CIO Kelly Hall's Priority: Make Kentucky Farm Bureau Agile
"We use the word 'agility' every day," Hall relates. "We've introduced SOA, which allows us to repurpose code. And we're working on an operational data store so that we don't have multiple puddles of data all over the place. Those technologies will serve us well going forward. If at some point we have to go through another transformation or select a different system, we'll have the foundation and the architecture in place to do that more readily than it's taken the past few years."
A driving force behind the successful implementation of these new systems has been a corporate commitment to IT innovation, according to Hall. "This is ... aligned from the board level on down," she notes. "All the vice presidents as well as the CEO are engaged on, at minimum, a weekly basis with all these initiatives. ... There's a willingness to reinvest and acknowledgement that it is necessary to do so."
Hall reports that she came to Kentucky Farm Bureau with a mandate to modernize. She's been at the company for three and a half years, a full year of which was spent rolling out the new policy administration system -- San Mateo, Calif.-based Guidewire's PolicyCenter. (It was launched with a pilot agency in July 2009, and all 170 agencies were live by July 2010.) The company was primarily a mainframe shop, but the new policy and claims systems (also from Guidewire; ClaimCenter) are web-enabled, Hall notes, adding that the change required her to retrain her staff so that they are in a position to supply needed support during the transition.
"We've been very focused on establishing training programs and helping our folks migrate from the older technologies to the newer technologies. Specifically, for example, migrating from a COBOL programmer to a Java programmer -- not just supporting [IBM] DB2, but being able to support [Microsoft] SQL Server," she says. "In addition, I've worked with others to help me evolve the department so we have new disciplines, such as enterprise architecture and e-business skills and quality assurance and testing. Those are areas we didn't really have expertise in when I came in."
Hall says her management strategies took root after she perceived shortcomings at other organizations where she's worked. "Whether it's a Java programmer or a SQL database support staff person -- they need their technical focus. But I want them to have involvement and understand why they're there and why they fit," she explains. "So many times I've seen IT organizations lose perspective on why they're there. At the end of the day IT is a support organization -- it's not its own entity. Coming in here, I wanted to set the tone that our focus is going to be on supporting the business."
A New Legacy
As part of the strategic shift in the architecture at Kentucky Farm Bureau, Hall also has taken a proactive approach to legacy retirement. "I have an obligation to be assertive with the retirement of the legacy systems," she says. "When you're supporting multiple highways over a long term, you can't be efficient. Your speed to market is diminished."
Kentucky Farm Bureau saw immediate benefits to the new strategy when Kentucky was buffeted by back-to-back weather events. In fall 2008, Hurricane Ike came inland and caused major damage, she recalls. A few months later, a devastating ice storm crippled the state.
But because the new claims system was up and running, the insurer was able to process the massive volume of claims resulting from the disasters, Hall reports. Everyone in the organization (including Hall) was recruited to take claims information over the phone. The company sent out mobile generators to make sure that "even just one laptop" could access the new system, Hall notes.
"A majority of our offices were live on the new claims system," she says. "We had the ability to have different offices handle claims for different areas of the state; you used to be locked into your region. It's allowed for ubiquitous service no matter where you're located."
The carrier's new web-based architecture has improved more than just core systems, Hall stresses. She credits the desire to migrate core systems with improving the company's offerings to its agents as well. Hall has led the development and implementation of new corporate, agency and agent websites. This included the implementation of a new content management system (built internally on Emeryville, Calif.-based Lyris's Hot Banana platform) to manage all external-facing websites, a quote generator tool and authoring capabilities.
"When I came into the organization we had kind of a shell of a website -- it was really just brochureware," Hall explains. "Our 170 agencies wanted a portal through which they could service the customers. As a result of our modernization on the claims and policy side, we've built in parallel a foundation of e-business, and it has laid the groundwork for other online services."
A major driver of the effort to modernize its customer- and agent-facing systems is Kentucky Farm Bureau's desire to advance its reputation for excellent service. Hall says she and her colleagues understand that consumer technology has fundamentally altered the expectation of service, and they are looking to technology to further position the company as a leader and innovator in customer service.
"Our agents really are the conduit to the customer -- they have community relationships. Technology combined with that reputation creates even higher expectations," she says. "Our delivery system has been designed to be very customer-focused."
Nathan Golia is senior editor of Insurance & Technology. He joined the publication in 2010 as associate editor and covers all aspects of the nexus between insurance and information technology, including mobility, distribution, core systems, customer interaction, and risk ... View Full Bio
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