For years, those insurers that chose to reject wireless andmobile strategies complained there was no "killer app" that madewireless technology completely necessary for them. They grumbled,of course, while talking on their cellular phone, checking e-mailon their BlackBerry, and wondering how best to service theircustomers and their agents. There is no mystery to the value ofwireless technology–it's everywhere we work. As moreforward-looking companies are embracing wireless, the naysayers aregetting fewer. However, the growing ranks of wireless users havecome to realize before getting too far along, they need to chart aclear path.

Wireless strategies must be a component of a larger companystrategy, according to Kimberly Harris-Ferrante, research vicepresident for Gartner. Many companies have built siloed strategies,and those in charge of these silos often fail to communicate wellwith their counterparts, so companywide strategy is lost. "[Eachbusiness unit] is one prong in a multiprong strategy," shesays.

Rod Travers, senior vice president, technology, for Robert E.Nolan Co., advises clients to take a step back. "Many of them havemultiple devices, multiple contracts in place, and multipledependencies on different technologies," he says. "Take a stepback, look at what you're trying to accomplish from a businessstandpoint across all those needs, and define your strategy. Whatis it you're trying to accomplish–in the near term and in the longterm–and what are the enabling technologies that can help you dothat?"

What this assessment accomplishes, continues Travers, is itallows a company to adopt a new device or type of technology orenable an application so it can serve in a mobile mode while havinga strategy to look at to see how the technology will fit. "Are yougoing over new ground or stepping outside what you said was yourwireless strategy?" he asks. "Are you spending more than what youfelt your strategy warrants for this type of mobiletechnology?"

Speed has been one of the barriers to a full wireless enablementstrategy, believes Tim Wiedmeyer, vice president of claims, WestBend Mutual. "We operate with a fairly bandwidth-intensive browserapplication, so getting adequate speed wirelessly has been a bit ofa challenge," he says. "Also, coverage across the five-state areawhere we have field people located has been an issue."

Larger carriers are using wireless in many of their fieldfunctions, particularly claims, but some of the less glamorousfunctions–such as loss control and premium audit–are becomingwirelessly enabled, too, notes Travers. Communications is not aspecific function of insurance, but with e-mail and messaging, itperhaps is the most widely used wireless/mobile function, he pointsout. "Some of the functions that previously were mobile but notnecessarily wirelessly enabled now are being looked at for wirelessenablement," he says. "It varies greatly from one company to thenext. Some companies still use pencils and paper, go back to theoffice, and enter the information into their laptops. Others arecarrying the devices into the field."

Areas that have been examined for wireless are ones thattraditionally have a mobile component to them, explains Travers."Rather than having to return to the home base, the application isdesigned to work in the field in a wireless and connected mode," hesays. "Not only are you seeing GPS used for dispatch and claims butfor data where you can correlate demographics or other kinds ofrisks into the picture." These technologies are starting toconverge, though they aren't prevalent yet. "What we areexperiencing with our clients is there are a lot of discussions butnot a lot of application," he adds.

The claims department is leading the way for West Bend with itsDamage Appraiser system for automobile repair estimates, whichScott Thomas, West Bend's director of claims, describes as aprototype for the company. "They really are the most task intensiveof any of our remote workers," he says. "We would like to set it upso they are connected continuously in real time for access to ournetwork. We want to move to that so they don't need an officelocated at their house and so they essentially will have a completemobile office. They are the first to do that in the company, butothers may follow."

Another project is what Thomas says the company has dubbed WestBend Anywhere, a Citrix application West Bend is rolling out toworkers in the field. "Not only does it improve their connectivityremotely, but it will enable everyone not to be tied down to aspecific location," he says. "If they have an Internet location ata hotel or an agent's office, they will be able to get to all ourapplications and work as though they were in the office."

In the past, most of State Farm Insurance's wireless technologywas on the voice side for communications, but there has been arecent shift to reliance on wireless data communications. "We'veseen the shift from cellular phones to now where we're also usingwireless cards and wireless LAN cards to communicate," indicatesDarrell Sims, systems analyst, in the wireless development area forState Farm. The current applications State Farm has in the fieldare used by claims personnel. But the carrier is in the process ofrolling out technology to the agent force for sales, reports Sims."We'll be using the same things we've used in the claimsforce–wireless cards, cellular cards, and the wireless LANcards–giving [agents] the same accessibility to the applicationsthey need to run," he says.

One of the main reasons to supply wireless technology to theagency force, comments Sims, is the ability to interface withpolicyholders while out in the field and to offer service orsupport. "To use some of the tools, [agents] had needed to be inthe office," says Sims. "Now, we can give them these tools whilethey are out in the local environment."

Productivity and cost are the drivers for insurers usingwireless/mobile technology, Harris-Ferrante believes. "It's gettingtools and technologies to the adjusters so they can be moreproductive and do things faster," she says.

Some application vendors, particularly those in coreapplications, such as claims or underwriting, and back-roomsystems, such as imaging/workflow, are outwardly supportive ofwireless/mobile and even tout features they may offer, Traverscontends. However, in practice, some of those vendors are lessenthusiastic about the mobile technologies because they tend tocomplicate implementations, slow them down, and introduce risk."Sometimes the issue of wireless even can slow down the sale of asystem to a carrier," he says, "because the carrier wants tounderstand fully the relationship between the new system and themobile/wireless realm." Travers suggests a carrier first design itsbusiness processes to deliver the kind of service it wants todeliver and then automate those processes with the righttechnology, including wireless/mobile. "Using this approach, therequirements for a given functionality (e.g., mobile) are drivenand justified from a business perspective, not from a 'technologylimitations' perspective," he says.

For claims departments, the biggest benefit to wireless is theability to do tasks once and then be done with them. "It's realtime, so things will be done more promptly, but primarily it's toavoid double entry on their part," says Wiedmeyer. "[Adjusters] goin the field, they do their work, they get home, and they're done.They don't have another two or three hours on the computer tofinish up what they did during the day."

Customer service also will stand to benefit, Thomas asserts. "Weare able to get the information in the hands of those who need itmore quickly," he says. Information is sent to the damageappraisers and then back to the people in the home office who needthe information to act on the claim so the claim can be paid andclosed and the information returned to the customer more quickly."We have nine appraisers and about 50 field adjusters," Thomaspoints out. "The goal ultimately is to get this technology in thehands of the adjusters so they can do the same thing for theirclaims–primarily property–so they can settle claims in the fieldand not have that double entry."

As more companies develop wireless/ mobile strategies,Harris-Ferrante contends management often starts at the wronglevel. "The problem we are seeing is the industry structure, inparticular with big companies," she says. "You have claimdepartments with such power that when you start looking at how tobring it all together at a higher level, it gets a little morecomplicated and political. With large companies, they don't knowhow to back out of these siloed strategies to get that higher-levelvision."

When building a strategy, the first thing to keep in mind iswhat it is you are trying to accomplish, adds Harris-Ferrante. "Youcan't just focus on operational efficiency because there's only somuch you can take out of that equation cost-wise," she says.

"So, there are lots of strategies coming out that cross all thedifferent channels," she continues. "If you are focusing just onadjuster technology without taking anything else intoconsideration, you are going to be very shortsighted on a lot ofwhat you invest in, both strategy-wise and technology-wise. It maynot lead you to the appropriate answer."

West Bend turned to a consultant to help assess its remotecomputing needs. "We hired R.E. Nolan to help us go through thatstudy," says Wiedmeyer. "It involved meetings with our remote usersand people from the home office, across all functional lines of thecompany–loss control, premium audit, sales, claims–who had remoteworkers. From that, we put together a road map of how we shouldincrease the capabilities of our people located away from the homeoffice. Wireless was just a piece of that."

West Bend's adjusters in the field have laptops, but they areconnected only through the docking stations in their homes oroffices. "We haven't been fully enabled by wireless technologyyet," Wiedmeyer says. "Certainly, it would be our vision to enablethem fully while they're on the road." The company now is testingthe Panasonic Toughbook for its field force.

"The goal is to have the field reps do their work out in thefield," Thomas adds, "and when they return to the office, the workessentially is complete."

There are different domains within an insurance company, Traversexplains. Large claims organizations are going to be exploringwireless and mobile technology, but there also is the executivecommunications aspect, which typically is how companies dip theirfoot in the water, and those are two different kinds ofapplications. "You've got a claims situation where you have a needfor more robust technology–probably a ruggedized laptop, maybetouch-screen type of capabilities, and specific applicationsrunning on that equipment," he says. "Executivecommunications–e-mail and messaging–is stock stuff and is prettyubiquitous. There are two different types of devices, two differentsets of requirements, and two different sets of things to support.Those have entered the organization at separate times and are ondifferent maturity curves."

Carriers often discover they have two whole sets of technologyin an organization that fall under the mobile and wirelesscategory, observes Travers. "You often have experimentation goingon," he says. "You have different parts of the organizationadopting these technologies and not under the umbrella of astrategy."

Sims indicates the challenges to turning State Farm's captiveagency force into a wireless unit include the size of the StateFarm organization vs. the rapid advancements in technology. "Ourscalability makes it a little tougher, but we are striving toinnovate and execute the best we can and find ways to gettechnology into the hands of the folks in the field," he says.Hardware and software upgrades to devices in the mobile environmentusually take longer to complete compared with users coming into theoffice every day. Another challenge is the protection of customerand company data. "Wireless security is getting a lot of press andfor good reasons," Sims points out.

When workstations are sent out to field personnel, State Farmlocks them down so users do not have administrative rights and areunable to add or update software. "That helps us from a securityand standardization standpoint, but then again, it also presentschallenges," says Sims. "When we do need to get something out [tothe laptops], we have to plan around an issuance of software for anupgrade or a revision change."

From a wireless LAN perspective, if users are not at a StateFarm location with their wireless LAN card, security requires theworkers to use a VPN client, which protects the company data. Thesecurity team always is looking for rogue devices that may beplugged into the network, Sims adds, such as employees bringingtheir new wireless router from home, plugging it into the network,and then leaving it wide open. "We're constantly monitoring forthose kinds of activities," he says.

During weather catastrophes, State Farm has faced issues withagents losing network connectivity in their offices. "That's wherewe utilized cellular air cards or our satellite capabilities to getthem back up and in service," Sims says. State Farm has a few RVsoutfitted with C-SAT capabilities that are made for catastrophes."We can go into a location and not rely on the infrastructure beingin place from a communications standpoint," he says. "We can createour own. Satellite has been a great tool we've used over the lastfew years."

The biggest advancement West Bend has made in technology is amobile office called Responder–a 35-foot Winnebago the carrier hadbuilt last summer that is equipped with satellite technology. "It'stotally self-contained," says Thomas. "It allows us to driveliterally anywhere and deploy the satellite and link up to oursystems so the adjusters, appraisers, or responders can work asthough they are in their office." The company uses it primarily forcatastrophe response to be more efficient and provide better claimsservice to the policyholders. It has been used on four occasions sofar.

"We've got the capability inside for nine workstations and havewireless laptops all hooked up and working concurrently and anadditional six connections outside the vehicle," saysWiedmeyer.

West Bend went in this direction because it has closed branchoffices in the last few years leaving no remote bases to operatefrom when catastrophes hit in those areas. "We had people scatteredaround in different motels, and it was hard to get losses to themand get them distributed," says Wiedmeyer. "Now the Responderserves as our remote command center for handling losses. We alsohad some really rough working conditions we asked our people towork with–working from a trailer, under a tent–just not the bestworking environment. This dramatically improves that experience forour catastrophe adjusters."

Travers believes wireless/mobile is having an impact on businesscontinuity and disaster preparedness for companies. Businesses weretaken by surprise when an entire area code failed to function afterHurricane Katrina. "Communication was not the thing people expectedto be compromised as much as it was," he says. Carriers are lookingat communication as an area they need to give more attention to soif the devices are not functioning under certain scenarios theyhave a backup plan. "It's all a part of business continuity, butit's not something that had been getting a lot of attention," henotes. "You just assume the dial tone is going to be there or thecell phone is going to work. We learned unfortunately that's notalways the case."

The best practices for disaster preparedness with wireless arebeing invented right now, according to Travers. "What we're findingis the backup to a traditional communication method is a blog,which is hosted geographically outside the affected area," he says."That's not necessarily a best practice; it was invention borne outof necessity. Now, it's becoming a practice."

Insurers affected by the storms were forced to turn to two-wayinteractive communication systems, such as blogs and messageboards, Travers indicates. "One of the aspects of what we saw withKatrina was the need to get the word out to a lot of people andhave some interactive communication," he says. "So, it's some mixof Web, blog, and e-mail that can serve as your backup. It's notnecessarily a best practice, but it's an area of study rightnow.

The decision by State Farm to go wireless for agents resultedfrom feedback from the agents. "They are out in the community alot, and they wanted to be able to do business from outside theiroffice, so we're trying to make that possible," says Sims. Thereare differences in the agent force as far as levels of technologyuse, he points out. Some agents have been early adopters oftechnology and may be ahead of the curve. There also are agents whodon't want to try new technology. "We run the gamut there," hesays. "The agents probably best know how to service theirpolicyholders and have a feel for what the policyholders need, sowe leave some of that up to the agent."