Against a backdrop of continued economic uncertainty, ITprofessionals are challenged to deliver the highest level oftechnical capability to the business in the most cost-effectivemanner. Wednesday's IT Town Hall shares the experiences and insightof industry professionals and audience members who can provideanswers to some of the key questions being asked across theindustry.

The IT Town Hall is a perennial favorite, and for good reason.“This isn't a traditional panel presentation or even a Q&A,”says session moderator Rod Travers, executive vice president,Robert E. Nolan Company. “The whole point is for the audience to beactive in the discussion. It's an open forum for people to sharesuccessful ideas and learning experiences.”

This year's Town Hall features more panelists than ever beforefrom carriers, analyst firms, and solution providers. Fieldingtopics will be Mary Ellen Freyermuth, director of MIS, CatholicMutual Group; Alfred Goxhaj, CIO, Philadelphia Insurance Company;Donald Light, senior analyst, Celent; Kimberly Harris-Ferrante,vice president and distinguished analyst, Gartner; Don Goodenow,director, product management and insurance solutions, StoneRiver;and Euan King, CEO, North American technology, InnovationGroup.

Solution-Driven

The audience sets the tone of the Town Hall, which will open bysurveying the crowd for the top two topics to discuss. Where theTown Hall progresses from there is up to the participants; however,some areas in particular are likely to be candidates for spiriteddiscussion.

One hot topic is how the downturn in the economy has continuedto impact IT. Carriers across every sector of insurance are askingwhether the current state of lean operations for IT represents a“new normal,” or whether resource-strapped IT departments expect tosee increased budgets as the economy recovers and the projectedhardening of the insurance market begins.

“This is a topic near and dear to the hearts of severalpanelists,” Travers says.

As carriers struggle to operate most efficiently, they need tobase their decision-making on reliable business intelligence. Onthe analytics front, new and updated tools are proliferating,whether used to optimize functions at the operational level orguide day-to-day tactical decisions. In particular, businessstakeholders are looking to capitalize on these tools in the areasof underwriting, fraud, and product and market development.

In turn, IT is being asked to implement and support these tools,which often touch multiple databases and systems. Panel andaudience members will be able to discuss their experiences over thepast year with analytics.

Another pressing topic for insurers is social media. “Themarketing side of the business is clamoring for social mediacapabilities. That creates inevitable need for IT to support, froma technical standpoint, a company's social media presence,” Traverssays.

Prime areas for discussion include what forms of social mediaare being adopted, how to integrate it into your technologyinfrastructure, and how to ensure that it creates a qualityrepresentation of your company.

Social media has been enabled by Web 2.0 technologies. Anotherarea of Web 2.0 that is top of mind for insurers today is cloudcomputing. In recent months—despite some high-visibility negativepress around outages in cloud services—the business side has becomemore comfortable with cloud computing because of the ubiquity ofthe term as well as use of content-focused cloud services in theirpersonal lives.

Mobile Tech

Mobile technology is another topic on the IT Town Hall agenda.By the end of 2011, more than 1 billion people around the worldwill own smart phones or other mobile devices such as tabletcomputers. Employees are increasingly familiar with next-generationmobile technologies in their own lives, and customers are demandingmore and more mobile-driven capabilities.

Insurers are looking to other sectors of financial services andeven to other industries, trying to determine what opportunitiesmobile technology creates for their own operations. “Mobilerepresents an avenue to provide service to additional channels andreduce costs; however, the challenge for insurers is how to takethe highly transactional model of other sectors and apply it toinsurance. We have to sort out the seeds from the chaff anddetermine the true upside of mobile technology for the industry,”Travers says.

In this new world, IT departments are challenged with how toextend mobile services to customers and how to incorporate mobiledevices that employees demand into their infrastructure. They needto manage new risks of mobile and avoid the complexity that canarise with a highly distributed environment.

“Mobile is both a challenge and opportunity for insurers. On theone hand you have a simplified platform that is well suited forworkers on-the-go such as claims staff, agents, and executives. Onthe other hand you have a whole new set of emerging standards,infrastructure, and security issues that IT must now deal with,”Travers says.

“What is often happening today is that employees discover theconvenience and applicability of tablets and other mobile devicesand realize how productive they can be. Then informal adoptionbegins to take hold before IT can establish the necessaryinfrastructure,” he adds.

Other areas of discussion may include managing IT consolidationcreated by mergers and acquisitions and finding the right solutionsand vendor-partners quickly amidst the crowded solutionsmarketplace. Modernizing IT management and systemsdevelopment—including agile methods, portfolio and projectmanagement, skill and capabilities management, performancescorecards, accountabilities, and so on—are all prime areas fordiscussion.

And not to be overlooked is the issue of how to find and retainthe best talent, which has continued to be a pressing concern forIT departments despite a high unemployment rate.

“Even though the jobless rate is high, an ongoing issue for ITdepartments is finding the best people,” Travers says. “Now, withthe economy poised for recovery, the issue will evolve into how toretain the good people you already have.”

Panelists and audience members will share their real-worldinsight into these topics and more.

“One thing is certain—we will end up talking about severalthings that are not planned,” Travers says. “That is the nature anddesign of the open forum.”