Computer information systems: overview and applications

Computer Information Systems

SunLife of Canada competes across a wide variety of very competitive services-based businesses and continues to expand into adjacent businesses that offer greater profitability. The continued deregulation of their industry is forcing the need for much higher levels of individual agent performance and profitability. As SunLife Canada believes that IT is a strategic weapon, the company has invested heavily into enterprise-wide sales productivity systems that could also be considered Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in functionality and scope (Bull, 2010). The pace of their innovation however lags their competitors and most critically, the level of user adoption and enthusiasm for the new systems is mediocre at best. Studies indicate that merely pushing sales representatives and professional through more training is no substitute for an effective change management strategy (Mann, 2002). In order to fully analyze this problem the user, organizational, and technological issues facing SunLife are analyzed, in addition to a discussion and analysis of the environmental factors affecting the choice of information systems as well. This analysis concludes with an assessment and critique of the Maestro software package using the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) model.

Analyzing User, Organizational and Technology Issues Affecting SunLife

SunLife's greatest assets are its highly trained and loyal agent base, numbering 4,379 globally with 1,545 in Canada alone. As is typical of real estate agents specifically and sales people in general, they are accustomed to having a significant level of freedom in how they approach the selling and customer relationship process. The case details the many iterations of sales productivity and CRM applications the company has used, each meeting with resistance from the sales team and only limited results. Despite the lack of consistent execution and performance of the sales productivity and CRM systems however, the SunLife agents have been successful in becoming trusted advisors for the clients who are purchasing financial services, insurance, and in some cases, annuities from the agents. Paradoxically the four-year retention industry wide of only 20% is far surpassed by 26% achieved by SunLife Canada. This is because they have a high degree of autonomy in how they work and can structure customer relationships how they want. One of the many failings of the company is taking to getting Maestro adopted is not designing a sales productivity or CRM application that makes how these agents work. In the SDLC analysis this will be discussed in greater detail.

From an organizational standpoint, SunLife Canada is also creating more impediments to successfully using their existing sales productivity applications and decreasing the probability of success for Maestro. First, the company continues to take a very compartmentalized view of the sales and marketing, and only after years begins to think like customers do. This shift happens too late to make any difference in adoption and performance of existing sales productivity and CRM applications. When Maestro is launched, there is less acceptance because a re-organization has just occurred as well. Second, with 62% of revenues from outside of Canada and no allowances for global adoption of Maestro, no planning for an SDCL standpoint for a global launch. More will be discussed on this point later in the SDLC critique, yet it does show a mentality in SunLife of skipping the most critical phases of the SDLC methodology. In addition to all of these challenges internally with getting the launch and use of sales productivity and CRM applications right, there is also the continual pressure of new and more intense competition brought on by the deregulation of the industry. The agents are also being given an increasingly larger group of products and services to sell including mutual funds, residential mortgages, life insurance, all of which require intensive levels of training to understand and sell. The core strength of the agent's role with clients is that of trusted advisor, and the onslaught of new services brought on to counter competitive threats from deregulation is threatening that status. The agents need to have a very effective, efficient and productive system for learning and selling the new products and services only when they precisely align to customer needs. This is the essence of being a trusted advisor, and this must be the central to the automating of the guided selling, quoting, policy and proposal processes that SunLife relies on to grow their business. The capturing and use of the knowledge within the company is critically important to fuel any customer-driven change (Keller, 1999). For the SunLife agents to be successful the accumulated experience and knowledge in the company need to be captured, and applied to the sales cycles and ongoing customer relationships. This is another major gap that is in the approach the company is taking with the implementation of Maestro today as well. SunLife is not taking into account the deep expertise and knowledge within the company to streamline and make more efficient the selling process, and as a result the resistance to change on the part of agents just increases over time. They fail to see the value of making any significant shift in how they view new technologies to help them sell more effectively or continually be trusted advisors over time.

SunLife has an exceptionally strong grasp of technologies and their contributions to each aspect of the insurance sales, account management and risk management aspects of the insurance industry. Several times in the case study the point is made that SunLife Canada senior management sees IT as a strategic weapon. This commitment to technology is exemplified in the extensive level of investment in high-end mainframe computers including the IBM 3093 in corporate headquarters, and the investment in IBM System 36 minicomputers throughout the branches. There is also evident in the millions of dollars spent on the Advanced Life Insurance Systems (ALIS) mainframe-based core record-keeping system and the Agent Micro Systems (AMS) is the low-end CRM application running on agent's PCs. The investment in Maestro further shows a willingness on the part of senior management to continually seek the competitive advantages of IT in their business.

Analyzing Maestro Using the Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC)