CIO of the individual business unit ofMetLife in April of last year. While he was a CIO before joiningMetLife, he says these past few months in his new position havebeen an enjoyable experience because of the culture at MetLife andbecause of the commitment, starting with our chairman and straightthrough the organization.

Stoll is responsible for partnering with business managers tooffer efficient support, create and provide necessary technologysolutions and application development, and respond to the need forcommon components and platforms, legacy system access, and Webservices for the individual business line at MetLife.
Stoll came to MetLife in 2000 and was responsible for applicationdevelopment in support of individual business, including managementof life and annuities administration, life new business, andunderwriting and remittance processing. He was named vice presidentwith MetLife IT in March 2001. Stoll received a bachelors degreefrom New York University and a masters degree from ColumbiaUniversity.

We get a lot of support, he says of the MetLife operation. Theway were structured with business, operations, product development,and technology, when we talk about a partnership, its really acrossall levels. That makes the CIOs job easier.
Stoll spoke with Tech Decisions about the partnerships he hasforged within the MetLife family and a huge systems integrationprogram the IT department in his unit already hasimplemented.
Tech Decisions: How do you foresee your partnership with businessmanagers at MetLife progressing as the individual business unitgoes forward?

Stoll: Partnership truly is a way of life at MetLife, and thatbenefits both the business managers and the IT associates. IT istied to business units via a formal governance structure thatencourages strong partnership between IT and the business. Also,this collaboration positions IT associates to understand thebusiness, and business associates to understand ITcapabilities.
It is advantageous I have had a leadership role within theindividual business-IT organization for a number of years and so donot find myself in a situation where I need to build newrelationships. We will continue to grow those relationships andwork to provide quality systems and strategic framework in supportof business direction.

Tech Decisions: Can you give us a few examples of how thispartnership with the business side has worked successfully sincejoining MetLife?

Stoll: We have some [partnerships] that have worked well and areworking well. One of them is something we call Project LESS [LegacySystem Simplification]. That was a significant effort withinMetLife individual business where we worked with business toconsolidate and integrate many legacy systems. One of our overallobjectives is to simplify our environment.
We also have implemented a single unified life applicationprocessing and underwriting system across all our distributionchannels for all our life products. We currently are working tobring the annuities front-end processing into that same commonfront end. For an organization the size and breadth of MetLife,that is quite an accomplishmentdealing with many businesslocations, business partners, and business functions. To be honest,its been very successful.

Tech Decisions: How are your teams brought together, and wheredoes accountability fall? Where do your project managers factorinto this accountability?

Stoll: Its really a multifunctional team. Theres applicationdevelopment, quality assurance, and what we call the enterprisetechnologythe data center, the network. All those functionalcomponents have to come together. On the business side, there arebusiness analysts and administration. The way we generallystructure this is the business will have a business lead and wewill have a technology lead. From a day-to-day standpoint, I lookat [IT] project managers as having the accountability, helping tocoordinate things. They do that in part with the business side. Bymy nature, I always like to have one person accountable, so eventhough theres joint accountability [on the project], Ill hold mymanager accountable for assuring internal delivery.

Tech Decisions: Which is the more difficult proposition,understanding businesss problems or helping business understand ITsproblems?

Stoll: Although either problem set standing alone can be achallenge, our approach to establishing project teams eliminatesthose difficulties. By setting up teams that include IT andbusiness representation, discussions occur that explore a varietyof aspects of the business problem and the proposed IT solution. Ajoint team enables ongoing communication, a better understandingand appreciation of other team-member responsibilities, jointaccountability, and joint decision-making. This approach also helpsestablish reasonable expectations and helps the final productfulfill the business need within both the business time frame andbudget.

Tech Decisions: Are there any other benefits to be gained?

Stoll: An added benefit is IT associates are able to learn aboutthe business, understand the business needs, and influencealternative solutions, and conversely, members of the business teamgain an understanding of IT solutions and challenges. The endresult is IT associates become advocates for the business, andbusiness associates become advocates for IT.

Tech Decisions: What are the technology challenges the MetLifeindividual business area faces today, and how do you go aboutidentifying them?
Stoll: We still have a number of legacy systems and technologiesthat should be integrated and sunset. Our challenge is to continueto identify cost-effective opportunities to reduce the number ofadministrative and down stream systems while at the same timesimplifying our end-to-end processing and infrastructureenvironments. In addition to this effort, we must continue tosupport our leadership in new-product innovation and development,improved service quality, and expansion of our self-servicetechnologies.

Tech Decisions: As the leader for Project LESS, can you explainhow it originated and has made MetLife a more effective operationthan before?

Stoll: Project LESS was a very large undertaking that involvedmultiple IT and business areas. We looked at our systems portfolioand realized there were significant opportunities for us to reducecosts, increase efficiencies, and enhance speed to market. Weidentified 53 systems we could sunset and sold the plan to thebusiness based on an aggressive schedule and definable benefits. InNovember 2002, Project LESS concluded on time, reducing ourapplications portfolio and returning a bottom-line impact thatjustified the investment.

Tech Decisions: Even the technology-challenged would recognizehaving more than 50 legacy systems would be a major problem for acompany to deal with, but how hard is it to push for a replacementwhen you know time and financial restraints for the carrier will beenormous?

Stoll: We understood the potential difficulty we faced and soentered into an intense planning phase before bringing the initialplan to the business. When we did begin discussions with thebusiness, we had determined and were able to demonstrate theproject would be cost justified. To limit inconveniences to thebusiness, we set aggressive schedules to complete the entireproject within one year. Additionally, we created a ProjectManagement Office (PMO) specifically for Project LESS and conveneda steering committee composed of the business and ITrepresentatives most directly affected. The chair of the committeewas the business executive with the greatest number of projects andthe largest investment within this environment. That PMO constantlymonitored the success of each portion of the project andcoordinated business and IT needs.

Tech Decisions: Which areas of the MetLife business do you thinkwill see the most improvement in the replacement of so many legacysystems?

Stoll: This project focused on legacy systems [foradministration and underwriting] within individual business, but wedid recognize Project LESS could be used as a model that could bereused in other areas of the MetLife enterprise. To facilitate thepotential reuse of the project we had what we called a road-mapfunction to develop a documented, repeatable process. Now thatProject LESS is a documented success, there is no need to reinventthe wheel if another line of business would like to integrate andcondense legacy systems, or even if an acquisition were to occurrequiring us to merge systems.

Tech Decisions: As a CIO, what challenges and opportunities doyou see for the future? How will they benefit MetLife?

Stoll: We have demand that far outstrips our ability to meet it.So we continuously are looking at ways to better meet that demand.And if we dont partner properly, we will not be as effective. Oneof the strong partnerships we are forming right now is with theinstitutional business of MetLife. [Institutional business] CIOMark Hammersmith and I are looking at better leveraging ourinvestments in our technology stacks and in our applications whereit makes sense to do that. That will help us meet our clientneeds.