Entries by Mark O'Brien

A Tale of Two Words: Planning and Preparation

“May you live in interesting times,” is a popular expression attributable to myriad sources and derivations. But it’s safe to say, regardless of the source, the insurance industry is living in some interesting times, indeed. On January 7th of this year, Insurance Journal published a post — “Moody’s Global P/C Outlook Now Stable Despite Past-Peak […]

Making FAIR Plans More Fair

The December edition of Best’s Review contained an article that caught our attention: ”FAIR Plan Policies Nearly Double in Five Years”. It caught our attention for two reasons. First, we write FAIR Plans. Second, there seems to be some churning in the FAIR Plan vendor market. It’s no wonder. It’s not an easy market to serve. […]

Get it Right the First Time: Part Two

In our most recent post, we cited one we’d written six years ago. Given the Holiday Season, maybe we’re feeling nostalgic. We don’t know. But we do know almost six years ago, we published another post called, “Get it Right the First Time“. In it, we cited a survey of 396 CIOs and technology leaders […]

Keep the Change: Part Two

Six years ago, we wrote a post called, “Keep the Change”. At the end of that post, we wrote this: Since we have to keep the change, we may as well manage it effectively. In the time that’s elapsed, we’ve come to realize two things: (1) We were correct. (2) We didn’t know how correct […]

The Three Ps

Most software companies define success in a number of common (and predictable) ways: They develop and deliver software specifically for their intended users. They possess a deep understanding of their customers’ needs and experiences. They ensure their software enhances business value and has quantifiable ROI. They establish roles and responsibilities with their customers during implementations. […]

The Use in User Groups

Since we concluded our Innovation Advisory Board (IAB) meetings early last month, since the IAB comprises users of our software, and since (like our software) we intend to keep improving our IAB meetings, we were doing a little reading on the topic. We found a post from April of 2022, published by Forbes — “Why Customer […]

The Tell in Artificial Intelligence

tell (noun) In poker, a tell is a change in a player’s behavior or demeanor that allegedly reveals information about his hand strength. This can include facial expressions, nervous habits, or mannerisms that are believed to be indicative of a player’s assessment of his hand. A tell can be used to gain an advantage by observing […]

A Study in Contrasts

We asked JoAnna Bennett and Mark O’Brien from O’Brien Communications Group to attend our annual Innovation Advisory Board Meeting. Following that experience, Mark wrote this post. Back in my corporate days, I had the distinct sense in every meeting I attended that they were conducted for the sole purpose of talking about writing plans for […]

The Evolution of BI with AI

With more and more being written about AI — and with more and more applications being developed for its use — we couldn’t help wondering about the role of AI in what we’ve come to consider business intelligence (BI). Obviously enough, BI is synonymous with data analytics and has been for a while. But we […]

Configure This

In the early 2000s, policy admin vendors whose systems had tools were at a distinct advantage. Vendors that didn’t have tools would blanch at the notion of competing for business: “We can’t beat those guys. They have tools!” That was then. This is now. Configuration toolsets have become table stakes. If you’re a vendor — […]