NEWS FROM ACORD: ARE YOU KEEPING THE CUSTOMER IN MIND?

What do customer satisfaction and industry electronic data standards have in common? The traditional view of data standards places them in the lifeless recesses of the back office, sending and receiving a steady and unanimated stream of business messages. But the advance of the Internet is recasting their role; standards are now seen as a critical element in successfully meeting customer demands for more and more information and service in real-time.

Companies that consider themselves committed to technology - that have invested in their IT infrastructure and even leveraged standards to assist them in their business processes - but have still not seen that investment pay off in customer growth and satisfaction will find the ACORD Technology Conference 2001 (Orlando, FL, May 20-22) more than helpful.

Customer-centric, e-business solutions are the focus of this year's event. Savvy financial services companies are gearing up with new technologies and the utilization of data standards to meet customers' needs head-on, and the ACORD Conference is the place to see new technology solutions based on standards in action.

The insurance industry has ground to cover to catch up with other financial services sectors if it wishes to compete on customer service. This year's conference allows you to see and hear about a host of real world strategies and solutions. For example, would you like to hear about e-business solutions that allow you to tap into customer-centric information buried in legacy systems? Do you need to know how to embrace e-business in a way that strengthens all distribution channels and your whole sales process? Could you benefit from hearing top insurance company executives compare their IT philosophies and discuss where they are spending their IT dollars and why? Only standardized B2B and B2C data transactions will permit the level of service being demanded by customers.

This year the ACORD Standards Implementation Champions Awards will prove the versatility of the expanding ACORD XML Standard. The standard may have been founded on the need to communicate in real time with business partners, but it can significantly improve other business processes, particularly those compatible with Internet applications. These processes can be aggregated and moved out closer to the point-of-sale, closer to the customer.

Today's technology is close to solving age-old problems of interconnectivity and transparency. Find out how to be a part of the solution at ACORD Technology Conference. Go to www.acordconference.org for more information or to register and learn what 1,500 of your colleagues and competitors already know.