Insurance companies are finding themselves faced with increased pressures due to new regulatory requirements, more-demanding customers, and the competitive imperative to innovate and launch new products. Those fundamental challenges are intensified because of capital constraints and the need to control costs. When cost pressures mount, technology and operations improvement/transformation projects frequently are the first to be eliminated.

And yet we are seeing large-scale investment trends among both property/casualty and life insurance companies in the areas of operational efficiency and revenue optimization/cost reduction. The strategic initiatives supporting these investments often are focused on making improvements to insurers' core operations, including claims management, billing, policy administration, and incentive compensation management, to increase the speed to market of their products. Customer data management and analysis strategies also are becoming mainstream.

And what insurers are finding, once they have accomplished a significant portion of their operations transformation, is the efficiencies derived and the other qualitative benefits delivered are helping to fuel and support the successful completion of the transformation project right away.