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Designed correctly, E-Bills are a great use for the web, allowing insurance companies to communicate critical financial and census data to their customers in a controlled fashion while increasing efficiency and accuracy for the customer and themselves.
Unfortunately, it has been my experience that there’s a lot of misleading information about E-Billing “products” and “systems” on the Internet. In my upcoming posts, I’m going to wade through this morass of information and detail the approach that works – both from the company and customer standpoint.
The bill I’m speaking of is for group insurance. In the paper world, it’s that complicated, multi-page, already incorrect when it’s mailed, document that details what the insurance company believes the customer owes them. In the group insurance world (especially worksite marketing), where products may be voluntary and usually involve payroll deductions, I contend the bill is always wrong when received by customer due to the nature of the beast. By the time the bill arrives, the customer has employees who have joined the company, left the company, added dependents, etc. The poor customer then moves to try to reconcile said manual bill at a “point in time” that has nothing to do with the insurance company’s computer system used to generate the bill. The customer remits the reconciled (from their standpoint) bill, and it starts all over at the company end. There, it’s a reverse reconciliation as the company tries to figure out the entries the customer made on their end. It’s not unusual to see bills arrive at an insurance company with lines marked out, additions written in the margins, incorrect calculations, etc. How can it be right? The customer doesn’t know the insurance company’s business rules.
A statement about E-Billing products – based on the complexity of insurance billing systems (especially legacy systems), the inherent dynamic nature of the customer’s census and the integration needed to design posting for a true E-Billing System (Presentment, Reconciliation and Payment) back to the billing system after a bill is finalized, products haven’t met the mark. I have yet to see a product that meets the needs of an insurance company requiring true branding, specific process flow, true self-service automation, and SOA compliant integration.
Contributing to this state of confusion, I’ve seen three completely different levels of E-Billing as requested by clients. All are referred to as E-Billing and in many cases, in previous engagements, the client visualized more and received a lot less.
Stay tuned for a discussion of (1) E-Bill Presentment, (2) E-Bill Presentment and Payment and (3) E-Bill Presentment, Reconciliation and Payment (true E-Billing).
Image appears courtesy of graphicalwonder.com
I should be biting my tongue, but the pain exploding in my brain by thinking this prevents me from doing anything further to my anatomy. As one who escaped IBM’s totalitarian regime of the 1980’s (run Apple 1984 Super Bowl commercial), I can not believe I want to return, even if Steve Jobs is cool and IBM was not. Chrome is what is sending me there.
Does anybody think of the poor slobs shoveling coal in the bowels of IT support when they think up a new browser or (shudder!) yet another toolbar. These unsung heroes are just turning the corner on the Safari onslaught — every user with an iPod (99.999998% approx.) had this disease ridden Typhoid Mary installed on their PC auto-magically (thank you for the opt out Apple, not). At least Chrome is “voluntary” at this point, requiring a mouse click for download, but given Google’s track record with their Toolbar, it is sure to be foisted on every unsuspecting PC in short order. I can’t wait.
The best part about all of these revolutionary browsers is playing malware shell games with their developers: “We fixed some bugs, but we are not going to tell you which ones (Ha Ha Ha).” Nothing personal, but what happened to “Do No Evil”? It is an oxymoron, name one marketing/advertising entity with morals (it started with Josef Goebbels and has been downhill ever since).
This weeks Economist has a much more interesting insight in its technology section. The bulk of the world will be accessing the Internet through their cell phones based on cost, penetration, and true ubiquity. This is the platform of the future and the one most in need of innovation and development (the greatest good for the greatest number I always say). Putting all of the resources of the Internet in the hands of the poor and repressed and truly flattening the world as put forward by Friedman seems so right, squabbling over the desktops of the rich developed world seems so Evil (well trivial and venal in any case).
I am not a Luddite (argh! I am having an existential moment), Chrome does have value beyond firing up the trade press and blog traffic (oops, did I say Chrome in my blog too?). It legitimately tries to move the user experience up a level in terms of trying to derive an informational level of interface instead of gratuitous data groveling at a list level. More research needs to move in this direction as the data volumes increase to the absurd. One question we discussed: Would cartoon character representation assist C-level executives understanding? The answer is of course, Yes! Only The Family Guy could illuminate those fixtures.
I’m very excited about the news breaking out today of Chrome: the new browser from Google. It will launch tomorrow and you can read all about it on Google’s blog and see their tech friendly comic book(that is brilliant by itself).
I have to admit that both the last release from Firefoxand especially the half baked lackluster IE8 beta from Microsoft were disappointing. While providing relatively minor improvements to most users, they failed to address the biggest challenge confronting the continuing growth of the web: inherent support for rich applications. All we want is to use our email, IM, Search and Facebook without it crashing every few hours taking all windows and tabs with it.
The browser had become the master application where most of our work and play on the computer is done these days. As Google had nicely put it in their blog post “All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser.” … “What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build”
So it seems that the smart guys at Google finally understood that if they base their entire business on ads presented while web browsing, they better make sure that browsing experience is fast, secure and continues to flourish. Counting on Microsoft to do that for you is not a smart business strategy.
The new Chrome browser was built from scratch not as a browser but as a platform. Most of the features and improvements are taken form the OS playbook for stability and security: process containment, sand boxing, efficient garbage collection, tight security model.
Here is a short list of some of the innovation the Chrome is introducing:
- Process isolation for tabs and plugins within tabs. Awesome. No more will a single window force me to kill the browser with all 30 tabs I have open gone with the wind.
- New Javascript virtual machine that will product compiled machine code. If Java script is to be the future of rich web interfaces (as opposed to the proprietary Flash or Silverlight) it needs to run fast and be more robust and that’s exactly what the new virtual machine is providing.
- Gears Integration: with Gears support for persistency and OS level access, developers can build client level applications for the web with reasonable portability
- Security: the new security model offers a strong foundation for ongoing security schema that can be used by application coders and plugin providers.
Google will also make the whole thing open source, allow plugins and invites everyone to add and extend.
That’s the kind of innovation we need in order to keep the web growing and becoming the robust platform for work and play.
I can’t wait to give it a full try tomorrow.
It's in there!
Web 2.0 is giving me flashbacks to an old TV commercial for Prego spaghetti sauce; “Tomatoes, in there! Garlic, in there! Carrots, in there! Half of Italy, in there!…” It seemed no matter what you asked for it was in that bottle of sauce. Being a sauce, how could you really tell what was in there, or if it was really needed? Plus, the tomatoes colored everything red so who knows? Now we have another bottle of technical sauce here called Web 2.0; it’s in there! It’s colored all Internet so how can you tell what is really in there, or if it is really needed?
Good question, seems like every vendor says they’re on the bottle of ingredients, in fact the most important one. It would be funny if it was not so pathetic. Unfortunately, the smell here is not a nice bubbling spaghetti sauce, closer to a warm crock of….., you get the concept. Every vendor out there seems to believe companies will blindly buy anything labeled Web 2.0. Rather, the CIO’s are more apt to remember the Internet bubble and where that approach got them the last time.
What is required is more definition of what Web 2.0 is, and why we in IT need to move in that direction. To get that basic understanding, we need to breakout that old spaghetti sauce pan again to boil out all the fancy analysis and obsequious technology. Lo and behold! What remains is a simple concept: the inmates are now in control of the asylum. Users of the Internet have turned the tables on the big players in the space, they are no longer happy being spoon fed from a portal. The denizens want to hunt it on their own terms, see it their own way, save it and dispose of it as they please. If you stand in their way, this mob of Internet hunter-gatherers will crush you with the loss of their eyeballs (poor Yahoo, poor EBay, happy Facebook, happy iPhone).
If this basic principle is followed like a lode stone, much that is occurring in the Internet space is much more illuminating and the proper path forward (with supporting technology) is a great deal clearer to discern. For example, the winning companies embrace openness and external developers. There is no way their internal staff can create and the site push enough content and functionality to stay on top. The Tao of a top site is to be one with the masses, following and attempting to push is uncool. Allowing users to mash-up specialty widgets into cool personal discoveries is winning, monetization will ultimately follow.
By this point, you are thinking — how is all this ethereal philosophic spew helping me? I need to get something together that can be called Web 2.0 or my IT existence is at risk! Do not worry Grasshopper (I’m showing my ’70s again, rats!) I’ll put forward a corporate-friendly straw man. If SharePoint is used to enable a project, process, or department; it is so Web 1.0 (boring!). If we put the entire corporation up on SharePoint, acting like a corporate Facebook, we are getting there. If we template it such that we now have ubiquitous collaboration; optimizing and moving our corporate intellectual property (IP) at light speed much nicer. But for ultimate coolness, we need to commit heresy and wire a Google search appliance in, after adding all of our corporate content to the pile: documents, presentations, everything. Then the cherry on top, flatten key data bases to HTML and toss them in. Now, with proper organizational change management (Yes Billy! You can run with scissors, points down please), employees can use all of the power contained in Web 2.0 to maximize unstructured corporate data for speed and profit. Mangiare! Mangiare!
McKinsey and Company released a research report last week titled “Building the web 2.0 enterprises” (free registration required). It is a global survey of about 2000 executives about the use, adoption, priorities and satisfaction with web 2.0 tools and technologies.
The summary in their words:
“Companies are using more Web 2.0 tools and technologies than they were last year, sometimes for more complex business purposes, according to McKinsey’s second annual survey on Web 2.0. Companies that are satisfied with their use of these tools are starting to see changes throughout the enterprise.”
A few thoughts and observations from the findings and from our own experience with implementing Enterprise 2.0 solution internally at Edgewater and for clients:
1. The technologies that are being implemented.
Social networking is now in second place after web services. It is not clear how social networking is defined and if the focus is internal or external. From what we’ve see, there are at least 3 different ways companies use social networking technologies:
- Internal social networking: the goal of these tools is to help people stay in contact, share activities and be able to find expertise inside the organization. From the much discussed use of Facebook as an internal social network by Serena Software to the creation of SharePoint profiles, the tools that currently exist are very limited in their support and address only what Andy McAfee calls the Strong circle, the group of people you interact with on a regular basis anyway. A true internal social network that will spur interaction and discovery across the enterprise is yet to emerge.
- Internal Collaboration: it is not on the list but internal forums and collaborative tools for projects are one of the oldest and most used aspects of an active intranet. Many may associate these activities as part of a social network.
- External social network for customer or partners. In here as well, collaborative environment and Social Network seem to be used interchangeably. There are a lot of forums, discussions and member interaction but due to their limited scope, these communities rarely develop into a full fledged social network.
The second point of interest here is the relatively low rating of some of the emerging trends like Tagging, Prediction markets and Mashups. We see a lot of interest in these upcoming technologies and expect to see them rise in priority in the future.
2. The cultural implications of adopting Web 2.0. It is good to see that in many organizations the change is not just in the tools that are introduced but also in the organizational culture and governance. 
The tight correlation between the level of satisfaction with web 2.0 tools and the degree the organization had changed indicates that they are tightly coupled. Introducing new tools to a rigid organization will result in failure. A successful implementation has to consider attitude and cultural changes as much as tools and technologies.
3. Who is leading the change: the role of IT. It is not surprising to see in the survey results that only in 16% of the responders indicated that IT had initiated the introduction of Web 2.0 tools. 
and that in the cases it did, they resulted in the lowest level of satisfaction. We’ve seen similar trends with our clients as these tools introduce chaos into the environment corporate IT is trying desperately to control and maintain. IT is responsible for keeping the security levels in place, ensuring availability, backup, searchability and integrating these services into the existing infrastructure. Since many of these tools are from open source or startup organizations, IT is justifiably playing the role of the gate keeper. A successful strategy must marry the business needs and opportunities with the prudence of a supported environment but in keeping with the agile approach that is inherent in web 2.0 – IT must be willing to give up some control otherwise web 2.0 initiatives will take too long to implement and will be too restrictive for an organization to embrace. In many cases, this is our role as strategy and technology consultants, to bridge the gap and set a cohesive strategy everyone can agree upon and execute.
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A visitor walking the demo floor at the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference would find it hard to define what all these companies and product offerings have in common and what qualifies them to be categorized as Enterprise 2.0 solution providers.
While vendors of organizational social networks are a clear fit, what is common to advanced search vendors, enterprise mashup providers, Content Management vendors and video broadcasting solutions?
It seems that the common thread is a shared vision of the future enterprise as a social, open and collaborative place where data, content, knowledge and expertise are more easily available and where productivity results from enhanced collaboration and information sharing.
We can categorize the solution areas based on what they allow the user to do:
Finding information and data across silos and systems is still the holy grail of today’s information systems. Our information workers are dependent on their access to information but the ever growing amount and complexity of the data makes it harder and harder.
Most basic Enterprise 2.0 products cover the first 4 levels. They include a basic search for content within the network, provide tools for creating new content, sharing, and collaboration using technologies like discussions, wiki’s, blogs, RSS, Public Profiles, and groups.
Products in this category include: Microsoft Sharepoint, SocialText, Telligent , Thoughfarmer and GroupSwim among many others.
The fifth level offers a unique opportunity to leverage the interactions, conversations and links to add context and intelligence. By using Tags or by auto detection of terms and traffic patterns, some of the solutions can help create a layer of relationships and meaning on top of the content and link together disparate pieces of content, data and people for a complete picture.
Products in this category include: OpenWater, Connectbeam, Inquira
The 6th level in our stack consists of tools that try to bring together and connect data from disparate systems and source and allow the user to connect them and create custom applications and views on demand. By using open standards and web services, these tools called Mashups attempt to simplify our search for information across multiple systems by allowing us to pull from them without creating a separate datamart as the baseline for data and correlation.
Mashups are a hot topic for enterprise portals and enterprise web 2.0 initiatives. IBM, Oracle and Micosoft are releasing mashup tools as well as a few smaller vendors like Jackbe and Serena
At the final level, we would all like to have a toolset that will allow us to discover ideas, bring important knowledge to our attention, alert us in real time to activities and trends we should be watching, feed us in real time information that is relevant to the tasks we are performing. No tools in this category yet but check again in a few months…
The ROI and game changing benefits of Enterprise web 2.0 internal implementations can go well beyond important outcomes like of employee involvement, morale and collaboration. It would come from harnessing the intelligence, context and knowledge within the organization (data, content and people) and outside sources to increase productivity, shorten development lifecycles, enhnace relationships make better decisions and inspire innovation.
