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Presenter Interview: Tips from an Expert - BPM for Insurance Organizations

Interview by Helen Winsor, Process Excellence Network Jorge Rosas, Quality Manager at Chubb Group, joins Process Excellence Network to share some best practice tips from the Insurance Group on BPM. Process Excellence Network: How does Process Excellence fit into the business at Chubb? J Rosas: Process Excellence is an integral part of Chubb's business methods. It allows us to ensure that product and service delivery are meeting customers' expectations, while creating metrics to describe how well we are doing this. It also provides internal measures of performance that are used for appraisal purposes and as input for Continuous Improvement programs. Process Excellence helps us analyze resource needs and determine what the best organizational structure is in order to deliver products and services in an efficient and effective manner. Process Excellence Network: How do organisations typically react to demands for greater quality in service? What are the key measures to take? J Rosas: I believe that many organizations, especially in the financial services space, are still more reactive than proactive in their response to Quality. This means that when customers or regulators demand quality improvements a quick fix is usually sought, as opposed to deep process analysis and Continuous Improvement that lead to sustainable change. A proactive quality program, including customer listening posts need to be implemented and used as the source of information to assess customer and stakeholder satisfaction before demands for improved quality are received. When this happens, the customer has already had a bad experience and he/she might be lost. Process Excellence Network: Can you give some examples of initiatives to improve quality and customer service at Chubb outlining the challenges and solutions? J Rosas: Chubb implemented a major Quality Management Program across all of its commercial lines units. The challenges faced at that point in time were twofold: a) To ensure product and service delivery standardization from centralized locations: b) To design a reliable method to capture and measure accuracy (one of the main quality characteristics) both from a customer and from a compliance point of view. The solution was the design, development and implementation of statistically based Certification and Quality Control procedures. These procedures were automated and distributed using Business Process Management (BPM) tools.

Process Excellence Network: What impact has BPM implementation had on Chubb in the areas of data collection, performance measurement and strategy? And how has your role within the organisation adapted? J Rosas: The BPM implementation underlying the Quality Management Program has created a new Quality culture at Chubb. This was achieved because the data collection, inspection, appraisal and reporting methods were designed with the user in mind, and based on sound principles, which have been readily accepted. It is the credibility of the results being published that has led management to accept them as part of the performance appraisal process and thus, become part of the fabric of field operations. As Quality Manager, I was responsible for leading the QMP project. Since its implementation my role evolved from an architect to a consultant in the quality and Continuous Improvement arena. Process Excellence Network: What top tips could you give to organizations to make the most of BPM software solutions? J Rosas: BPM is a key tool in the distribution and control of many corporate processes including Quality. But it is only as good as the underlying design and methods. The BPM applications cannot improve a flawed process. They can just make it faster. So I believe that all necessary resources need to be invested at the project outset to ensure that efficiency and effectiveness are baked-in form the beginning.

Hear more from Jorge Rosas at Business Process Excellence For Financial Services Online