Having Stepped Up to CIO, Bob Casale Pushes Innovation at MassMutual

MassMutual's Bob Casale has stepped into the CIO role and led the carrier into the next phase of its technology modernization initiative.

'Conduit to the Policyholder'

Over the past few months, Casale adds, MassMutual has taken steps to provide its field force with more mobile capabilities. "We're in a high-touch business, and our field force is really the conduit to the policyholder," he says. "We're trying to create an environment where it's much easier to work with us, where [field agents] have access to information at any time they need it so that they can do what they do more effectively."

In a proof of concept that was completed at the end of the second quarter, MassMutual developed two prototype mobile field applications for Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM's BlackBerry device and delivered them to 40 field force workers, Casale notes. The carrier's internal IT team partnered with Waltham, Mass.-based Pyxis Mobile on productivity tools that give users access to policy data and sales results, and worked with Chalk, a mobile software firm recently acquired by RIM, on a producer learning tool that delivers instructional information, such as policy compliance guidance, to users.

The proof of concept, which took seven weeks to develop, was well received, according to Casale, and the IT team is currently deciding the next steps for a wider pilot and rollout. "Mobility is really about giving access to critical information, whatever that may be, to them wherever they need it while they are on the road," Casale says.

In many ways, the concept of technology modernization and Casale's IT leadership style work in concert. "We need to be at least 18 months ahead of the business in terms of what we're thinking about and getting ready for," Casale describes. "The successes we have today are because of the decisions we made 18 months ago, and the success we have 18 months from now will be because of the decisions we make today."

With that in mind, Casale says, he and his team spend a considerable amount of time discussing potentially disruptive trends in the industry. One technology that in the future, Casale feels, could be a disruptive force is social networking. "Lots of companies like ours are really trying to understand what it means to our business," Casale relates. "We know it's coming, we know it's real. We know that it will change the way people work. It will change the way our customers expect to be worked with."

Casale has responsibility for MassMutual's enterprise architecture, infrastructure, enterprise information and risk management functions, as well as application development and delivery. He also oversees shared services, technology that spans multiple MassMutual groups or subsidiaries. Casale counts CSC (Falls Church, Va.), IBM (Armonk, N.Y.), Microsoft (Redmond, Wash.) and SAP (Walldorf, Germany) as the carrier's key vendor partners.

With an assist from his predecessor, he has learned to better compartmentalize the requirements and stresses of his job, helping to make him, he says, a more effective and, ultimately, a more productive IT leader. "[Foley] also taught me that urgency and importance aren't necessarily the same thing," Casale reveals. "In these kinds of jobs, everything is urgent, and what you find out is that not everything is as important as you think."

He also has learned to maintain a better balance between work and home life, which centers around his wife and three children. "I don't know if you ever get true separation of work and life, but you get a better integration when you think about it that way," Casale says.