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2007-12-26T10:56:00.001-08:00

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Discussion: Re: Disabilty Insurance
Posted by Lawrence B. Keller, CLU, ChFC on 09/16/2005

As you already know, Berkshire (Guardian) would offer her an additional $5,000 month with a true "Own-Occupation" definition of disabiltiy for five years, Modified "Own-Occupation" thereafter.

Standard Insurance Company (Portland, OR) would normally issue a policy with a true "Own-Occupation" definition of disability to age 67 (based on her age of 40). However, at this point they only issue and participate up to $10,000 month on an individual basis.

Therefore, at this time, they would not allow her to purchase any additional coverage. That being said, they have recently introduced a new policy series (The Protector+) that will participate up to $15,000 with another company (or companies) on an individual basis. However, it has not yet been approved in Tennesse but should be in the future (for your sake, hopefully the near future).

Your other choice would be to use MetLife's policy which can be purchased with a "Transitional Your Occupation" defintion of disabiltiy.

This would allow her to work in another occupation with no disability benefit offset until her DI benefits from NML plus MetLife plus her new occupation exceeds her prior income.

Simply put, if she earns $600K and would receive $180K form NML and MetLife, she could earn up to an additional $420K in another occupation and still receive her full disabiltiy benefits. I'm not sure if the rider is approved in TN but could check it out for you on Monday.

Finally, she might also consider a policy with a Modified "Own-Occuaption" defintion like Principal's. The more she earns, the more it acts like an "Own-Occ" policy. If she has a loss of 75% or more of her income, she would receive full benefits anyway. You might want to ask her if she can no longer perform surgery, what other job can she do that would allow her to earn anything close to $600K. Berkshire's policy is still better, but also more expensive.

The Lloyd's policy is a good idea as it would allow her to purchase up to a total of 65% of her income in conjunction with other DI companies. However, she should buy more traditional coverage first - as if she doed not, other companies will look a that coverage and eill not issue her any additional traditional coverage.

Hope this helps. If you want to talk, feel free to call me at 516-677-6211 and I can give you more detailed explanations and share some other ideas with you.

Larry

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Thomas McLaren
Lead Systems Analyst
IT Business Solutions
............................................................
TheStandard
StanCorp Financial Group, Inc.
900 SW 5th Ave., C12C
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Book reviews: Everything is Miscellaneous

2007-12-19T11:30:00.001-08:00

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Deceptively deep, May 3, 2007
By Ethan Zuckerman
One of the central ironies of David Weinberger's new book, "Everything is Miscellaneous", is that a book about classification is bound to suffer from classification problems. Reviewers and bookstore owners are inclined to think of David as a business writer because his previous books - The Cluetrain Manifesto and Small Pieces Loosely Joined - were profoundly useful in helping businesspeople understand what this World Wide Web thing was really all about. But it's a mistake to consider David's new book solely as a business book.

Which isn't to say that reading Everything is Miscellaneous won't help you make a buck in world of Web 2.0. It probably will, as the issues Weinberger explores are core to any business that deals with information and knowledge... which is to say, virtually every industry you can think of. But "Everything is Miscellaneous" is also a philosophy book. It's about the shape of knowledge, and how moving information from paper to the web changes how we organize and how we think. And this means that Weinberger's book crosses from territory like Wikipedia and Flickr into Aristotle and Wittgenstein.

This would be a dangerous path for a lesser author to take, but David grounds his explorations in examples and interviews that are, as Cory Doctorow puts it, wonderfully miscellaneous. We bounce between the lives and ideas of taxonomers past - Linneaus, S.R. Ranganathan, and the wonderfully strange Melvil Dewi - and the librarians and software developers who are making sense of today's digital disorder.

At its heart, the book is about what happens when we liberate knowledge from the world of atoms. In the physical world, we can only organize books on a shelf in one way or another - books can't be in multiple places at once. Frequently we find ourselves reduced to ordering information in arbitrary ways as a result - AAAAA Towing Service gets more business through the phonebook than Mike's Wreckers through the unfairness of alphabetization.

Adding a layer of metadata to the physical world helps somewhat - card catalogs allow us to put multiple pointers to a single physical location so we can file a single book on Military Music under both "Music" and "Military". But card catalogs pale in comparison to the wonders of "third-order" metadata, the sorts of organization we're capable of in a digital age. A book listed by Amazon can be filed in any number of categories. It can be annotated with reader reviews, added to reading lists, enhanced with tags or statistically improbable phrases. The "card" in the card catalog can be larger than the book itself, and the full text of the book serves as metadata, as the book itself is searchable.

Weinberger argues that the fact that we tend to organize data in terms of its physical placement has consequences for how knowledge works. We tend to think in Aristotelian terms - objects are members of a categories, and share the same traits as other members of that category. We can organize these categories into trees: a robin is a bird, which is an animal. We can expect the leaves of trees to share the attributes of their branches, and we expect each leaf to fit onto only one, specific branch.

But that's not knowledge works in a digital age. When I bookmark a [...] it's to my benefit to add many tags to it, both because it makes it easier for me to find it again, and because it helps other people find it as well. Weinberger advises us to "put each leaf on as many branches as possible", building a tree that looks more like a hyperlinked pile of leaves.

This suggestion, along with advice to use everything as a label, to filter only when we need outputs, and to give up the idea that there's a "right way" to order things, serve as a roadmap for how to build tools and services in a digital age. But the magic of Weinberger's book is that this practical advice is also an invitation to explore categorization, language and knowledge itself. If knowledge is a pile of leaves instead of a tree, how does the shape of our knowledge change?

It's questions like this that make "Everything is Miscellaneous" deceptively deep. One moment, we're thinking about how we organize photographs in shoeboxes or on our hard drives, and a moment later we're asking whether we understand "shoebox" in terms of definitions, family resemblances or exemplars. It's a little like drinking a mojito - smooth going down, but deceptively powerful, and slightly staggering when you get up to buy the next round.

I've read the book twice now, and am looking to my third pass through it. Weinberger has done something rare and admirable here - he's written about a world I thought I knew well in a way that makes me realize that there are innumerable depths and implications left to explore.

From Aristotle to Del.icio.us, June 17, 2007
By K. Sampanthar "Inventor of ThinkCube" (Boston, MA)

As other reviewers have mentioned David Weinberger's new book is a hard book to categorize, which is also the irony, since it's central premise is about categorizing information. I place this book in the company of other books about the internet and information; Ambient Findability - Peter Morville, Wikinomics - Don Tapscott, Wealth of Networks - Yochai Benkler. To me it's about the changes wrought by current trends on the internet. Weinberger is deeply familiar with internet and all it's implications, since he is one of the original authors of Cluetrain Manifesto which was probably the first book to outline the game changing nature of the internet. Here he tackles how to cope with the seeming chaos of digital information that we are deluged with.

This is a thought provoking book and will make you look at organizing information in a different way. It will help you understand some of the current trends on the internet and put it into historical context.

Audience
I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in internet trends especially as it relates to organizing information. If you are at all interested in the history of information and how we as humans have struggled to come to terms with the world, then this book is one of the best I have come across. It is well written and a pleasure to read.

Details
David Weinberger, internet visionary, has again synthesized an intellectual romp through another important topic - Information. We, humans, are obsessed with defining, categorizing /and organizing information as our way of bringing some order to the chaotic world we live in.
Weinberger explores our obsession with information from Plato and Aristotle to our modern-day digital explosion of information.
He frames this exploration by defining 3 orders of organizing information:

1) 1st Order organization is of the physical world, manipulating physical objects and organizing them,
2) 2nd Order of organization is the use of metadata to organize and categorize physical objects i.e. library card catalogs. This is still limited by physical constraints.
3) 3rd Order of organization is the world we live in today, as we move from the physical to the digital, organizing information becomes freed from physical constraints allows us to simultaneously define, categorize and organize information into a million different taxonomies.

The 1st and 2nd orders of organization are covered as Weinberger explores the history of our obsession with categorizing information; from Plato's `Joints of Nature', to Aristotle's `Trees of Knowledge'. We have been lumping and splitting information for thousands of years. Until recently we have been constrained by the laws of physics, it is hard for objects to be in two places. It is also hard to categorize the real world into orderly taxonomies i.e. what category does a duck-billed-platypus fit into?

The 3rd order organization is what Weinberger is referring to in his title, `Everything is Miscellaneous'. In a world where we can organize information any way we want, nothing needs to be categorized per-se and everything can live in a state of limbo in the miscellaneous category until we need it and then, and only then, does it need to be grouped, filtered, sorted for our immediate consumption.

The 3rd order world has freed information and people to categorize information anyway they want. It is no longer an academic exercise to come up with taxonomies. With tools like Digg, del.icio.us, Flickr etc. we slice and dice the world of information to our personal needs.

Understanding this digital disorder we live in and how we cope is the ultimate point of this book. True to form, Weinberger has given us a wealth of information to ultimately understand where we are today and how to build the tools to cope in the future.

Key Take-Aways
You will come away from this book understanding the following:
- Our historical struggle to organize information from the physical to the digital
- That we live in a new reality where information is freed from its physical constraints.
- The world of information is now available to all of us and can now be organized any way we want.

Summary
If you enjoyed any of Weinberger's previous books (Cluetrain Manifesto, Small Pieces Loosely Joined) you will not be disappointed. This is a pleasure to read and will make you think - my two most important attributes when it comes to books. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in information and the current trends on the internet. Weinberger has been right on the money with his observations of the internet and this book is no different; organizing information in the age of the internet is an important subject. Read why there is more to information than search alone.

Kes Sampanthar
Inventor of ThinkCube

The way of the (Virtual) World, May 4, 2007
By Miles Kehoe (Cupertino, CA)
With a background in enterprise search, I'm inclined to think of David's book as required reading for those who doubt how vital meta-data and community tagging is to quality corporate search. In reality, it's about meta-data.

As other reviewers have mentioned, the book is about moving organization and retrieval of content - physical and virtual - from atoms to electrons. Office supply stores, libraries, and daily life are all limited by atoms: how much space there is in a store; what products should be displayed near other products; and what single specific shelf should a new book occupy given the Dewey Decimal system categorization.

In our increasingly virtual world, based on electrons, little of this matters - fax/copying/printer/scanners can be 'stored' under all of those categories, or a new book can be tagged with every possible related term, regardless of what category the librarian suggests. Web 2.0, Flickr, Wikipedia, Enterprise Search 2.0, all of our virtual worlds, will allow us to tag everything in any way that will help us find it again. And we can make it even better by opening the tagging up to a wider audience - friends, co-workers, even strangers - consider Amazon's suggestion system.

The book is a masterpiece and is a must-read for anyone involved in using - or designing - any part of our virtual and future world(s).

Corp Strategy: Making most of hidden assets

2007-12-19T11:26:00.000-08:00

A good book that stands on its own, October 10, 2007
By M. McDonald (Chicago, IL United States) -
Normally the third book in a series either rehashes the prior two books, or requires that you read all three to understand the authors points. Unstoppable is unique in this regard as the book stands on its own and does not require you to read the other books.

Zook talks in depth about how enterprises can find source of growth from the core of their company either by finding hidden assets, customers or capabilities. The strength of this book is its detailed discussion of each of these sources of growth from the core and extending the core. Zook also provides detailed tools to help the reader apply these ideas to their company. This is particularly unique in a book that addresses issues of growth and growth strategy.

In some ways, Zook's book should be used as a companion to the book "BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY" which talks about identifying opportunities where there are no competitors. Used in combination, Blue Ocean will open up new possibilities, while Unstoppable will provide a way to execute on these opportunities and build off of your core to achieve them.

The book is clearly written with detailed case studies and verbatims form actual companies going through their growth processes. This is unique for any business book and Zook's use of extensive interview comments makes the book seem real and actionable rather than academic.

While Zook's book is well researched, there is a subtle and important bias in the research. Zook's results and statistics are largely based on analyzing projects that he and his company have conducted, rather than looking at the general marketplace. This is strength in that the book can talk about implementation details because they did the work. However, it is a subtle weakness in that the cases suffer from selection bias that has a tendency to color the results and conclusions. Zook's attention to detail, pragmatism, and exposing tools do compensate for this research weakness and for most it will not matter, but recognize that it is there.

Overall, I would recommend this book for any executive who is looking to change their enterprise or recognize the need to do more in order to grow. This is one of the top 10 business books I have read so far this year so highly recommended.

Important information on how to continue to survive over the long haul..., June 3, 2007
By Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) -
Nothing stays the same in the business world, and even successful businesses will face their own demise if they are not thinking ahead to their next "core" business. Chris Zook examines this redefinition of business in the book Unstoppable: Finding Hidden Assets to Renew the Core and Fuel Profitable Growth. This is an important book for all businesses, especially those who think they're on top of the curve right now...

Contents:
Unsustainable to Unstoppable; When to Redefine the Core; Undervalued Business Platforms; Untapped Customer Insights; Underutilized Capabilities; Managing Through the Growth Cycle; Appendix; Notes; Bibliography; Index; About the Author

When a company is trying to redefine their core, often they'll do one of three things. They'll either commit ever more deeply to what they currently do, they'll move into an area where they have no experience, or they'll merge with some other group to form a new mega-power. But Zook shows through research that each of those moves has a very small chance of success over the long term. The odds are much better when companies examine what they already have, and then map out how to leverage those hidden assets. They often fall into the categories of undervalued business platforms, unexploited customer assets, or underutilized capabilities. By moving in these areas where you already have traction, the company can be redefined to meet the next growth period. Zook has plenty of case study examples to back up his premise. PerkinElmer went from precision optics to genetic research using a small niche subsidiary they had. American Express took their massive data assets and redefined how they catered to customers. These and many other stories help to flesh out an important message... Change is inevitable, and it's best to be out in front of it, rather than playing catch-up in survival mode.

I can't think of too many businesses that wouldn't benefit from a structured examination of what they do and where things are going. Even if you don't feel you need to change right now, it's important to be thinking along those lines. That time *will* come, regardless of whether you want it to or not...

Pogo was right., June 18, 2007
By Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) -

In two previously published books, Profit from the Core (2001) and then Beyond the Core (2004), Chris Zook shares what several years of extensive and intensive research revealed about "how companies fail to recognize the potential of their core business and, as a result, prematurely abandon it in pursuit of hot markets or sexy new ideas, only to realize their error - often, when it is too late." He suggests a systematic way for organizations to assess their full potential and to make certain, also, that they do not fall into "this common, and typically human, trap."

In this volume, Zook draws upon an even wider and deeper wealth of research sources that include about fifty interviews, mostly of CEOs. The title is explained by the fact that he and his associates chose to study most closely those companies "that beat the odds. We also analyzed patterns of failure and estimated the odds of success offered by various paths in various situations." He goes on to observe that all of the success stories built their renewal on their "hidden assets" that had been previously been undervalued, unrecognized, and/or underutilized. "These assets were not central to the strategy of the past, but they held the key to the future. Furthermore, the older and more complex the company, the greater was the likelihood of finding promising hidden assets." In other words, many companies already "hold most of the cards for "a winning hand" but do not realize it.

I highly recommend all three of Zook's books because, together, they answer three separate but related, and critically important questions:

1. How to define and grow an organization's core assets? (Profit from the Core)
2. How to expand its boundaries into new territory? (Beyond the Core)
3. How to redefine and renew its core? (Unstoppable)

No company is forever "unstoppable" but most (if not all) companies can take full advantage of the information and counsel Zook provides in this book to find correct answers to all three of these questions achieve core renewal without "leaps to distant and hot new markets, ...being the first adopter of a pioneering new strategy,...[or making] as `big bang' acquisition." In fact, unless a given organization has "beaten the odds" by sustaining profitable growth, it should first define or redefine its core assets and then grow or renew them, before committing any resources to organizational and/or territorial expansion.

Zook is to be commended on the care with which he defines various terms. For example, undervalued business platforms "that might have once been secondary in importance but now have the potential to be the foundation for a new major core business"(e.g. IBM's Global Services Group). Also unexploited customer assets that tend to exist in three primary forms: "knowledge gathered as part of serving the customer but that, over time, accumulates an inherently greater value of its own...a unique position of trust of relationship with a set of customers [that gives] much more access and influence than has been recognized (e.g. American Express and Harman International). And finally, underutilized capabilities ("the most difficult hidden asset to discern but no less powerful") that result in losses of position to competitors in terms of cost, speed, logistics, design, and quality of customer service (e.g. the United States Postal Service's inability to invest as much as FedEx and UPS in system upgrades). "At the root of such competitive reversals we often find a yawning capability gap that was undetected, dismissed, or ignored."

I especially appreciate Zook's skillful use of various reader-friendly devices such as check-lists that focus on key points covered within a chapter: "Seven Steps to Redefining Your Core" (pages 24-25), a "State of the Core Diagnostic" (Figure 2-3 on Page 44), "Detecting Undervalued Business Platforms" (Pages 82 and 83), "Identifying Hidden Customer Assets" (Page 115), "Defining Your Core Capabilities" (Page 140), and "Ten Principles of Core Growth and Redefinition" (Page158). These and other check-lists facilitate, indeed expedite frequent review of key points later.

Although hidden assets are the "real key" to redefinition and capabilities are "the building blocks of renewal," and I agree with Zook that they are, it is important to keep in mind that transformation and renewal initiatives should never end. Zook asserts that "the real focus of business should be external - on competitors, shifts in technology, and customer dynamics." However, ironically, for many companies now searching for profitable growth, some "of their most challenging demons are internal" and their "most difficult foes" are often themselves. Unless they identify and then leverage the hidden assets they already have or to which they have easy access, they will either be out-of-business or acquired by another company within the next ten years.

Source: http://www.amazon.com/Unstoppable-Finding-Hidden-Assets-Profitable/dp/1422103668/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195591255&sr=1-1

2007-12-12T10:20:00.000-08:00

MetLife Expands Distribution of Deferred Income Annuity
Rebecca Moore – 12/11/2007
MetLife has renamed its Personal Income Builder deferred income annuity to Longevity Income Guarantee (LIG), and has made it available through MetLife Investors, the company’s independent distribution arm.

LIG is designed to help clients maximize, protect, and guarantee income for life in retirement, MetLife said in a news release. Lisa S. Kuklinski, vice president and actuary, Individual Annuities, MetLife, said incorporating longevity in the name was to more closely align the solution to the risk offset in people’s minds.

LIG is available in two versions – Flexible Access Version (FAV) and Maximum Income Version (MIV), and either version can be funded through a lump-sum payment or incremental purchase payments (a minimum of $2,500 initial purchase payment with $500 subsequent payments).

The Flexible Access Version offers a death benefit to named beneficiaries should the owner die before taking the LIG income. Beneficiaries will receive a death benefit equal to purchase payments compounded at 3% annually.

The FAV also includes current income options to suit individual needs, such as payments for life and that of a spouse or partner, or payments for life guaranteed for a specified number of years, in addition to liquidity in the form of a one-time partial or full withdrawal from the contract within 60 days following the income start date, according to the announcement. The income option can be selected when income starts, and is not locked in on the issue date.

The product also offers clients the option of beginning to take income between age 50 to 85 after a two-year waiting period. Like the income option, the income start date is not locked in on the issue date. The client can start income whenever the need arises, subject to the above constraints.

The Maximum Income Version contrarily, does not offer a flexible start date, death benefit, or liquidity, and is an option for individuals who can meet their retirement needs before age 85, but do not need a death benefit or a flexible withdrawal option within their annuity contract. Future income payments are based on annuity purchase rates available on the day a client makes a purchase payment into LIG.

Elizabeth M. Forget, senior vice president, MetLife, responsible for marketing and product management for MetLife Investors, said in the release: “LIG is an exciting addition to our suite of annuity offerings to third party distributors, because it offers clients the ability to ‘buy’ guaranteed lifetime income today that will begin at a certain date in the future. Knowing how much income they’ll receive and when they’ll receive it helps clients establish an income planning time horizon so they know how long their assets need to last. This can help clients and their advisers plan more efficiently.”

IRA assets in 2006 exploded to $4.23T up from $3.63T in 2005 = mostly from rolloever from Retirement Plans

2007-12-12T10:19:00.001-08:00

ROLL "PLAY." A new study finds IRA growth continues to be fueled by rollovers from employer retirement plans - about $200 billion annually – with new IRA contributions significantly smaller by comparison. A news release from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) said IRA assets exploded in 2006 with a whopping 16.5% hike to a record $4.23 trillion - up from $3.63 trillion in 2005. That 2006 performance gave more weight to the notion that IRAs are now the largest repository of U.S. retirement funds, according to EBRI. MORE

User Experience

2007-12-11T14:41:00.001-08:00

Updated: 8/31/2007
Wellness
Press Clips
Study: Insurers Need to Focus on Customer Experience
August 27, 2007 — Armonk, N.Y. — U.S. consumers want insurance companies to more effectively communicate new products and services available to them, provide customized policies to better meet their needs and bring their customer experience up to par with other industries, according to an IBM study of more than 3,000 P&C insurance policyholders. Yet, despite boasting one of the largest demographics of loyal and satisfied customers of any industry, few insurance companies are looking for new and innovative ways to connect with their customers to enhance their experience and drive organic growth.

Fewer than half of the policyholders polled are informed about new products and services by their providers. Additionally, only 43% of policyholders said their insurance companies customizes policies to meet their specific needs.

Andrea Eichhorn, GBS, associate partner in IBM's financial services customer focus strategy team suggests providing customers with more information online. "Maybe provide some Internet access-for when the customer is checking prices-that clearly explains what the different options are and how they can tailor the products to meet their needs," she says, "because, I think many people buy insurance blindly."

The study, "Surviving Climate Change in the Property and Casualty Industry By Growing Customer Advocacy," also demonstrates a widening gap between insurance customer demographics, product offerings and distribution channels. Younger policyholders are increasingly price sensitive and technology-savvy, and are more likely than other demographics to access a variety of distribution channels including the Internet and Web 2.0 technologies such as mobile text and instant messaging. Baby boomers are accustomed to more traditional insurance channels and are redefining the market as they age, forcing insurance companies to accommodate their varied needs and develop customized products that can be offered across multiple channels.

"Insurance providers can no longer follow the 'one-size-fits-all' approach to product offerings and channel distribution and expect to remain competitive," says Bill Busby, partner, IBM's Global Business Services, Americas insurance leader. "Younger customers want fast and easy transactions with little or no human interaction, while older customers continue to value a high touch experience and demand higher levels of service and quality. Meanwhile, customers across the board want their providers to offer more flexible products and deliver a greater degree of personalized service."

Insurers can more easily decide which services and products are best for their customers by using technology to capture customer data at the point of interaction, says Eichhorn. "Insurers can capture more feedback and provide more avenues and venues for policyholders to provide input on product development and product needs," she says.

As part of the study, IBM tested a new measure of customer loyalty, the Customer Focused Insight Quotient (CFiq) to drive the quantification of key interactions on policyholders perspectives and attitudes. Unlike other satisfaction or promoter measures, the CFiq goes beyond a single measure of satisfaction by combining policyholders ratings of three statements to obtain a more predictive and commercially viable view of advocacy:

I would recommend their insurance company to others.
I would consider my insurance company first for future insurance products.
I would stay with my insurer if offered competitive insurance products from other insurers.

More than half of insurance policy holders (51%) surveyed strongly agreed with these statements and are considered advocates. This number is relatively healthy compared to other industries, such as banking or retail where only one in four customers is an advocate. Beyond their clear value as referrers and credible promoters, they deliver better financially. For example, advocates have 22% more products and trust their insurance companies 98% greater than low-value policyholders or antagonists. Advocates also tend to be long-time policyholders, with more of them staying more than 10 years with their insurance companies, nearly double the amount of antagonists. This result means more premiums are collected and sales investments can be more effectively managed.

Future success in the insurance industry will depend upon creating and delivering a compelling customer experience, according to the survey. Insurers need to begin to build a basic foundation that enables them to move to a more customer-focused enterprise that increases the relevance and attractiveness of products and services to policyholders. Specifically, the study lists five key areas for insurers to consider:

Build a deeper understanding of the policyholder. Create or repurpose customer research to capture and analyze customer data from key interactions across the policyholder experience.
Design customer experiences based on customer expectations and perceptions of operational performance. Use policyholder advocacy data to drive improvements to key front-office interactions and customer metrics to measure targeted improvements.
Communicate and transact with customers intelligently during key interactions, on a customer-by-customer basis. Encourage customers to provide feedback and reward them for sharing information through personalized service, relevant offers and recognition.
Improve the coordination and key activities across the delivery channel to improve effectiveness and quality of the overall policyholder experience. Provide agent- and direct-based channels with real-time access to key customer data to increase visibility into customer needs and wants.
Increase policyholder involvement in the development and customization of insurance products. Collaborate with both advocates and antagonists (i.e., internet surveys, blogs, "Customer Jams" etc.) in the development and testing of products and services.

"Everyone's been focusing on cost reduction for a long time now," Eichhorn says. "But it's time to make a slight shift; keep reducing costs, but use some of the savings to improve the customer experience for the areas where we want to grow."

Insurers must find ways to intelligently evolve and differentiate their business by understanding and incorporating advocacy to enhance the policyholder's experiences, according to the study. Continued reliance on traditional competitive levers will contribute to a slow erosion of business value and contribution for today's leading insurance providers.

"The financial services industry is really starting to pick up on the importance of focusing on the customer experience," Eichhorn says, because consumers view the insurance transaction as a transaction, not necessarily an insurance transaction. "They expect the experience to be much like their experience of shopping at their favorite Web site."

To get a copy of the study, visit http://www.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/ibvstudy/gbs/a1028725.
Source: IBM

.............................
   Thomas McLaren
   Lead Systems Analyst
   Standard Insurance Company
   Desk:   971-321-6153
   Mobile: 503-309-2555

M&As Drive Innovation: First Notice Systems and SurePlan deals broaden Innovation Group’s offerings and expand its BPO footprint in North America.

2007-12-06T17:11:00.000-08:00

http://www.insurancetech.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=4CLTDMBD5VHJWQSNDLRCKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=196602091

By Anthony O'Donnell
Insurance & Technology
December 06, 2006

Seeking to expand its offerings to North American customers, Innovation Group (Hartford/Whitely, U.K.) in November acquired claim-reporting outsourcing software and services provider First Notice Systems (Boston) and SurePlan International Pty Ltd., an Australia-based holding company that owns 51 percent of SurePlan USA, a provider of outsourced claims management services to the vehicle leasing and fleet industry. Innovation Group had already acquired another subsidiary, SurePlan Australian Pty Ltd., in May.

The acquisitions position Innovation Group for a significant expansion of its presence in the United States market for business process outsourcing (BPO) for claims and related services, according to Donald Light, a San Francisco-based analyst with Celent. "These two acquisitions give Innovation Group a significant footprint today and potentially a platform for expanding the range of BPO services it provides to insurers, TPAs and self-insured companies," he says.

Expanded Offerings

Innovation Group purchased First Notice, described by Light as a leader in developing technology and services to take the first notice of loss (FNOL) from policyholders to spark quick and accurate claims handling, from Concentra Operating Corporation for $51.55 million in cash, comprising consideration of $50 million and related payments of $1.55 million, according to an Innovation Group source. The deal is expected to close by the end of the fourth quarter of 2006. SurePlan did not disclose the terms of its deal.

"The ability to provide BPO capability to North American customers like we do in other markets has been [a top priority] for the past couple of years, but we needed the credibility and customer performance in this market to do it," says Ed Ossie, president, Innovation Group.

That credibility has been built over the past couple of years by what Ossie describes as "improving equity and meaning with key customers." He cites a 24 percent organic growth year over year, which the company has forecast to continue in predictive statements. "On the heels of success we're able to expand and do a little more to achieve a critical mass," Ossie comments.

The primary impetus for the acquisitions was to provide customer options, says Ossie: "Our customers are making choices every day, and we need to be in a position to provide them choices to engage with us, whether that's through a policy admin system or some support around FNOL during times of overflow or catastrophe. If you're thin and only do a few things, you're going to strain to develop deeper relationships with your customers."

The additions of First Notice Systems and SurePlan's U.S. operation, Ossie adds, "provide us with complete motor claim outsourcing capability for personal, commercial and self-insured or fleet."

IBM study: Customer Service, Multi-Channel Distribution Could Help Insurers Mantain High Levels of Customer Loyalty

2007-12-06T17:09:00.000-08:00

http://www.insurancetech.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201802732

A new study from the IBM Institute for Business Value indicates that insurers need to enhance customer service and distribution channels to maintain their high levels of customer loyalty.
By Nathan Conz
Insurance & Technology
August 28, 2007

A recent survey conducted by the IBM (Armonk, N.Y.) Institute for Business Value has found that P&C insurers have highly loyal customer bases, especially when compared to other areas of financial services, but that they'll need to improve multi-channel distribution efforts and customer service levels if they want customers in younger age demographics to become loyal as well.

The results of the 3,020-policyholder survey were released on Monday in "Surviving climate change in the property & casualty industry by growing customer advocacy." The survey results showed that 51 percent of policyholders could be considered "advocates" for their insurance carrier, using the Customer Focused Insight Quotient (CFiq). Meanwhile, banking, another industry looked at in similar IBM study, only demonstrated a 24 percent advocacy rate.

The CFiq is a new metric from IBM that considers customers as "advocates" if they would a.) recommend their company to others, b.) consider their current company first for future products and c.) stay with their current company if offered competitive products elsewhere.

While just over half of policyholders surveyed strongly agreed with all three of those aforementioned statements, study co-author Robert Heffernan, an associate partner and CRM Global Leader at the IBM Institute for Business Value, points out that a majority of advocates come from older demographics. When you remove older policyholders -- who are most likely to prefer a traditional delivery and service model -- from the equation, Heffernan says that the insurance industry's advocacy rate drops to around 25-percent.

"The bottom line is insurers are looking good now when compared to different industries, but they really need to take a look at how they view younger segments. [They need to be] moving towards more direct channels or at least laying that foundation, and they need to understand what younger customers want and what they're going to value online," Heffernan says.

The aim of the CFiq metric is to roll a few common customer service metrics into one -- providing a better enterprise-wide view of a given company's success in satisfying customers.

"There are number of satisfaction metrics within a firm. Some might be based in the call centers and some be based with agents, and so on," Heffernan relates. Any one metric, however, can be a poor predictor of a satisfied customer's future behavior.

For example, Heffernan explains that many customers say that they would recommend a company to friends and family, but also say they'd go to another company when looking for a new insurance policy. "A high 'recommend' percentage doesn't necessarily give you any understanding of the commercial viability of that customer," he says.

Future success in converting younger policyholders and potential customers into advocates could be dependent on customer service. Heffernan explains that new products are soon copied and pricing changes are quickly matched. "We think the differentiator is really going to be from the customer experience. It's how you use your company to effectively change up and differentiate how you interact with a client," Heffernan says.

Meanwhile, Heffernan says insurers must balance the needs of many baby-boomers and seniors, many of whom still prefer more traditional insurance models and renew policies at very high rate, with the preferences of many younger policyholders who increasingly look to more mobile, more Web-based and more direct and automated ways to interact with their carrier.

"We're starting to find a demographic split with respect to age. It's really pronounced in the insurance side of it. We're seeing insurance companies trying to address those two demographics, and the two have sometimes contradictory objectives," Heffernan says.

Google Search Appliance 5.0, Enterprise Labs Launched

2007-11-29T16:50:00.000-08:00

Google Enterprise launched two things today. First, they put out version 5.0 of the yellow “cheese box” Google Search Appliance. The new version has an enterprise connector framework for connecting to intranet services, platforms, applications, databases and hosted services (like Microsoft Sharepoint and IBM FileNet) as well as enhenaced security.

Also launched, Google Enterprise Labs, where enterprise customers can download new experimental features for the Search Appliances and Google Mini systems. It launches with a search-as-you-type application that can be applied to any text field that queries the Appliance and shows rich preview, complete with thumbnails and category grouping. Also, it has Do-it-Yourself Keymatches, which lets users add smart answers to the top of search results, and Parametric Search, which accesses your metadata to provide seperate sidebar navigation through that data.

Here: A video demonstration of search-as-you-type.

Dell to sell Google appliances

2007-11-29T16:46:00.001-08:00

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2204489/dell-sell-google-appliances

PC maker to offer Google Search Appliance and Google Mini
Clement James, vnunet.com 28 Nov 2007
$30K box for enterprises, $2K for small biz.
User-interface customizable.

Dell has signed a deal with Google allowing the PC maker to sell Google Search Appliance and Google Mini devices direct to corporate customers.

Although the units are actually manufactured by Dell, the firm has not been able to sell them until now.

"Having Google Search Appliance and Google Mini bolsters our enterprise offerings and simplifies the search engine process for our commercial and public customers," said Terry Klein, vice president at Dell's Americas Advanced Solutions Group.

"Google's turnkey search appliances align well with Dell's priority to simplify IT in the data centre."

The Google Search Appliance, with its distinctive yellow chassis, is designed for larger enterprises, while the blue Google Mini is targeted at SMEs.

The appliances deliver relevant search results from information sources within a company's firewall.

Companies can also design their own interface that users will recognise from their familiarity with Google.com, without compromising existing corporate security requirements.

"Expanding our channel presence will help meet the growing demand and interest in Google Enterprise solutions worldwide," said Darci Dutton-Reimund, head of North America channels at Google Enterprise.

"Dell's partnership is critical in helping us deliver the best of Google business innovation to our rapidly growing customer base."

The Google Search Appliance starts at $30,000 and the Google Mini starts at $1,995.

How to Conduct an Audience Survey

2007-11-29T14:37:00.000-08:00

January 12, 2005

http://www.techweb.com/mediakit/m2i/jan05.html

You're receiving this newsletter as a member of Marketing2IT from CMP Media's TechWeb Network. For more details, see the bottom of this email. If someone forwarded you this issue and you would like to subscribe, please go to www.Marketing2IT.com.

How to Conduct
an Audience Survey
An Interview with Donna Fabyonic, CMP Research Manager

Welcome to Marketing2IT. This issue focuses on how to conduct an audience survey, with practical tips for getting the best results.

There are many reasons to survey your customers (or prospects, readers, target market, etc.) A typical audience survey will help you gain greater market intelligence including: interest in your product, purchase involvement, job title, professional role, type of business, size of firm, publication readership, trade shows visited, and more.

This data in turn will help you develop the strategy and tactics to achieve your corporate sales, marketing communications and branding objectives. Read on to find out how.

With 10 years of market research expertise, Donna Fabyonic knows what works and what doesn't when it comes to running surveys. We asked Donna to share her tips on conducting successful surveys. Her most recent TechWeb Online Audience Survey got 3,560 responses and covered the entire TechWeb Network.

M2IT: How do you define which audience you want to survey?
Donna Fabyonic: Typically that is dictated by the survey objectives. For our online audience survey it's important to get as broad a selection of the visitors as possible - ensuring we have an accurate representation of the varied visitor 'types' to our sites. From there you can segment the results to narrow it down.

M2IT: What are some of the key ingredients of a successful survey?
DF: First, keeping the survey as brief as possible will help you achieve your response goals. Second would be a topic that spans the interest of several departments at your company (to get as much mileage from the results as possible) as well as the community you are surveying (to get them to want to participate in the survey). Then I would say obtaining as random a sample as possible to ensure the validity of the results.

M2IT: What are some of the best practices for recruiting respondents?
Be upfront with the audience as to survey length, respect visitors' privacy, and offer an incentive that they are going to want to receive. And of course, a key element is a well-written survey invitation. It's also important to attach a cookie to prevent visitors from taking the survey more than once.

M2IT: How many results do you need to be statistically significant?
DF: For any research study you want to try to achieve a minimum of 100 completed surveys. From that you can project out onto a larger universe. For our larger sites we try to get 250 or more to make it that much more significantly stable. At this level, you've got about a 6% margin of error.

M2IT: What role do surveys play in the IT marketing process?
DF: Surveys can help tech marketers hone their messaging. If you know what your market wants to hear, it makes it a lot easier to build effective creative. Or, pre/post campaign surveys can help measure shifts in awareness.

M2IT: Should surveys be multiple choice, yes/no, short answer or a mix?
DF: While simple yes/no questions are useful in any survey, I find them most valuable as a means to send respondents down different paths of questioning. Multiple choice and even rating matrices are my favorite. You can get a lot out of these depending on the question asked (select all that apply, select top 3, top 1, etc). Short answer questions, used in moderation, can be very informative. They allow the respondent to expand beyond a simple single or multi-select question. And depending on the respondent, you can get some great info. But mostly these open-ended questions tend to slow the survey-taking process down and when used too frequently, annoy the survey taker.

M2IT: What are the potential benefits/risks of conducting a survey?
DF: Increased intelligence is the main benefit. One risk is that you don't get the survey results you were looking or hoping for. But that in and of itself tells you something. Another risk is that you don't achieve a projectable sample base. But that is something you can try and manage by monitoring recruiting methodologies.

M2IT: How important is it that the survey be conducted by a third party (i.e.: not affiliated with the company)?
As long as you conduct an honest survey and deal with the results in an honest way, it is not critical to conduct a survey with a third party. If you are looking to get a lot of mileage in the press, want to sell your results, or are doing a large-scale industry-wide type of survey though, a third-party provider will bring credibility and eliminate any perception of bias

M2IT: Can you describe the TechWeb Network reader profile?
DF: Our visitors are technology-savvy professionals heavily involved in purchasing IT products and services for their company or organization. They are responsible for large budgets and rely on technology information web sites to provide them with the tools they need to make smart purchasing decisions.

M2IT: What kind of purchase involvement did you discover in the survey?
Not surprising, most of our audience (72%) is involved in the purchase process for their organization in one way or another with close to half of them (48%) responsible for their entire company or multiple companies within their organization. These technology buyers have influence over substantial annual purchasing budgets. Overall, each is responsible for an average annual budget of $21.8 million on technology-related products/services.

The TechWeb Top 10
Here are the current top 10 terms IT pros are searching for according to the TechWeb Network search logs:

rfid

voip

outsourcing

linux

erp

spyware

intellectual property

it spending

retail

phishing

Top 11 Successful Survey Tips
1. Gather data that's useful for many functional areas within your organization.
2. Select a topic that is interesting to your audience to increase response rates.
3. Create a well-written survey invitation with a short catchy subject line.
4. Be up-front about the number of questions and time to complete the survey.
5. Keep the survey as brief as possible: 10-12 questions maximum.
6. Get a minimum of 100 completed surveys.
7. Obtain as random a sample as possible.
8. Run the survey for a minimum of one week.
9. Offer an incentive that your audience will want to receive.
10. Attach a cookie to prevent any visitor from taking the survey more than once.
11. Respect visitors' privacy.

Tech Marketing WebCast
CMP's How to Market to IT WebCast is available on-demand. Find out more and register at www.Marketing2IT.com.

Global Competitiveness Audit
The CMO Council is conducting a new online survey designed to capture the insights and perceptions of high-tech and telecom executives on the changing structure and nature of competition in their industries. Take the survey.

Featured TechWeb Ad Products
TechWebCasts: Build a qualified list of leads, self-selected and engaged in your technology products. [More...]

Pipelines: Surround an audience that's researching news and information in your choice of topics. [More...]

Cost Per Click: Your links display around the TechWeb Network by topic or by brand. [More...]

New clients in the US should contact...
West Coast
Kathy Kottenbach
Account Manager
kkottenbach@cmp.com

East Coast
Nadine Watson
Account Manager
nwatson@cmp.com

Complete Contact Details

The TechWeb Network
is part of

The Fine Points
1. If you received this email directly from us, you received it because you registered to attend the How to Market to IT TechWebCast or you were a member of the TechWeb's IT Ad Club. (Notes_Placeholder) This email was sent in strict compliance with CMP Media's Privacy Statement.

2. To unsubscribe: If you'd rather not receive further emails from TechWeb's Marketing to IT, just click the "Leave" link below. If you'd rather a human took you off the list, just respond to this email and I will personally remove your name.

Regards,
Michael Grover
Director of Marketing
CMP Media's TechWeb Network
mgrover@cmp.com

Google + SurveyGizmo, Part 2: Integration

2007-11-29T14:28:00.000-08:00

http://www.surveygizmo.com/google-surveygizmo-part-2-integration/
November 13th, 2007 by Christian Vanek

Two weeks ago we wrote a post describing how to pass information into SurveyGizmo from Google Adwords. Very nifty! *This week* we are going to pass information from SurveyGizmo into Google Analytics. Even niftier, huh?

Why would we want to do this? Well, Google Analytics is a very powerful (and free) web analytics suite. With it you can track survey conversions, path analysis, sources of surveys traffic and even various versions of your forms and surveys. It’s the best of both worlds.

So let’s get the ball rolling:

Introduction to Google Integration Code

When you create a Google Analytics account you are given code snippets and instructed to place them at the bottom of each page on your website. For use in surveys, you will need to add them to the HTML Template of your Survey’s Theme.

There are two parts of the code you are asked to embed: 1) A javascript library that Google provides and 2) a little snippet of javascript code that actually triggers the analytics record.

The first part looks like this:

You should place this bit of code at the top of your survey’s HTML template (the very top).

The second part looks like:

So, where does this part go? Well, first we are going to modify this bit just a little. Why? Because we want to track individual survey pages, and make them a bit easier to understand in Google Analytics.

So, here is what we are going to do. We are going to pass an argument (a bit of data) to the urchinTracker function that will identify individual pages of the survey. We are also going to create a ‘fake’ folder for our survey. So change this second bit of code to:

You should replace ’surveyname’ for every survey you integrate. Make it distinct and understandable. The merge code [%%:Survey_Page%%] will merge in the current page number. Tip: If you want to get fancier you can merge in the value of a hidden question on the page, or even question data from previous pages this way.

Place this modified code at the very bottom of the HTML Template.

Congratulations. When you launch your survey, it will store the navigation and traffic information to your Google Analytics account!

From here you can treat your “surveys” folder like it was just another part of your website. You can run your favorite reports, build charts graphs, etc. Enjoy!

Next week we will look into test variations of your surveys and landing pages and doing analysis in Google Analytics.

Google + SurveyGizmo, Part 1: Adwords

2007-11-29T14:26:00.000-08:00

http://www.surveygizmo.com/online-survey-google-adwords/

November 8th, 2007 by Christian Vanek

In the past two months we have received a huge number of questions concerning Google and SurveyGizmo integration. We’ve gotten so many, in fact, that we decided to write a three-part article that shows everyone how to do just that.

This week: Part 1 - Tracking Keywords and Ad Type from Adwords
Next week: Part 2 - Using the A/B/C Splitter to Test Landing Page Variations
Finally: Part 3 - Hooking Your Survey up with Google Analytics & Conversion Funnels

This week we are going to show you how to link a landing page in SurveyGizmo to a Google Adword’s campaign and how to pass valuable information from Google into SurveyGizmo. The two pieces of information we are going to track are: 1) the keyword that triggered your Ad’s clickthrough and 2) whether your ad was shown on a search results page or on the content network.

Let’s leap right in:

Step 1 - Create your Offer Landing Page

Naturally, before we can go into Adwords and set up our campaign, we need to create a Landing Page for the offer. So, what exactly is a “landing page”?

Definition of a Landing Page

The destination web Page for people responding to an advertisement, designed specifically for that campaign and audience. The key difference between a home page and a landing page is that the former must be all things to all visitors, while the landing page should be narrowly designed to optimize conversion for a specific campaign.

The easiest way to create a landing page in SurveyGizmo is to create a new survey with our landing page template and then add your own text and images. Remember, with SurveyGizmo you can brand your landing page any way you want; our templates are just starting points.

Here are some tips for your landing page:

Don’t ask for more information than you need. Each ‘extra’ field you ask for might cost you valuable leads.
If you have a complicated qualification process, break it up into a few pages.
Remember, you have all of SurveyGizmo’s features at your disposal. You can ask qualification questions or make your landing page interactive with Show/Hide logic!

Step 2 - Linking Google to your Landing Page

After you create your landing page, you need to setup your AdWord’s campaign to link to it. So, from your Adword’s control panel, copy the Survey Link that we provide you and paste it into the Adwords destination URL box.

Now here is the cool trick!

We want to track which keywords are generating conversions. To do that, we tag a little extra line after our survey url, like this:

http://survey.12342-21.sgizmo.com/?keyword={keyword}&from={ifsearch:search}{ifcontent:content}

This works becuase SurveyGizmo will automatically track data sent through the URL!

Now that we have keyword and ad type tied to every response, we can look at conversion as a whole, as in the report below. Just make sure to check off “Include URL Tokens in Summary report” for your report options:

Or, to get a more in-depth look, we can create a report that filters based on keyword and ad type.

If you are a Free user, you’ll have to export your data into Excel to see these keywords, but at the Pro level you get access to filtering so you can create reports right in SurveyGizmo.

That’s it for this week. If you have questions feel free to post them in the comments for this blog post. I’ll answer them as soon as I can.

Next week: We will show you how to perform A/B split tests on your landing page to see which version and offer text work best!

Christian Vanek
Christian is a founding partner of SurveyGizmo and the lead software engineer. He comes from an 11-year consulting background focusing on marketing and content management tools. Christian is based out of Cambridge, MA.

ITIL? No. MOF, yes.

2007-11-14T14:28:00.001-08:00

ITIL WORKS, BUT I PREFER THE MICROSOFT OPERATIONS FRAMEWORK
by Niel Nickolaisen
http://searchcio.techtarget.com/magItem/0,291266,sid19_gci1279615,00.html?track=NL-545&ad=613082&asrc=EM_NLN_2580904&uid=6532949

CRM at center of Customer Data Integration ("Master Data Management")

2007-11-13T11:46:00.001-08:00

Customer data basis for CRM, MDM at Schneider
By Barney Beal, News Director
13 Nov 2007 | SearchCRM.com

Summary
CUSTOMER DATA BASIS FOR CRM, MDM AT SCHNEIDER http://go.techtarget.com/r/2572116/6532949
Barney Beal, News Director

Creating master customer data helped Schneider National not only salvage its CRM project but build a foundation for a master data management (MDM) program and other strategic objectives, its director of enterprise architecture told attendees at the Oracle OpenWorld event being held here this week.

Several years ago, as Green Bay, Wis.-based Schneider saw its business expand beyond just trucking and into a broad set of services, the shipping and logistics company found its customer data, and the location of that data, expanding just as rapidly.

We found ourselves looking at many repositories for customer information," Pravin Nair, director of enterprise architecture, said in a session at the conference. "There were 50-plus customer information repositories, and those were just the ones IT maintained. We lost count of how many the business was using on the side in Excel, etc."

Currently, Schneider manages more than 11,000 tractors, 15,500 drivers, 55,000 trailers and 22,300 associates in 28 countries. In 1990, the company was primarily focused on asset-based tracking, the "one-way van," but by 2006 it had expanded into brokerage, bulk and financial services, according to Nair. With it, revenues grew to four or five times what the company brought in 16 years before. Executives learned that the customer experience was suffering.

Full Article
SAN FRANCISCO -- Creating master customer data helped Schneider National not only salvage its CRM project but build a foundation for a master data management (MDM) program and other strategic objectives, its director of enterprise architecture told attendees at the Oracle OpenWorld event being held here this week.

Several years ago, as Green Bay, Wis.-based Schneider saw its business expand beyond just trucking and into a broad set of services, the shipping and logistics company found its customer data, and the location of that data, expanding just as rapidly.
For more on customer data, CDI
Get serious about data quality with our Data Quality Learning Guide

See why a true view of the customer requires data symbiosis

"We found ourselves looking at many repositories for customer information," Pravin Nair, director of enterprise architecture, said in a session at the conference. "There were 50-plus customer information repositories, and those were just the ones IT maintained. We lost count of how many the business was using on the side in Excel, etc."

Currently, Schneider manages more than 11,000 tractors, 15,500 drivers, 55,000 trailers and 22,300 associates in 28 countries. In 1990, the company was primarily focused on asset-based tracking, the "one-way van," but by 2006 it had expanded into brokerage, bulk and financial services, according to Nair. With it, revenues grew to four or five times what the company brought in 16 years before. Executives learned that the customer experience was suffering.

"We rely a lot on some pretty big customers who take advantage of the broad portfolio of services," Nair said. "It was becoming more apparent in terms of the customer experience that who they call and how we interact with them was being hampered by our information problems."

In late 2004, Schneider launched a customer master program and eventually elected to purchase the Universal Customer Master (UCM) from Siebel to get it started. This in itself was a departure for the company, which "has traditionally been a build-it-yourself organization," Nair said. "We like to think there's nothing else out there that can do it and serve our unique needs."

Eventually, however, someone suggested looking to off-the-shelf applications and, partly because it had already purchased Siebel for its CRM application, the company added the UCM as well. Schneider had embarked on the customer master project with the goal of enabling the CRM project but quickly realized that in addition to marketing, customer service and sales, the focus had to be on the customer master if it wanted to back its strategic goals for the next five to 10 years.

"We [learned] a lot … from how we did the customer master using UCM [about] how we want to transform all the data," Nair said. "It was really a launching point to our bigger goal."

In fact, the CRM project was put on hold in August 2005 when it ran into some resource constraints and some difficulties with change management, particularly in the call center, Nair said. Customer service staff struggled with capturing activities, issue resolution and changing processes that were based largely on legacy applications.

"We re-looked at that and said the objectives are still valid, but our growth trajectories could not be accomplished with the systems we had in place," Nair said. "We worked it out to make sure CRM would not be burdensome to the customer service flow."

Now, Schneider has been able to leverage the integration between CRM and the UCM. For example, if a customer service representative is entering a new customer into the CRM system, the system records that process without having to add a separate customer master data maintenance screen.

Schneider also has a data warehouse with Cognos running on the top of it and, in 2006, began piping Siebel analytics into it.

"One of our early forays into common enterprise services was, if you want to get rates, we encapsulate the validation into Trillium and connect that back to the Enterprise Service Bus and connect that to any process that's needed in UCM or CRM," Nair said. "Eventually, when we think about full self-service capabilities, that's something we will enable through Avaya back to Siebel."

Schneider's source data comes from a monolithic mainframe-based system that houses customer information such as billing and customer orders. The UCM also ties into a Lawson ERP system on the back end.

"We had created different stacks of systems for different lines of business, and now we have multiple stacks of capability," Nair said. "With order management or customer management, there's a lot of overlap of functions that need to be maintained. Our strategy going forward is to look at things like customer management and order management."

Key customer master lessons

Schneider learned that in order to ensure the success of its customer master project, it was vital to first identify the factors that were driving it and then design accordingly. The company held a series of information definition projects that identified the core processes and involved the line of business working with IT.

Business was also involved in building data quality into the processes and systems, and the company has a data steward program to keep business vigilant over data quality issues.

The change management issue also became a key learning experience when it delayed the CRM project. Schneider now has a change management center of excellence and methodology that follows the change management aspect of any process.

"Don't skimp on robust conversion testing," Nair also advised. "We did have a robust test environment. We wanted to make sure the impact on downstream legacy operations was minimal."

Finally, when coming up with a business case for the customer master, Schneider determined it didn't need one.

"The customer master product was deemed foundational to all major transformations," Nair said. "It does not have a standalone business case. We quickly came to a consensus and got buy-in from the executive team. Looking at the customer master was foundational to lots of strategic objectives. I think, personally, that was fortunate. If we had gone down the regular path of ensuring the rigor for this particular investment, we probably would have gotten mired down."

Outage

2007-11-13T11:41:00.000-08:00

.............................

Not a Slam Dunk, # 31

2007-11-13T11:35:00.001-08:00

Things that go wrong with webcasts.

From the Help Page for a leading webcast hosting service:

If you are experiencing problems viewing or listening to an event, please review the following minimum requirements and frequently asked questions.

Minimum Requirements

Hardware and Operating System Configurations

Media Players

Internet Browsers

Internet Connection

Cookies and JavaScript

Java Virtual Machine

Test Your System

Click here to test your system if it meets the minimum requirements

FAQs

The Audience URL in the confirmation email didn't work.

I am prompted to register again even if I already registered for the event

I keep receiving an error message stating that the form is missing information or I am entering an invalid e-mail address when I register.

Can I access the event from a different computer than the one I registered from?

I am asked for a password when I try to view the event

I can't get back to the registration page!

Pressing the "Launch Presentation" button doesn't do anything

I received a message that the event is not currently available.

I receive an "HTTP not found" error message.

The sound works continuously, but the video freezes.

The media player automatically stops or it continually stops and rebuffers

I can't hear anything (or the sound is very faint or choppy)

I can access the event, but I cannot view the slides or the slides are not flipping.

My computer crashes when I try to access the event

I can see the video but I can't hear anything (or the sound is very faint or choppy)

I can't see the test video.

I can see the test video but I can't see the event video.

The video is choppy

I cannot view the Desktop Presentation portion of the Event, and am getting a 'Java Not Found' Error

I cannot hear the audio in a Live Demo Webcast (that includes a Desktop Presentation)

IT Support: Change Management

2007-11-12T17:10:00.001-08:00

Iterating on IT Service
http://community.ca.com/blogs/itservice/archive/2007/07/02/winning-the-whack-a-mole-change-game.aspx

Simplify and unify technology, business, and service

Winning the Whack-A-Mole Change Game
In a previous blog entry, “Winning the Whack-A-Mole Support Game,” I compared IT support to a Whack-A-Mole arcade game, with issues popping up like moles from holes, two or more issues popping up for each one solved. I said that ITIL® was the best mallet to use for this game, and discussed Incident and Problem Management. Now, I’d like to continue the analogy with Change Management.

Ask support managers what causes more incidents than anything else and they’ll answer “change.” Ask support technicians what question solves more problems than any other and they’ll answer “what changed?”

There is a saying among system administrators, “Change is evil.”
It’s surprising, but many support teams dread solutions. Why? Because solutions are implemented with changes and changes cause more incidents. Whack one mole and two others pop up. One uncontrolled and poorly managed change leads to two more and the whacking never ends.

Many organizations begin their ITIL journeys with Incident Management and follow with Problem Management. But when I see sites struggling with an onslaught of incidents and problems brought about by changes, I’m not surprised that they’re jumping to Change Management as their second big ITIL project.

The risks involved in changes to the infrastructure are hard to avoid. IT systems are complex. Tightly-coupled and highly-distributed IT systems are efficient but they can propagate errors unpredictably because changes ripple erratically through the system. No wonder the troops on the IT frontline hate change. They know full well that when you bend an otherwise robust IT system, it may break.

But change in the infrastructure is desirable, if not inevitable.
Problems have to be solved and the system has to grow with new requirements and new technologies. An IT system that cannot evolve as rapidly as the business it serves is a drag on the enterprise.

Change Management has evolved to reduce the risks of change endemic to this complex environment. Change Management forces the examination of each change from many viewpoints to proactively identify risks. Not only does Change Management control what changes, it controls when a change takes place and who is informed of the change. By placing the changes under this 360-degree microscope, the unexpected and undesirable side effects of changes are curtailed.

Change Management is difficult to implement. Incident Management often can be implemented with the current support team learning some new practices, but still relying on the people and problem solving skills they developed before ITIL. But Change Management shakes up the whole IT department. Technicians and managers can be frustrated with new procedures that at first may seem to be extra work without any return. The commitment to Change Management has to be solid. The effort must be championed vigorously on a high level to overcome initial resistance.

Nevertheless, Change Management is mighty attractive as an ITIL practice.
Those organizations that see beyond the difficulties and zero in on the benefits of Change Management are making a decision that shows extraordinary foresight. For them, the payback is enormous. They are on their way to winning the Whack-A-Mole Change Game.

CMDB

2007-11-12T17:04:00.001-08:00

Iterating on IT Service

Simplify and unify technology, business, and service

Why CMDB?
At CA World last month, I participated in a round table with a group of CA partners - including Accenture, BearingPoint, and Cap Gemini-where we discussed significant problems in IT. We talked about how we, as software vendors and service providers, could help meet these problems by improving our products and services.

The discussion was open and ranged widely.
We talked about many technologies, and CMDB was at the forefront of our discussions. Of course, since I am deeply involved in CMDB product development, CMDB is always on my mind. But I still had to ask myself: Why CMDB now?

CMDBs are hot, but they're not new. In fact, we were implementing CMDBs for European ITIL-savvy clients a decade ago. Outside of ITIL, definitive databases of configuration items and their relationships have been in use for a long time. (See Why CMDBf Matters - IT's not a solution in search of a problem," Iterating on IT Service, April 20, 2007.) Visualization, reconciliation, synchronization, dependency discovery, and federation are all features of commercial CMDBs, but a CMDB still requires an IT department that understands and is committed to configuration management.

ITIL and CMDB
A CMDB is the foundation for many ITIL practices, to the point that a CMDB is almost a symbol of ITIL itself. But the popularity of ITIL does not explain the popularity of CMDBs. It merely raises the question: why has ITIL become so important?

There is no simple answer. Compliance is a factor. A decade ago, IT was relatively free of compliance issues, but the list of IT regulations today has become long and continues to grow: SOX, HIPAA, Graham-Leach-Bliley, Basel II and so on. SOX compliance, for example, is not a one-time investment. Controls must be reviewed and revised when the infrastructure changes, increasing costs throughout project lifecycles. Ad hoc processes increase the difficulty and expense.

Consequently, IT departments have been forced to systematize their processes by turning toward practice frameworks like ITIL. CMDBs are one of the components that can improve a wide range of ITIL processes-including change, incident, problem, availability and capacity management.

Risk is a factor.
In addition to regulatory pressures, risk has driven corporate boards and executive management to become more aware of the role of IT in the enterprise. When something like a Blackberry crash disrupts business, non-IT executives begin to think of technology risk assessment and abatement. CIOs and IT managers ask how their practices could minimize consequences. At these times, ITIL practice is seized upon as an antidote to IT risks.

But I suspect that sustained interest in best practices does not come from IT crashes.
ITIL and CMDB help blunt the effects of technology failures, but they are really aimed at the biggest technology failure of all: technology that fails to serve the business that funds it. ITIL will not suddenly align business goals and IT services, nor will an isolated ITIL CMDB implementation reverse decade-long configuration management habits.

Thankfully, IT is becoming more introspective and instead of trying to solve problems with more technology, the goal has become to apply technology more carefully.

Both IT departments and IT professionals are stepping up the maturity ladder. CMDBs have been around for a long time, but real news is that IT has matured to the point that it is ready for them. The buzz around CMDB is a symptom, not a cause, of this professional growth.

Five Tips for Great E-Service in the Financial Services Industry

2007-11-09T14:15:00.001-08:00

How to Increase the Responsiveness, Efficiency and Consistency of E-Service

August 2007

http://www.insidecrm.com/whitepaper/pdf/E-Service%20Financial%20Svc.pdf

Table of Contents

· Executive Summary

· Introduction

· A survey of e-service effectiveness in the FSI marketplace

· Five Tips for Successful E-Service

· Tip #1 – Model the issue resolution techniques of your best agents

· Tip #2 –Deliver a seamless escalation experience across all channels

· Tip #3 –“Right channel” your customers

· Tip #4 –Treat e-mail as the mainstream channel it has become and meet customer expectations with fast response

· Tip #5 –Make it easy to keep e-mail interactions private

· Practical Applications and Results

· TD Waterhouse – Intelligence increases agent productivity and customer satisfaction

· Bank Leumi – Unified knowledgebase for agents and customers delivers a higher standard of service at lower cost 8

· Conclusion

Executive Summary

In the financial services industry, e-service is not working when:

􀂃 95% of company websites cannot answer a simple question.

􀂃 67% cannot provide satisfactory answers via e-mail.

􀂃 Only 6% of websites let self-service customers escalate inquiries to e-mail or telephone channels.

􀂃 17% fail to respond to an e-mail inquiry at all.

These were the unfortunate results from a “mystery shopper” survey conducted by KANA and IBM to assess the effectiveness of e-service in more than 70 financial service institutions.

In this paper, we will look at how banks, insurance companies and investment firms can reverse this trend and implement e-service that delivers the level of timely, responsive and consistent service customers demand. Here, you will find five tips that will help your organization rethink its e-service strategy to offer customer-focused, yet highly efficient service that promotes greater customer satisfaction and operational productivity.

Introduction

Financial services institutions (FSIs) have been quick off the mark when it comes to leveraging e-service channels. From ATMs to online banking, FSIs have been ahead of the curve in deploying electronic channels to improve the customer experience. But, like companies in all industries, the quality and efficiency of e-service provided by FSIs have not always lived up to expectations. As the 2007 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking scorecard reports, customer satisfaction has dropped 15% since 2005.1

Jupiter Research believes e-service investments are even driving more costly phone contacts as customers pick up the phone after a bad e-service experience. Jupiter predicts that incremental off-line contacts due to failures in online service will grow annually by 18% through 2010. In 2006, failed e-mail inquiries were predicted to drive 71% of these incremental contacts, while failed self-service inquiries would drive 27%.

A survey of e-service effectiveness in the FSI marketplace

This year, KANA and IBM evaluated the effectiveness of e-service provided by more than 70 major FSIs in a variety of sectors including retail banking, insurance and investment. This “mystery shopper” survey asked a series of questions to measure the usability and response quality of each company’s Web self-service and escalation via

multiple channels.3 Questions were simple and relevant to the type of industry. For example, banks were asked about cancelled check charges and interest rates on checking accounts. Insurers were asked if claims could be made online. Investments firms were asked if they could trade on a foreign stock exchange.

The results indicate FSIs have significant room for improvement when it comes to eservice:

- 95% of websites surveyed could not answer a simple question.

- 67% did not provide satisfactory answers via e-mail.

- Only 6% offered the ability to escalate self-service inquiries to e-mail or telephone channels.

- 17% failed entirely to respond to an e-mail inquiry.

The KANA-IBM study ranked the overall quality of online service offered by each FSI according to

their proficiency scores for a number of contact channels and effectiveness of each channel. Only

4% scored in the top “Multi-channel Leaders” quadrant for having multiple and highly effective

channels available to their customers. 25% landed in the “Best Practice” quadrant for having only a

few channels but using those channels effectively. 15% fell into the “Lip Service” quadrant with

multiple, but ineffective channels. The majority of companies – 58% – fell into the lowest quadrant

for lack of both the necessary online access channels or for having a channel that was ineffective.

Five Tips for Successful E-Service

Obviously, implementing electronic channels is not enough to guarantee great customer service. So how can e-service work better for FSIs and their customers? Based on KANA’s experience with leading financial firms around the world, the following five tips will help you start delivering the level of service convenience and quality your customers and your company demand.

Tip #1 – Model the issue resolution techniques of your best agents

Driving intelligence into the process of answering questions is a key enabler of customer satisfaction and agent efficiency. Start by going beyond standard search techniques to offer guidance that helps agents and self-service customers through the process of finding an appropriate resolution. Provide multiple ways to look for answers

so that users can choose a method that matches their level of skill and mimics a oneon-one interaction with a highly knowledgeable agent. For example, in addition to standard and advanced search capabilities, offer step-by-step scripts and dynamically generated FAQs that help users efficiently express the intent of their questions and pinpoint the most relevant answers.

Don’t stop with the just answer. Increase the value of your service and reap higher retention and life-time value by offering advice along with the solution. When a credit card customer inquires about a car loan, guide the process of finding the most appropriate information about a loan. Then, use knowledge of the customer and products owned to suggest an equity line of credit that provides debt consolidation, a lower rate and tax deductions. This advice-driven response delivers the dual benefit of a better deal for the customer and an effective up-sell for the company. Finally, increase the consistency of answers with a unified solutions knowledgebase that can be shared by agents and customers alike across all channels, including selfservice, e-mail, live chat and phone. Online customers learn to trust the self-service experience when they can be certain that the answer will be the same on your website, from an agent on the phone or a teller at the branch.

Tip #2 –Deliver a seamless escalation experience across all channels

In the eyes of customers, self-service convenience is never a substitute for live interactions. It turns out that “I can talk to a person when I want to” is still the number one factor in creating a positive experience with self-service according to recent research by HarrisInteractive. Customers must always be able to reach you with simple paths to live communication built into your self-service strategy. Provide quick, easy ways for customers to escalate from a self-service session with one-click links to assisted service channels, such as e-mail and live chat. Ensure that no matter which channel the customer chooses for escalation, the experience is smooth and seamless. The key to delivering a seamless experience is to preserve the context of the customer’s self-service inquiry when transferring to an escalation channel. With the self-service session history maintained, agents know what solutions have been tried and rejected so that they do not ask the customer to repeat solutions that have already failed. The session history can be also be used to analyze the context of the incoming escalation to appropriately route the inquiry and automatically supply the agent with recommended solutions.

Tip #3 –“Right channel” your customers

Selectively match channels and service levels to customer profitability. For example, you may want to offer e-mail as the primary escalation channel for lower-value customers and reserve more costly interaction channels, such as live chat, for your long-term or high-value customers.

Take advantage of solutions that let you proactively engage with self-service customers to drive sales and forestall online abandonment. You can use business rules to automate the process of proactively extending chat invitations at particularly opportune moments, such as when a customer browses a high-value page or has spent an unusual amount of time completing an online account application, suggesting help may be needed. Let customers tell you how and when they want to hear from you. Offer them the opportunity to subscribe to proactive notifications about topics of specific interest, such as automatic e-mails or SMS alerts about unusual account activity or completed trades.

These outbound communications convey your company’s understanding and awareness of the customer’s needs, while at the same time presenting a valuable opportunity to deliver relevant cross-sell and up-sell offers within the context of asked for operational messages.

Tip #4 –Treat e-mail as the mainstream channel it has become and meet customer expectations with fast response

As the SSPA points out, in the 1990s, surveys showed customers expected an e-mail response within 24-48 hours. Now, surveys indicate a two-hour response window is best, with younger users growing impatient after the one-hour mark.4 Give your e-mail service as much attention as you do your phone service to ensure fast answers. Use automation to set expectations for response and shorten reply time such as:

· Auto-acknowledgements for immediate feedback that establishes the time frame for response.

· Intelligent queuing, business rules and language detection to route an inquiry to the most qualified agent.

· Message analysis and categorization to analyze the inquiry before it reaches the agent’s desktop and recommend the most appropriate answer.

· Back-end system integration to automatically fetch and insert relevant data, such as account information, into replies.

Tip #5 –Make it easy to keep e-mail interactions private

Satisfy governmental regulations and corporate requirements for protecting the privacy of electronic communications in a way that makes it simple and easy for customers to do business with you. Rather than imposing

Cumbersome encryption/decryption schemes on your customers and agents, ensure privacy through secure, personal Web portals. With this type of implementation, sensitive information is never included in an e-mail. Instead,

customers receive an e-mail reply that contains a link to the appropriate portal site.

Once customers log on, they can read the response securely and reply back as necessary through the portal.

Customers can also initiate secure exchanges through their private portals.

What to Look for in Secure E-mail Solutions

Look for solutions that:

· Do not require customers to install additional software or hardware.

· Automatically enforce corporate communication security policies and maintain corporate security standards.

· Automate the process of determining which e-mails should be treated confidentially using rules to scan incoming messages for sensitive content, such as the alphanumeric pattern of an account number.

· Prohibit e-mail messages from containing sensitive information so that you can continue current best practices for e-mail management, including analyzing content, applying routing rules and sending autoacknowledgments or replies.

· Are fully integrated into the agent desktop so that confidential messages can be created with just one click.

Practical Applications and Results

KANA customers have been applying these tips to their e-service operations for many years. The results speak for themselves: higher customer satisfaction, greater operational efficiency, widespread self-service adoption and increased up-sell/cross-sell rates. Let’s look at how these tips have benefited two FSIs and their customers.

TD Waterhouse – Intelligence increases agent productivity and customer satisfaction

Great Britain’s second largest discount broker, TD Waterhouse UK, regards customer service as the “make or break” factor in customer relations. To improve its service, the company identified the need to develop multi-skilled customer service teams that would effectively support any customer question about its large and growing product portfolio. TD Waterhouse built an intelligent environment for its service staff using KANA’s knowledge management solution, KANA Agent IQ. Agents have access to a variety of information retrieval methodologies and a single, unified solutions knowledgebase containing thousands of solutions. The ability to guide agents through the resolution process has meant that even the most inexperienced staff members can now help customers with complex trading, support and other inquiries.

As a result, TD Waterhouse UK has reduced hold times by more than 23% and escalations to the back office by 16%. The effects of these improvements are reflected in the company’s customer satisfaction rating as well, which has risen 12%. In addition, the company can now rapidly retrain representatives to provide support across multiple

lines of business, resulting in higher productivity, greater levels of cooperation between departments and a more attractive working environment for its customer service teams.

Bank Leumi – Unified knowledgebase for agents and customers delivers a higher standard of service at lower cost

Through its online banking, online trading and direct banking help desks, Israel’s Bank Leumi enjoys a reputation for quality service with service level agreements approaching 100% at its online banking support center. To better manage its growing portfolio of complex products and services and reduce the time needed to train agents, the bank implemented KANA Agent IQ in its call center. With the knowledgebase providing one-stop access to solutions and intelligent guidance to help agents resolve inquiries, Bank Leumi has been able to reduce training costs by 66%.

Bank Leumi has also implemented KANA Customer IQ for customer self-service. The bank regards the ability of the unified knowledgebase to ensure consistent answers across channels as crucial to the success of its banking strategy. The self-service implementation ensures 24x7 service, solving the problem of not being available to

assist customers due to the practice of not working on parts of Fridays and Saturdays.

The self-service implementation has produced real benefits as call deflections have been measured at 17%, and the bank has increased its customer base 15% to 20% without adding agents.

“The system enables us to deliver outstanding service to our Internet-based customers and to set a new standard in customer service via Internet channels.”

Itzhak Malach

Senior VP, Head of Operations

Bank Leumi.

Conclusion

The KANA-IBM mystery shopper survey shows that much work remains to be done

when it comes to delivering e-service successfully. Using the tips we have outlined

here, FSIs can deliver an e-service experience that is always timely, consistent and

customer-focused. As the TD Waterhouse UK and Bank Leumi experiences illustrate,

thoughtfully implemented e-service can lead to significant improvements in customer

satisfaction, while reducing pressure on other service resources to deliver the level of

service customers want.

For More Information

To learn more about how the KANA suite of intelligent multi-channel solutions can help

you create customers for life, call 1-800-737-8738.

About KANA

KANA is a world leader in multi-channel customer service. KANA's integrated solutions allow companies to deliver consistent, managed service across all channels, including email, chat, call centers and Web self-service, so customers have the freedom to choose the service they want, how and when they want it. KANA's clients report doubledigit increases in customer satisfaction, while reducing call volumes by an average of 20%. KANA's award-winning solutions are proven in more than 600 companies worldwide, including approximately half of the world's largest 100 companies. For more information visit www.kana.com.

KANA. Other company, product and service names may be service marks of their respective

181 Constitution Drive

Menlo Park, CA 94025

T 650.614.8300

F 650.614.8301

1 2007 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report for 400 contact centers in 43 countries.

2 “The State of Customer Service 2006: Trends in Consumers’ Attitudes and Behavior” Jupiter Research

3 KANA-IBM Online Customer Service Study: US Financial Service Sector, 2007

4 “10 Best Practices to Increase ERMS Success” John Ragsdale, SSPA, July, 2007.

Fidelity unveils systems for RIAs

2007-11-09T13:04:00.000-08:00

http://www.investmentnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070509/REG/70509007/0/FRONTPAGE%20%20&template=printart

By Darla Mercado
May 9, 2007

Fidelity Investments, in cooperation with Oracle Corp. and Emerging Information Systems Inc., has created two web-based customer relationship management and financial planning systems for registered investment advisers, the Boston-based firm announced today.

Through a customized version of Oracle’s Siebel CRM On Demand, Fidelity offers advisers with automatic data management.

The new software will be integrated with Advisor CHANNEL, Fidelity’s brokerage platform.

Client data within Advisor CHANNEL can now be imported into the CRM program, showing account valuations and contact information on one screen.

Fidelity’s NaviPlan financial planning software, coming from EISI’s NaviPlan Central program, also works with Advisor CHANNEL, allowing advisers access to Fidelity’s brokerage account demographic.

Advisers can also track the progress of clients’ financial plans, assess investors’ net worth and generate wealth planning models, customized with their firm’s logo.

Both systems are also hosted in an on-demand application service provider environment, which further streamlines workflow by making client data accessible anywhere at anytime, Fidelity said in a statement.

John Hancock Guide to Investments

2007-10-26T13:40:00.000-07:00

TYPE		DESCRIPTION		WHEN TO CONSIDER		PRODUCTS TO MEET YOUR NEEDS


ANNUITIES
FIXED ANNUITIES	- A fixed annuity is a financial product issued by an insurance company. It minimizes tax liability, while allowing tax-deferred growth of assets. - At retirement, a fixed annuity can provide a guaranteed income stream for one or more people, in specified amounts, for a specified period or for life.^1,2 - There are basically two types of fixed annuities: a fixed deferred annuity and an immediate fixed annuity. 1. Withdrawals of taxable amounts from annuities are subject to ordinary income tax and, if taken prior to age 59 ½, a 10% IRS tax penalty may apply. Withdrawal charges may also apply. 2. All guarantees (principal lifetime income and interest rates) are subject to the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company.	- You want a financial product with predictable growth and stable performance with no stock market volatility. - You want a secure retirement income that is not dependent upon circumstances beyond your control. - You know that Social Security alone might not provide the retirement income you'll need to maintain your standard of living or cover your monthly expenses.	Guaranteed Principal Annuity (GPA) Plus - Fixed Deferred Annuity John Hancock Managed Annuity - Fixed Immediate Annuity
VARIABLE ANNUITIES	- A variable annuity is a contract between you and an insurance company, under which the insurer agrees to make periodic payments to you, either immediately or at some future date. - A variable annuity combines features of an investment product, which can provide growth potential and inflation protection, and an insurance contract, which can give you access to certain income, death benefit and wealth protection guarantees.	- You want to take advantage of the three distinct benefits an annuity offers that other financial vehicles may not:: guaranteed death benefit, tax deferral, and guaranteed payments. - You want the option to receive guaranteed payments for life, even if you live beyond 100. - You are looking to fill the gap between what you'll need to live comfortably during retirement and what Social Security is likely to pay you.	Venture III Variable Annuity Venture Variable Annuity Venture Vantage Variable Annuity* * Venture Vantage is not available in New York.

COLLEGE SAVINGS/529	- A qualified tuition savings plan created by Section 529 of the IRS Code. - Can be used for education costs at any eligible college, university or graduate school in the U.S. - Tax-deferred earnings, contribution and investment options; no federal income tax on withdrawals.	- You get tax-deferred growth on earnings while you save and federal tax-free withdrawals for qualified education expenses in the future.¹ - You may also be able to make five years of gift contributions at once -- up to $55,000 per beneficiary without incurring a federal gift tax, or $110,000 per beneficiary if filing jointly.². - You, as the Account Holder, maintain control and can make the decisions about how to manage your account. 1. Tax provisions allowing for federal income tax-free withdrawals for qualified expenses will expire 12/31/10 unless extended. State laws will vary. If your state offers a plan you may want to consider what, if any, potential state income tax benefits it may offer 2. Donor must elect that the gift be treated as having accrued over a five-year period. If additional gifts are made to the same beneficiary during this five-year period, a federal gift tax may be levied. If donor dies within this five-year period, a pro rata share will be included in the donor's estate for estate tax purposes.	John Hancock Freedom 529

GROUP PENSIONS/401(K)	- An employer-sponsored, qualified retirement plan; employees can contribute through payroll deduction - Contributions are tax-sheltered until withdrawn at retirement¹ - Because there is a limit for annual contributions, the earlier you start, the greater the potential for reaching your retirement goals. 1. Withdrawals of taxable amounts will be subject to ordinary income tax and, if taken prior to age 59 1/2, a 10% IRS tax penalty may apply.	- You want a convenient way to save for retirement that offers potential for long-term investment growth. - You want an investment that lowers your immediate taxable income and is not taxed until you make withdrawals¹. - Your employer may offer to make matching contributions to your account under the plan.	Click here for more information on how our group pensions products offer a strong foundation for your qualified retirement plan needs.

MUTUAL FUNDS	- A professionally-managed investment offering diversity and liquidity. - Pools the money of many individuals in order to invest in hundreds of different securities at once. - Types: equity funds invest in stocks; income funds in bonds; money market funds in cash investments. - A professionally-managed investment offering diversity and liquidity.	- You want a liquid investment that can potentially produce a higher return than a CD or savings accounts can. - You want an investment that can reduce volatility - poor performance of one investment is typically offset by the better performance of the portfolio's other investments. - You want to invest in specific market sectors, such as technology, health care, or aerospace.	Equity Funds Sector Funds Income Funds Tax-free Income Funds Money Market Funds Closed-End Funds Institutional Funds Separate Accounts Retirement Plans

STRUCTURED SETTLEMENTS	- An annuity provides injury victims or the victim's family with a steady stream of income over time. - It is awarded to an injury victim or the victim's family through a pre-trial settlement or court order instead of a lump sum payment. - A similar product for personal injury lawyers provides regular income over time versus a lump sum fee.	- You want settlement payments that are 100% exempt from federal and state income taxes. - You want guaranteed long-term income without having to figure out an investment strategy - You want to customize payment frequency or amount to meet your changing financial needs	John Hancock Structured Settlement Annuity John Hancock Attorney Fee Annuity

SIGNATURENOTES	- SignatureNotes are fixed-rate investments with maturities ranging from one to 30 years. - Typically, the longer the maturity, the higher the interest rate	- You want a fixed-income portfolio offering regular interest payouts and capital preservation. - You are looking for an investment option that has a minimum requirement of just $1000. - You want flexibility, including a wide variety of maturity dates, structures, and payout schedules. This is not a solicitation of offers to purchase or an offer to sell any securities. An offer to purchase SignatureNotes can only be made by means of a prospectus. You may obtain a copy of an applicable prospectus by visiting www.SignatureNotes.com.	John Hancock SignatureNotes

John Hancock Guide to Life

2007-10-26T13:39:00.001-07:00

TYPE		DESCRIPTION		WHEN TO CONSIDER		PRODUCTS TO MEET YOUR NEEDS


TERM LIFE	- Purchased for a specific length of time, or term - generally one to 20 years. - The amount of the pay-off or face value varies depending upon your needs. - Upon the policy owner's death, the face value is paid to the beneficiary(ies).	- You want to ensure that your family can meet major needs if something happens to you. - You are just starting out in life and need to keep expense low. - You want a policy that offers a relatively high face value for a relatively low premium.	Hancock YRT1 Signature Term Life Term Series Survivorship Term

UNIVERSAL LIFE	- Permanent insurance which has the potential to accumulate cash value. - Increase or decrease policy's face amount to meet your changing protection needs - Increase or decrease the dollar amount of your premium payments and make additional lump sum payments to your policy.	- You want to ensure that your family can meet major needs if something happens to you. - You want the option to borrow against your policy's cash value to meet pressing needs. - You want the potential to earn a higher rate of return than a whole life account, even though there's a risk that your rate of return could drop	Protection Universal Life UL-G Performance Universal Life Performance Survivorship Universal Life Survivorship UL-G

VARIABLE LIFE	- Variable life is permanent insurance, which allows you to invest a portion of your premium in stocks, bonds, or money market funds in order to build your policy's cash value - Involves an element of risk because investment performance is not guaranteed	- You want to ensure that your family can meet major needs if something happens to you. - You want the option to add to your account value by paying an amount above your regular premium. - You want the potential to earn a higher rate of return on your account investments, even though your rate of return could also drop.	Medallion Variable Life Edge II Medallion Variable Life Plus VUL Protector SPVL Survivorship VUL Performance SVUL Variable Estate Protection Plus

WHOLE LIFE	- It's permanent life insurance that you own for your entire lifetime. - Premiums, or payments, are fixed and can be paid monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually. - Because your premiums are invested by your insurance company, your policy accrues a cash value, which grows untaxed.	- You want to ensure that your family can meet major needs if something happens to you. - You want to have a policy that you own for your entire lifetime and accrues cash value, which you can borrow against for any purpose.	Mod Plus Whole Life Insurance Premiere Whole Life (PWL 95) Level Premium 100 Survivorship Whole Life (TMS 97) Level Premium Estate Protection Modified Premium Estate Protection

LONG TERM CARE	- A long term care (LTC) insurance policy helps cover the cost of long term care, picking up where health and disability insurance leave off - LTC refers to help with daily activities -- such as eating, bathing or dressing -- over an extended period of time. - It can also include help for those suffering from a severe cognitive impairment such as Alzheimer's disease.	- Because: (1) at some point in your life there is a strong probability that you may need LTC (2) LTC is very expensive. - If you want access to the highest quality of care and don't want to trade the wealth you've accumulated over a lifetime to pay for your care, LTC insurance can help achieve those goals - Remember, too, that the need for LTC can happen to anyone, even in the prime of life. And the cost of purchasing LTC insurance is substantially reduced when you purchase it while you're young.	Click here to find out more about Long Term Care Insurance products

2007-10-26T13:10:00.001-07:00

Union Bank navigates employee self service

By Lauren K. Hoyt, Associate Editor
29 Mar 2007 | SearchCRM.com

For Don Goodhue, information technology officer at the Union Bank of Vermont, deploying an employee self-service system for IT support was not a question of if, but when.

"We were a small shop using just email and the phone [to document IT issues]," Goodhue said. "We had no way to distinguish between support emails and calls and regular email and calls. It got to the point where we had two people constantly handling [emails and calls], so we decided we needed some sort of system."

Part of the reason the bank couldn't wait was pressure from its auditors to more accurately document everything that goes on in the bank, including IT issues.

Union Bank, a community bank with headquarters in Morrisville, Vt., has 14 branches in Vermont and New Hampshire. It has close to 190 employees and holds more than $390 million in assets. It is especially important that the bank, as a financial institution, keep up with compliance regulations, Goodhue said. In spring 2004, Union Bank implemented Alloy Navigator from Nutley, N.J.-based Alloy Software Inc. in order to get control over its internal IT processes.

More on employee self service

Read how DaimlerChrysler
car technicians answer their own questions via a self-service system.

Test your self-service savvy with an employee self service quiz.

"We have to have everything documented, which can be overwhelming," Goodhue said. "[Alloy Navigator] is an excellent repository and we keep track of everything IT-related."

"The first thing I liked about Navigator was the Web portal," he said, adding that he wanted employees to be accountable for logging their own tickets instead of losing time having people delegated for that task.

The quick deployment was also part of the incentive to go with the Navigator product, Goodhue said.

"I didn't want to use something that I had to load onto every PC," he said. "Since it was a Web portal, we could just load it onto a few PCs in IT and we were up and running." The other employees simply added the link to the list of favorites in the Web browser.

Today, Union Bank uses the system to help employees who are having trouble with their computers or internal applications. Using the Web portal, employees can log tickets to be handled by help desk agents. The bank paid around $4,500 for the application, which includes access for up to five administrative users. There are now 140 end users running the application through the Web.

As with any change to internal systems, there was reluctance from end users at first, Goodhue said.

"That faded fast because the Web portal is just as easy as sending an email, and they started to see the value of that," he said. Employees also like to be able to log in and see the status of the tickets they have submitted.

The bank is also building a knowledge base so help desk agents can access information about frequently recurring problems. Using a knowledge-management system makes it easy for agents to search within all tickets to find the issue and the answers they are looking for, Goodhue said.

Customizing the system was pretty simple, he said, but it wasn't extensive. He said that he changed the "look and feel." Upgrades have also been a breeze, he reported -- Union Bank is now running the latest version of Navigator, 5.2.

"I log on to the Alloy Web site and download the patch on the server," Goodhue said, "and the next time the agents are scheduled to work, the [updated] system is up and running."

Another key feature in Navigator is the asset-tracking capability, Goodhue said. He uses this feature to scan all 198 PCs on the system and easily pull reports to keep track of all applications in use at the organization.

There have also been benefits Goodhue didn't expect. For instance, bank personnel realized that they could use the Navigator system for facilities management across all properties. Now, when one branch has an issue with plumbing, it can submit a ticket to notify all employees of the problem.

Goodhue also sees potential for expanding the use of the Navigator product to allow online customer service options for bank customers. While Union Bank has some online banking capabilities, he'd like to enable functionality for customers to log help desk tickets if they have problems with any of the bank's products.

"The good news is that it's something we can grow into," Goodhue said. "I don't see us growing out of it any time soon."

2007-10-26T13:09:00.003-07:00

Banks trading fees for loyalty

By John Gaffney
24 Aug 2006 | Peppers & Rogers Group, special to SearchCRM.com

The latest marketing campaigns from TD Waterhouse and WashingtonMutual have nothing to do with loyalty rewards, interest rates, or new branch locations. In fact, they have everything to do with something they are not doing: charging ATM withdrawal fees.

Giving up on fees of any kind is not easy for the banking industry. According to a 2004 report from the Federal Reserve, income from non-interest revenue streams now provides nearly half of all operating income generated by U.S. commercial banks. Non-interest revenues basically are fees. They come from checking accounts, ATMs, savings accounts, and credit card accounts. Fee income has more than doubled as a share of commercial bank operating income since the early 1980s.

The banking industry is not alone with its reliance on customer service fees. Tacking on fees for transactions and services has long been a profitable province for many businesses. Travel companies are among the worst offenders with fees for everything from rental car fuel surcharges to rescheduling fees for airlines. But banks are starting to understand the effect fees have on customers. They are starting to adjust their fees based on customer value. They're even getting rid of some fees in the interest of customer retention.

ATM fees are the focus of most customer wrath. Go to StopATMfees.com for evidence. But fees for checking, overdrafts, credit cards, loan origination, mortgage closings, and more are under scrutiny. Those fees may be affecting how customers perceive their banks, and that perception is not good. A recent Forrester Research study on customer advocacy found that the biggest retail banks have subpar customer advocacy ratings. When the research firm asked more than 60,000 customers if they believed "their bank acted with their best interest in mind," Citibank and JP Morgan Chase received positive responses from less than 20 % of their customers. The highest rated retail bank was Wachovia at 40%. In a separate study, Forrester found that 65% of all customers who had been hit for an overdraft fee at any point during their tenure with their bank had a negative view of their bank.

For more on customer loyalty

See why Wachovia is focused on customer equity

Check out our Learning Guide for Marketing Effectiveness

E-Loan, winner of the "most trusted financial services firm" in the most recent TRUSTe survey, guarantees customers that all fees will be disclosed upfront and will not change at any time during the loan process. Vanguard uses a sliding scale for fees it charges for everything from investment advice to brokerage commissions. The fees depend on the total amount of assets and the length of time the customer has been a Vanguard investor. CMO Sean Hagerty said he has had "absolutely no negative feedback" about that structure from those who benefit from lower fees, as well as from the customers who have to pay higher fees.

"Lower fees are part of the economies of scale for us," he said. "If you're a customer who has long-term investments with us, we're not going to charge a lot of fees."

The "most valuable customer" practice is actually finding its way into many banks. One way to avoid ATM fees, or any fees for that matter, at Citibank, First Fed, ING, or HSBC is to open a money market account with them. Money market customers have all fees waived at these banks. In fact at ING, if you tell a friend about that feature, it will reward you $10.

"Banks will eventually have to stop charging so many fees," said Gregg Freishtat, CEO of financial service e-commerce provider Proficient. "Right now they charge so many fees because it's just entirely too easy for them to do it, and they make too much money from it."

2007-10-26T13:09:00.001-07:00

Customer equity, not customer satisfaction the focus at Wachovia

By Barney Beal, News Editor
08 Jun 2006 | SearchCRM.com

It's hardly news that customer satisfaction and customer loyalty are imperatives in the banking business.

The Charlotte, N.C.-based Wachovia Corp. has taken those concepts a bit further, however. The company already scores at the top of the annual Customer Satisfaction Index compiled by the University of Michigan, but it is now embarking on a new initiative to define and promote customer equity.

"Consulting companies are saying you should be interested in customer lifetime value, and they'll give you an average value for those customers," said Dan Thorpe, senior vice president, and statistics and modeling director of Wachovia's Customer Analysis Research and Targeting (CART) Group. "We are calculating individual estimates for each of our households. We really think households drive customer value."

That's no small task. Wachovia has more than 13 million customers and breaking them down into households requires understanding the relationships within a household, which may include more than just checking accounts and mortgages for a husband and wife, but a brother or sister and a business as well.

Thorpe's CART team plans to have the estimates for household customer equity complete by the end of the year, when the company can begin applying it to customer contact campaigns.

For more on promoting customer loyalty and customer equity

Learn about Peppers & Rogers Return on Customer calculation

Follow these seven steps to retaining customers

"Rather than just the responses to a campaign or products a customer uses, we want to look at what it does for customer lifetime value," Thorpe said.

For example, a household may have a checking account and a credit card with Wachovia and may be a candidate for a home equity loan. But before making that loan offer and looking at just the value of the one loan, Wachovia will be able to see how that affects all the products the customer might be eligible for now and in the future. Also, the data will be used to optimize customer contacts, not just blasting out messages but showing whom to contact when, and what is the best value. Further down the line, Thorpe hopes to use the models to test advertising and sponsorship programs.

Thorpe has a 10-person statistics and modeling team working on the customer equity calculations. The team works within the CART Group, which acts in collaboration with Wachovia's marketing unit.

The calculations are done with sophisticated data mining, survival analysis, and multistage modeling with technology from the Cary, N.C.-based SAS Institute Inc., Wachovia's longtime technology vendor.

"SAS is the only language out there," Thorpe said. He maintains a strong relationship that he formed with the company's research and development team when he was with W.L. Gore and Associates, the makers of GORE-TEX, two years before coming to Wachovia. Wachovia uses SAS to provide customer analysis for each unique channel and banking group, including wholesale banking, Wachovia Direct, and the e-commerce division. "Banking data tends to have 30 deviations for spread. A lot of your simple statistics are not accurate. Having SAS's strength allows us to put the correct summary in place."

Back in 1999, Wachovia began placing an emphasis on customer satisfaction, and the focus on customer equity has evolved from that. In fact, customer loyalty is one of the company's top seven priorities over the next five years, according to a spokesperson. It's long been a priority at Wachovia, and CEO Ken Thompson continues to push for it.

"We recognize you just can't relax on this; that's why loyalty is the next step on satisfaction, and lifetime equity is the next step in profitability," Thorpe said. "When we do presentations to senior executives, I always include lifetime customer value equity calculations as I would with customer acquisition. We definitely understand and want to take a long-term view."

2007-10-26T13:08:00.001-07:00

Offshore outsourcing: A look at the security risks

from SearchCIO: IT news and analysis for CIOs by Philip Alexander

Offshore outsourcing can save money. Are the savings worth the security risks? Columnist Philip Alexander addresses security and data concerns CIOs should be aware of when sending work offshore.

2007-10-26T13:07:00.001-07:00

OFFSHORE IT OUTSOURCING STRATEGIES FOR CIOS

SearchCIO.com | 10.18.2007

RSS FEEDS:	IT news and analysis for CIOs

Offshore IT outsourcing is no longer just about saving money. The focus is now on value and risk assessment. Consulting this Executive Guide can help you decide if it's better to send your call center to India or Indiana.

This guide is part of the SearchCIO.com Executive Guide series, which is designed to give IT leaders strategic guidance and advice that addresses the management and decision-making aspects of timely topics. For a complete list of topics covered to date, visit the Executive Guide section.

IT outsourcing with purpose
Smart IT outsourcing advice in a declining market
Offshore outsourcing: A look at the security risks
Outsourcing's true value still goes largely untapped
Offshoring: Improved processes now more of a draw than cost savings
More resources

IT outsourcing with purpose

Table of Contents

[Info-Tech Research Group Inc., special to SearchCIO.com]

Outsourcing is being done in roughly two-thirds of organizations for three key reasons: IT cost savings, IT efficiency and business value, and to level the playing field for small organizations. Outsourcing has the potential to deliver ongoing budget savings in addition to business benefits, depending on the function outsourced. This report presents how your organization can take advantage of outsourcing to achieve your top IT priorities.

Learn more in "IT outsourcing with purpose." Also:

Midsized outsourcer perfect fit for midmarket firm (SearchCIO.com)
At Church's Chicken, outsourcing IT operations to IBM seemed like a recipe for success. But a smaller, Indian-based firm proved a better value and a better fit than Big Blue.
Outsourcing to India: Smaller firms good bet (SearchCIO.com)
As the top-tier Indian outsourcing companies continue their march to maturity, smaller clients should consider -- with all due care -- midtier providers, Forrester Research says.

Smart IT outsourcing advice in a declining market

Table of Contents

[Matt Bolch, Contributor]

The prevalence of IT outsourcing megadeals valued at $1 billion or more dropped 67% in the first quarter of this year, according to Gartner Inc.

But that doesn't mean IT outsourcing is showing any signs of slowing down, said Kurt Potter, research director at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner. In fact, company research has found that end-user spending for IT outsourcing will grow at a 7.5% annual rate globally, to $318 billion in 2011.

"There are only so many megadeals out there, and 80% to 85% of the largest companies have significant outsourcing deals. We're going to see more deals in the $350 million to $500 million range. Future megadeals will come from government," Potter said, citing last year's announcement that the German military had awarded a 10-year, $9.3 billion deal to Siemens AG and IBM to modernize and run much of its communications network.

Find out more in "Smart IT outsourcing advice in a declining market." Also:

Report: Offshoring 'stars' in financial services ramp up, clean up (SearchCIO.com)
The Deloitte & Touche 2007 offshoring report finds a gulf between the "best and the rest." Size of operations matters. So does quality.
PwC study: Majority of top executives bullish on outsourcing (SearchCIO.com)
Outsourcing, warts and all, is an "essential business practice" for CEOs, according to a study from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Offshore outsourcing: A look at the security risks

Table of Contents

[Philip Alexander, Contributor]

Offshore outsourcing can often help companies realize substantial cost savings by sending certain functions overseas, where labor costs are a fraction of those here in the United States. However, there is more to consider than just the lower labor costs of employees in India verses their domestic counterparts. In this day and age of heightened security sensitivity, it's important to make sure that in addition to going after cheap labor, you're not buying yourself a slew of security exposures as well.

The decision on whether or not to outsource should not rest solely with the CFO. The chief security and compliance officers should also be involved because of the many security- and regulatory-related issues involved with offshore outsourcing.

Learn more in "Offshore outsourcing: A look at the security risks." Also:

The Big Hand-Off (CIO Decisions magazine)
Midmarket companies are outsourcing data backup to take advantage of fast and efficient services. Just don't forget to upsize your network in kind.
Disaster recovery outsourcing: Simple and cheap (SearchSMB.com)
Outsourcing your disaster recovery efforts can be a wise technology strategy for resource-strapped SMBs. Assess your needs and determine if outsourcing DR makes sense for you.

Outsourcing's true value still goes largely untapped

Table of Contents

[Linda Tucci, Senior News Writer]

Companies that outsource IT functions save between 12% and 17% of the cost of doing the work in-house, a new report from Forrester Research Inc. finds.

The savings take into account the expense of moving the work to an outside provider, advisor and legal fees, severance for any employees let go, taxes and ongoing management of the deal. Moreover, the discount is conservative, said Forrester analyst Paul Roehrig, because it does not factor in harder-to-quantify benefits that can be accrued in a good outsourcing deal.

"There's additional skills that you would get, technology expertise, predictable delivery costs, none of which is included in these savings figures," said Roehrig, who covers sourcing and vendor management at the Cambridge, Mass.-based firm.

Find out more in "Outsourcing's true value still goes largely untapped." Also:

Gartner: U.S. IT industry needs to wake up and smell the competition (SearchCIO.com)
Gartner plays provocateur in the opening keynote at ITxpo, challenging U.S. IT pros to "take the first-mover advantage," or risk being eliminated.
CIOs face global competition, more cost pressures in 2007 (SearchCIO.com)
Innovation, global competition and staff retention are among the priorities CIOs should focus on in 2007, according to columnist James Champy.

Offshoring: Improved processes now more of a draw

Table of Contents

[Shamus McGillicuddy, News Writer]

NEW YORK -- Offshoring doesn't bring CIOs the cost savings it once did. But that's OK because maturing offshore partners are offering them new capabilities that are just as valuable.

"I think over time, the [offshoring] industry, certainly in India, has matured considerably. And what you find is a little less cost savings than you had in the '90s, but vastly improved processes," Michael Baresich, CIO of CIT Group Inc., told attendees at Argyle Executive Forum's CTO Leadership Forum, held recently in New York.

In a conversation entitled "Offshoring 2.0: Assessing the landscape of the flat world" with The Wall Street Journal staff writer Christopher Rhoads, Baresich said the opportunity for wage arbitrage is still available to CIOs in the developing world, but salary growth in those countries is leading to more modest cost savings than 10 years ago. Whereas once companies could achieve a 5-to-1 savings in labor costs by offshoring, now the savings are just 2-to-1 or 3-to-1.

Learn more in "Offshoring: Improved processes now more of a draw than cost savings." Also:

Benefits of outsourcing go beyond pricing (SearchCIO.com)
Companies are looking beyond cost when evaluating the many benefits of outsourcing. As the market becomes more competitive, business value and governance become the top drivers.
Business process outsourcing can be key for survival, say CIOs (SearchCIO.com)
Technology executives who have outsourced key business processes say the strategy can keep a company alive.

More resources

Table of Contents

Resource center: IT sourcing and services (SearchCIO.com)
Offshore Outsourcing Risk Evaluator

CIO RELATED LINKS
Ads by Google

Report For IT Consultants
Learn How IT Consultants Can Profit From Clients' Innovation Needs.
SAP.com/USA

A/P Outsourcing
Cut Costs 25% to 50% Annually, Gain SAS70 Controls & Best Practices
www.IQBackOffice.com

Outsourcing Solutions
Let Us Help With Your Payroll Needs Free Access to HR Complaince System
www.ceridian.com/payroll2008

Offshore IT in China
Freeborders and Fortune 500 firm create historic China IT deal
www.freeborders.com

Outsourcing India
Offshore Software Application Development in US & India
www.trigent.com

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	Smart IT outsourcing advice in a declining market
	Offshore outsourcing: A look at the security risks
	Parting Shot
	Outsourcing's true value still goes largely untapped
	Midsized outsourcer perfect fit for midmarket firm
	The Big Hand-Off
	IT outsourcing with purpose
	Outsourcing to India: Smaller firms good bet
	Report: Offshoring 'stars' in financial services ramp up, clean up
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business technology management (SearchCIO.com)

globalization (SearchCIO.com)

offshore outsourcing (SearchCIO.com)

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2007-10-26T11:51:00.004-07:00

John Hancock Annuities Wins Two 'Best In Show' Awards From Insurance & Financial Communicators Association

    BOSTON, Oct. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- John Hancock Annuities won
two "Best in Show" awards from the Insurance & Financial Communicators
Association (IFCA), presented at IFCA's Annual Meeting in Dallas, Texas,
earlier this month. IFCA gave the top awards to John Hancock Annuities'
advisor web site and to the John Hancock Venture Variable Annuity Sales
Kit.
John Hancock Annuities also won "Awards of Excellence" for its public
web site, and for the "It's About Time" marketing campaign highlighting the
web site. In addition, IFCA awarded Honorable Mentions to John Hancock
Annuities for the "Play Ball" campaign designed for Morgan Stanley
advisors, and for support materials prepared for Raymond James' national
sales meeting.
The IFCA awards mark the second time this year that John Hancock's
variable annuity literature and online marketing programs were recognized
for excellence. Both were previously recognized by the Insurance Marketing
Communications Association (IMCA).
"We join IFCA in congratulating our marketing team for producing such
excellent materials, and recognize them for their hard work and
dedication," said Marc Costantini, President, John Hancock Annuities.
"These awards reflect John Hancock's ongoing efforts to produce clear and
concise marketing tools and literature, making our products and their
benefits easier to understand and more accessible."
Tom Mullen, Vice President of marketing for John Hancock Annuities,
said: "Recognizing that consumers purchase our annuities from financial
advisors, we focus on delivering tools that can help advisors evaluate and
demonstrate how variable annuities may work effectively within the overall
context of the retirement strategies they craft for their clients. It is
very rewarding to know that industry peer groups such as IFCA recognize our
efforts."
About IFCA
The Insurance & Financial Communicators Association is an international
organization dedicated to the ongoing professional development of its
members in life insurance and related financial services communications.
For more information, please visit http://www.ifcaonline.com.
About John Hancock Financial and Manulife Financial
John Hancock Financial is a unit of Manulife Financial Corporation (the
Company), a leading Canadian-based financial services group serving
millions of customers in 19 countries and territories worldwide. Operating
as Manulife Financial in Canada and in most of Asia, and primarily as John
Hancock Financial in the United States, the Company offers clients a
diverse range of financial protection products and wealth management
services through its extensive network of employees, agents and
distribution partners. Funds under management by Manulife Financial and its
subsidiaries were Cdn$410 billion (US$386 billion) as at June 30, 2007.
Manulife Financial Corporation trades as 'MFC' on the TSX, NYSE and
PSE, and under '0945' on the SEHK. Manulife Financial can be found on the
Internet at http://www.manulife.com.
The John Hancock Financial unit, through its insurance companies,
comprises one of the largest life insurers in the United States. John
Hancock Financial offers a broad range of financial products and services,
including life insurance, fixed and variable annuities, mutual funds,
401(k) plans, long term care insurance, college savings, and other forms of
business insurance.
John Hancock Financial's primary insurance subsidiaries carry the
highest -- "AAA" -- financial strength rating from Standard & Poor's
Ratings Services.
Contact your financial consultant or visit http://www.jhannuities.com for more
information, including product and fund prospectuses that contain complete
details on investment objectives, risks, fees, charges, and expenses as
well as other information about the investment company, which should be
carefully considered. Please read the prospectuses carefully prior to
investing. The prospectuses contain this and other information on the
product and the underlying portfolios.
This information was prepared to support the promotion and marketing of
Venture Annuities. Neither John Hancock Life Insurance Company (U.S.A.),
John Hancock Life Insurance Company of New York, John Hancock Distributors
LLC, nor any of their representatives provide tax, accounting, or legal
advice. Any tax statements contained herein were not intended or written to
be used, and cannot be used, for the purpose of avoiding U.S. federal,
state, or local tax penalties. Please consult your own independent advisor
as to any tax, accounting, or legal statements made herein.
Venture Annuities and the optional riders are not available in all
states; product features may vary, subject to state regulation. Variable
annuities are not FDIC insured, are long-term contracts designed for
retirement purposes, and are subject to investment risk, including the
possible loss of principal.
Venture Annuities are issued and administered by John Hancock Life
Insurance Company (U.S.A.), a Bloomfield Hills, MI, company with its
annuity service office in Boston, MA. Venture Combination Fixed and
Variable Annuities are distributed by John Hancock Distributors LLC, member
FINRA.
-- Not FDIC Insured
-- Not Bank Guaranteed
-- May Lose Value
-- Not a Deposit
-- Not Insured by Any Government Agency

SFG Research

Fin Planner discussion board about D/I

Book reviews: Everything is Miscellaneous

Corp Strategy: Making most of hidden assets

IRA assets in 2006 exploded to $4.23T up from $3.63T in 2005 = mostly from rolloever from Retirement Plans

User Experience

M&As Drive Innovation: First Notice Systems and SurePlan deals broaden Innovation Group’s offerings and expand its BPO footprint in North America.

IBM study: Customer Service, Multi-Channel Distribution Could Help Insurers Mantain High Levels of Customer Loyalty

Google Search Appliance 5.0, Enterprise Labs Launched

Dell to sell Google appliances

PC maker to offer Google Search Appliance and Google MiniClement James, vnunet.com 28 Nov 2007$30K box for enterprises, $2K for small biz.User-interface customizable.

How to Conduct an Audience Survey

Google + SurveyGizmo, Part 2: Integration

Introduction to Google Integration Code

Google + SurveyGizmo, Part 1: Adwords

http://www.surveygizmo.com/online-survey-google-adwords/

Step 1 - Create your Offer Landing Page

Step 2 - Linking Google to your Landing Page

ITIL? No. MOF, yes.

CRM at center of Customer Data Integration ("Master Data Management")

Outage

Not a Slam Dunk, # 31

IT Support: Change Management

CMDB

Five Tips for Great E-Service in the Financial Services Industry

How to Increase the Responsiveness, Efficiency and Consistency of E-Service

A survey of e-service effectiveness in the FSI marketplace

Tip #1 – Model the issue resolution techniques of your best agents

Tip #2 –Deliver a seamless escalation experience across all channels

Tip #3 –“Right channel” your customers

Tip #4 –Treat e-mail as the mainstream channel it has become and meet customer expectations with fast response

Tip #5 –Make it easy to keep e-mail interactions private

Fidelity unveils systems for RIAs

John Hancock Guide to Investments

John Hancock Guide to Life

Union Bank navigates employee self service

Banks trading fees for loyalty

Customer equity, not customer satisfaction the focus at Wachovia

Offshore outsourcing: A look at the security risks

OFFSHORE IT OUTSOURCING STRATEGIES FOR CIOS

Table of contents

John Hancock Annuities Wins Two 'Best In Show' Awards From Insurance & Financial Communicators Association

PC maker to offer Google Search Appliance and Google Mini
Clement James, vnunet.com 28 Nov 2007
$30K box for enterprises, $2K for small biz.
User-interface customizable.