Mantissa recently reviewed a Life PAS offering from Penn River (http://www.pennriver.com).   And while CIO’s consistently note that there has not been a new offering in the Life Insurance PAS space in the recent years, we were pleasantly surprised our Penn River system demo. 

The power of the 100-day report for a new CIO cannot be underestimated. New CIO’s are normally hired for many reasons, such as setting a new organizational direction.  However, it is very easy for a CIO to fall into a predictable trap: production problems, sales calls, contract issues, human resource matters.  Issues immediately pile up and the CIO becomes distracted.  Then 6 months pass, and business leaders ask the inevitable question: What exactly has changed?

The employee “check in” is an informal, and probably one of the most powerful ways, to help your employees feel empowered and support their career and life goals. It also gives you a good sense for the culture of the company.

Why is it that the best professional sports franchises always seem to be in the playoff hunt?  The reason undeniably revolves around a highly integrated group of people, a team, operating with a clear sense of purpose and a unified mission. 

Whether you are a Small Business or a Fortune 100 Company, success depends on “The Team”.  For that matter, small businesses, baseball teams, football teams, team sports, IT Organizations, Departments, and most other industries live and die by the strength of the team.  

The Digital age is having quite the impact with the Agency distribution model. The livelihood of the individual agent is directly related to the number of touchpoints that they have with their customers. Agents are in constant pursuit of connection, interaction, hopefully sales, and then retention activities. However, if the life insurance company is also connecting digitally with the customer, do we have a natural conflict?

The role of the CIO is complex, changing, and multi-disciplinary. You are expected to have a technical point-of-view, deep understanding of the business you support, and have a technology vision for the future that will help transform your business. The digital journey is just one example of how CIO’s are helping their leaders transform the company.