What’s Behind Door No. 1?

Remember "Let's Make a Deal," the 1960s and '70s TV show that let ridiculously dressed people compete for prizes by trying to guess which box, door or curtain might hide a car, boat or fur coat - or just as likely, a giant can of baked beans or the show's announcer in a baby outfit? It always was fun to watch people agonize over their decisions, celebrate over winning guesses and sigh in mortification when they made the wrong choice. Until recently, insurers didn't always have it much easier when making business decisions.

Luckily for the insurance industry, when it comes to making financial and strategy decisions, companies have come a long way since the Monty Hall era. The decision-making process has become increasingly scientific.

Thanks to technology innovation, there is an array of sophisticated tools available to insurers (and their customers) - including analytics, modeling, data warehouses, dashboards, portals, mapping systems and networked storage - that can help them make intelligent decisions about anything from claims adjusting and underwriting to new product development and acquisitions. Now, the challenge is how to manage the volume of data and decision-making resources intelligently across the enterprise without getting bogged down in data overload.

This issue of I&T's Connected Enterprise explores the challenges of achieving an integrated information management environment - how to capture the right data and turn it into actionable information, without creating a new set of silos and disparate resources.

Visit www.insurancetech.com/ConnectedEnterprise to learn more about the options and best practices. Additionally, a live webcast on Dec. 7, produced by I&T and SAP, will provide insights into how insurers can achieve a more integrated and effective approach to decision making.