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Many of you will be familiar with the etiquette of passing port clockwise around a dinner table, where each guest is served in turn. No one particularly wants to be the guest seated at the furthest end of the table, patiently waiting on everyone in front of them.
Likewise, Generali Worldwide (GW) employees involved in the quotation cycle are familiar with working in much the same way when it comes to accessing data required to create a quotation. It has been common practice for progress to be stifled as each department waits in turn to complete their necessary part of the quotation. For the staff working in departments at the furthest end of the production line, waiting for this data can be hugely frustrating.
Given that GW’s ultimate driving force is to deliver the best client service possible, processing quotation data in a slow, labour-intensive chain, where only one department at a time can access the data, entirely counteracts this common goal. Until now, the Pricing Underwriters have been dependent on Excel spreadsheets for determining prices for new business; but reliance on Excel is open to error and can create discrepancies between the core system and the spreadsheet. In addition, communication concerning quotations is heavily dependent on email exchanges but, as there is not a common email server shared by all of the GW departments (in three different countries), each department is limited by what data they are able to view. Consequently, benefits of all the GW departments involved in the underwriting pricing process being able to share data in a transparent and accessible way, in order to meet the on-going demand for improved client service, become clear.
The answer to the problem of how to share data efficiently lies with our port-drinking dinner party guests. Should said guests wish to share a box of cigars, placing a communal ashtray in the centre of the table makes it possible for everyone to enjoy their cigars simultaneously; no-one needs to wait on anyone else as each guest has their own cigar and independent access to the shared ashtray. Although giving a cigar and glass of port to the waiting GW staff could temporarily ease frustrations, it was clear that a stable, long-term solution was required.
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