Insure Tech Business Records Automation

Insure Tech Business Records Automation Project

This is an interesting case study of a project that can be summarized as a Business Record Automation Project. InsureTech is an online Insurance subsidiary of an insurance giant Frontier Mutual Life Insurance Limited (Frontier). The Sales Associate reported daily business secured on a manual form directly to the Head Office of InsureTech. The system was prone to errors and misreporting and did not meet the projected requirements of 50 sales areas dispersed all over the country. The Company boss Robinson asked the Finance Director Deryl Smith to work on automation project, who assigned it to Mike Gibson.

The Project Manager Mike Gibson is a young and enthusiastic and competent finance professional but he has no experience of managing a data automation project. Smith does not discuss a target completion date with Gibson, according to the project management principles; a project is a series of work tasks that have a definite beginning and an end and leads to an outcome. The outcome may be a new product, implementation of new technology, or changes in work processes to enhance the organization's product line. A target completion date allows the manager to work on various parts of the project with a view to complete the project on schedule.

In absence of a dead line Mike Gibson, who already had other responsibilities would not be working to meet a scheduled date. Daryl Smith did not follow-up on the status of the Project. We are told that, six months after assigning the Project, Smith started asking Gibson on the status of the project. There should have been regular formal/informal meeting on the project status to monitor the problem areas. The management had a date in mind (probably six months) and after this date they started pressurizing Gibson to complete the project without any further delay.

There are many responsibilities and skills that a person must have to manage a project. [Bruce & Langdon, 2000] describe the required responsibilities:

1. planning the project in detail

2. organizing the project team and convincing them to participate

3. communicating the status of the project to all parties involved

4. managing the progress of the project closing the project

It appears that Gibson failed to meet the requirements in many of these areas. In this project, Regional Sales Managers, Director National Sales Bob Farley, Director Finance, Deryl Smith and CEO Peter Robinson were the stake holders. Gibson should have planned to bring all of these people on board from the very beginning.

He should have started by a short email to all of these stakeholders informing them of the project and inviting their suggestions.