Digital Strategy

As companies struggle to keep up with the changing landscape of business processing, data access, and communications, it has become increasingly important to have a discreet and easily understood digital strategy. CIV recognizes that:

Technology is integral to our daily working lives
Technology change is inevitable
Understanding how to implement technology is the difference between success and failure

CIV has helped clients navigate this landscape, through the following services:

IT assessments
Business continuity planning
Information security
Mobile strategy

CTO/CIO strategy services
Cost Benefit/ROI Analysis
Tool Selection
Testing Approaches & Strategy

CIV’s approach to creating a digital roadmap for its clients is based on common sense and a clear understanding of its client’s aspirations and goals. CIV understands that sometimes a tactical approach, combined with a unique depth of content knowledge, can help elaborate and extract the final long-term strategy. CIV’s team has used its analytical framework to make sure that clarity in strategy and execution is achieved.

Case Studies

Vendor Selection

A Top 10 Life Insurance Carrier primarily focused on high-end brokerage wanted to assess options for supporting transactional term business. A high-touch model was in place to support this carrier’s existing mix of business, which featured average face amounts in the top 10% of large carrier averages.

CIV conducted a full scale assessment of New Business and UW operations to determine future state productivity required in order to support corporate growth & cost projections.

CIV then reviewed nearly a dozen software vendors, both insurance specific Auto-UW systems as well as customizable BPM systems, across several criteria including cost, implementation time, ease of integration with existing admin systems and key software functionality (e.g., POS data capture, real-time search & pull of MIB, MVR, Labs, Scripts, auto-reading and interpretation). A short-list of vendors was recommended with ROI analysis to support request for funding, based on future-state metrics such as % auto-decisions, mix of business, and UW productivity.

Commercial Bank Digital Strategy

CIV sat with the CTO of a large commercial bank recently to discuss his strategic plan for 2013 through 2015. During the conversation it struck the team that he was focusing most of his effort on initiatives that could reduce run rate, cut expenditure, or reduce staff.

CIV asked him if the Bank’s strategy was to go into maintenance mode and if he was looking for cost savings. He sat back for a bit and then said that in fact the bank wanted to aggressively innovate but had huge regulatory initiatives that were mandatory for his department, and he was looking for areas to cut to fund those mandatory initiatives so that he could preserve his innovation budget. He was viewing his regulatory requirements along with his existing commitments and new requests as individual silos.

When CIV looked at the complete project portfolio, including the regulatory requirements, it saw that many of the business initiatives could be achieved if the regulatory programs were included in the project design. CIV’s review created a menu of choices for senior management to determine which regulatory initiatives together with business innovation would yield the best return for the company.

CIV achieved 80% of his innovation goals as well as meeting the regulatory deadlines. CIV also defined the budget according to mandatory, discretionary, run the bank and build the bank criteria. This clarity showed where the investment spending would have most impact and how to manage ongoing costs more effectively.