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Senior Vice President, CIGNA Corporation
Ray Caron heads Information Systems for CIGNA Insurance. In setting the background for this interview, I told Ray that many readers of The Interpreter were systems and financial executives of mid-sized insurance companies who wanted to gain experience from the largest firms in our industry about what worked (and what didn't) so that they could help their own companies.
For background information on CIGNA, Ray referred me to their Internet Web-site (www.cigna.com). In itself, that statement tells a lot about the relationship between CIGNA and technology. For the record, CIGNA Corporation, with about $96 billion in assets, is a leading provider of insurance and related financial services throughout the United States and the world. CIGNA has $7.2 billion in shareholders' equity.
John. Ray, I know business strategy drives much of what I/S does at CIGNA. What are the key factors today?
Ray: CIGNA is a broad-line company with significant operations in all aspects of the insurance business in North America and overseas. The major emphasis is on growth across the board. As you can appreciate, this will have an impact on everyone in I/S. Senior executives in CIGNA have learned that growth is dependent on the quality of information available to process routine business transactions and make key business decisions. That brings both opportunity and challenge to I/S.
Jobn: Does this imply expertise in Executive Information and Decision Support Systems?
Ray: Not entirely, While we have made good progress in using these technologies, much remains to be done. We'd like to think that EIS and DSS are "built in" to all of our production systems. As yet, they are not. Too often, we "add on" those capabilities.
More important to our strategies are the technologies that integrate workteams and support rapid decision-making: notably e-mail and groupware. The Internet, MS Office and Exchange are in the process of becoming corporate standard tools. We are evaluating the tradeoffs between adopting the 95 suite versus the 97 suite versus both. The issues of compatibility, transition and training along with the cost and value of hardware and software will directly influence the final decision. In any case, the corporate I/S function will buy and own the desktop equipment and lease it to...