Insurance projects get bigger as cy-
cle times grow longer and carriers
are forced to spend huge amounts
of money on transformation. That
means there’s a need to get results
and E&Y’s Charlie Mihaliak has
learned that insurance executives
need to make sure the issues and
risks that change
management
addresses are
accounted for in
these transfor-
mation projects.
Mihaliak,
executive
director leading
the organization
change man-
agement practice for insurance
operations at E&Y, explains that
in order to define change management insurers must start with
the business outcome they expect
to address: predictability of the
business results. A second benefit
involves sustainability.
“With a lot of focus and energy,
you can pump up results,” says Mihaliak. “When you decide
what needs to be done to achieve those goals you get into the
whole leadership space: clarity of what they try to achieve; how
to do it in a language business people understand; alignment
with the different leaders that have to spon-
sor the transformation so they have the same
goals and priorities; and reprioritize other
issues for the greater good of the transfor-
mation.”
Transformation is comprehensive at
Westfield Insurance, according to Robert
Bowers, national claims strategy leader for
Westfield. Changes there included substan-
tial process changes, reorganization of the
carrier’s claims department to meet strategic
objectives, and substan-
tial technology deploy-
ments to meet those
objectives.
“For such a large
initiative, and something
much larger than we
had ever subjected our
staff to, it was important
to have a strong change
management plan to
ensure the adoption and
the acceptance of not
only a new claims system,
but new processes and
A Change is Gonna Come
Replacing a legacy solution with new technology won’t solve any problems
unless everyone involved—from executive leadership to customer service
reps—buys into the changes.
By Robert Regis Hyle
“It was
important
to gave a
strong change
management
plan to ensure
the adoption of
a new claims
system.”
Kerri Weaver, Westfield
Charlie
Mihaliak
Robert
Bowers
