In speaking with industry experts about best practices and reading countless articles about technology developments and implementations, I find it intriguing and more than a little unsettling that buried within allthe highfalutin tech talk,I often hear a nervous, nearly inaudible question: Who exactly is the customer? Is it John, the policyholder? Is it Bob, his agent? Or is it the ABC Bank that sells XYZ Insurances new product?

As this issue came together, the critical importance of all customers became apparent, even if that wasnt the original intent. The cover story, Gimme a T!,(p. 14) was meant to be a roadmap for maximizing the relationship between IT and business, which as it turns out is the internal customer. CRM Is Dead . . . Long Live CRM (p. 18) is focused on the external customer. Although the thrust of the global insurance IT feature, Re Inventing the Wheel, (p. 22) was intended to be on reinsurance trading systems, it became apparent those systems were going to gather dust pretty quickly unless they got buy-in from the reinsurers e-partnerthe carrier.

Internal, external, and partnersthat pretty much sums up your entire business. Id say the biggest lesson this issue imparts is actually written between the linesthat if you can make all flavors of customer happy, your company will be doing bang-up business; and if not, keep the padlock handy.