Category Archives: business

Insurance Distribution challenges

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via Celent

Michel Michellod from Celent, an international strategy consultancy focused on the financial industry, has just posted a very interesting article which is very “aligned” with how we understand ourselves the current and coming insurance front-end challenges.

Some interesting strategic challenges highlighted in the post:

The direct channel requires an appropriate front end. […] This goal can be best achieved through the implementation of open and flexible front end systems facilitating interactions with potential customers, integrating modern communication tools for call center officers and allowing a high level of reactivity in terms of product, pricing and discount changes.

Communication with aggregators is key. […]  The second alternative consists in directing shoppers automatically onto the insurance online platform to perform the last step of the buying process (the effective purchase of the insurance product and its payment). This alternative requires an instantaneous transmission of customer and quote data by aggregators to insurers.

Insurers need to improve integration of affinity and bank channels. […] Insurers need to implement relevant portals allowing management and process of sophisticated insurance products.

Use brokers and agents in specific customer segments. […] I recommend insurers to implement sophisticated portals with rich functionality to provide point of differentiation.

Responding to multi-channel management. […] I believe insurers should prioritize sophisticated portals providing a single view of the customer based on service oriented architecture (SOA) with high level of automation.

As the insurance distribution landscape is changing fast and drastically, I expect this topic to be part of the European insurer’s top priorities in the coming years.

At Innoveo, we are exactly acting in this field and bringing a standard software product on the market – Innoveo Skye®– which allows insurance companies (life, non-life, health) to find an efficient, technology-proven and business-oriented answer to the different challenges raised by Celent.

Disclaimer: we were nominated by Celent as “Model Carrier” in 2007 for our effective usage of technology. See the report here.

Cross-posted on the Innoveo Blog

Some news from Hublot

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If you are reading this blog, you already know that I like very much the Hublot brand and watches. Hublot has just published its last newsletter, which contains some interesting information:

  • Hublot was strongly exposed in all media during the last Football Word Cup in South Africa as the official and first Official TimeKeeper of the FIFA (presence on the boards of the 4th referee). On top, Maradona sported a Big Bang on each wrist, which is quite strange (ridiculous?), but for sure visible! See below.

  • Hublot’s business is going very well. June was their best month ever, the last 9 months were the best ever. So it seems that they will close their best year ever ;-)
  • All these good news are also impacting the traffic on their corporate website (which is, by the way, very good). The 100’000 unique visitors per day level was reached in June, month which has generated about 1,5 million visits!
  • Also a cool generosity event organized with Usain Bolt at the new Hublot manufacture.

USAIN BOLT AT THE MANUFACTURE

The fastest man in the world ever received yet another honour on the 6th July in Nyon – for generosity. He took to the start line alongside 10 children – who were given a slight head start! A rapt public marvelled at his spectacular pace, though he allowed the children to beat him as Hublot had promised to donate 10,000 US dollars to the Usain Bolt Foundation for every child that crossed the finish line ahead of the "Lightning Bolt". It was a proud and highly motional moment for the young competitors, after which Usain devoted his time to the design of the watch that will bear his name in 2011.

I really like the way Hublot (and his CEO, Jean-Claude Biver) is marketing its products.
Super smart :-)

ro:mu:s event at the lake Zug

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Some colleagues from Innoveo and I were invited yesterday by our colleagues, friends and partners from the ro:mu:s company, which is bringing very high-valued and professional consulting in the fields of organization, project management and business advisory.

Their yearly event took place at the lake Zug, a absolutely fantastic place, specially with the cuper weather we had yesterday! We were on a boat during about 3 hours, making a slow trip all around the lake, with all these beautiful landscapes. And with some good food and wines. So an excellent evening!

Warm thanks guys for the invitation and friendly organization! (and thanks to Cédric for the pictures ;-)


As you see, I’m always well-positioned when it’s a matter of food ;-)

Cross-posted on the Innoveo blog

Apple selling more iPads than Macs

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via vowe and John Paczkowski

Apple is selling more than 200,000 iPads per week. Which means, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky, that sales of the company’s new device have outpaced those of the Mac in the United States and are closing in on those of the iPhone 3GS. […]

“We believe Apple is now selling >200k iPads/week, greater than US Macs (est. 110k Macs/week) and just below US iPhone 3GS first quart (246k/week).” […]

Earlier this year, Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi predicted sales will hit five million units in the first year, while Morgan Stanley (MS) analyst Katy Huberty said they’d likelyexceed six million.

By the way, I have ordered an iPad (WiFi, 64GB) in Switzerland, I should get it on June 7.

Lessons Learned from Dropbox

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I am a “happy user” of Dropbox as early adopter since 2008. We are also using Dropbox intensively at Innoveo since 2009. A really cool service and tool when you have to deal with different computers (notebook, netbook, iPhone for me). If you don’t know Dropbox, you should have a try!

Dropbox is a very young company and tool. Drew Houston, co-founder and CEO of Dropbox, has published a “worth-a-read” presentation about some Lessons Learnt they have done. No rocket science, a lot of common sense, but as usual, “everything is in the implementation” ;-)

Some data about Dropbox /

  • founded in 2007, launched in 2008
  • 1 million users 7 months after launch
  • Sept 2008: 100’000 registered users, Jan 2010 (15 months): 4 million users
  • Monthly growth: 15-20%

Some slides

Cross-posted on the Innoveo Blog

Launch of Jobping, an new specialized job-posting website

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Two of my long-time friends, the –Teach Head Brothers— (one of the most renowned French Microsoft .NET portal) Laurent and Mathieu (both MIcrosoft Most Valuable Professionals), have launched (public beta) on April 22 Jobping, a new specialized and totally focused job-posting website dedicated to job seekers and employers in the Microsoft technology field. Two others MS specialists are also participating to this nice story: Mark Kemper and Ally Colqhoun. Jobping is for now concentrating on the Australian market.

I find the business idea and positioning quite interesting and I am excited to follow the development of Jobping in the coming time.

Jobping is also the result of a nice international and geographical-exploded (France, Australia, etc.) development-team, based on Agile approach and nice technology. So I hope that Laurent and Mathieu will also share with us some of their experience in this field ;-)

Good luck to Jobping, I cross the fingers!

Have a look at the official Press Release.

Sydney, Australia – April 22, 2010 – Last week, Jobping, a new job posting web site aimed specifically at job seekers and employers who work with Microsoft technologies, was released into public beta.

Jobping currently focuses on the Australian market and aims to bring a better quality of candidate to a posted vacancy via a niche, industry targeted approach.

The site is unique, user friendly and streamlined when compared to the larger job post boards. For instance, publishing is done in a couple of clicks and the job is instantly broadcast through Twitter, Facebook and job indexing sites such as Indeed and CareerJet. Recruiters are also able to add their company Twitter feed to a job post in order to cross sell other vacancies all in one place.

From a job seeker point of view Jobping searching works just like today’s search engines with specific job filtering options. Job seekers also benefit by being kept up to date in a variety of ways including through Rss, Internet Explorer Web Slice, Twitter or Facebook. Similarly, job seekers are able to apply for a position using their LinkedIn profile, saving time and eliminating the need to keep two separate resumes up to date and they may optionally attach a traditional pdf or word resume.

More features and functions based on user feedback and requirements will be implemented quickly as Jobping takes an organic and user oriented approach to product development.

Jobping will remain free during the beta period which will continue for 3-6 months. Advertisers utilising the site during the beta period will be rewarded through special discounts once the pricing structure is introduced.

Visit us on www.jobping.com !

Disclaimer: Jobping is a private project of Laurent, Mathieu and their two friends, not linked with Innoveo in any manner, excepted our friendship ;-)