With a proven track record in helping insurance industry clients through end-to-end digital transformation, Capgemini, the global consulting and systems integration giant, is now poised to help insurers usher in the newest phase of the digital revolution—the human factor.
At the helm of this operation is Seth Rachlin, executive vice president for insurance. For more than two decades, Rachlin has built and advised Fortune 500 companies at the nexus of technology, business, and insurance sectors. Now, as the Go-To-Market lead for insurance, Rachlin has his finger on the pulse of the rapid changes occurring in the industry; all indications point to companies being required to think beyond the internet connection to the human connection.
“Most insurance companies tend to conceptualize their operations in terms of transactions and the associated value chain,” Rachlin says. “But we’re seeing priorities shift from technology to customer experience. Our clients are experiencing tremendous change driven both by technology and the changing nature of customer needs and desires.”
Facing significant cost pressure from a persistent low interest rate environment, insurers are turning to cost-proven upgrades like automation and artificial intelligence of the technology age. As the Capgemini Efma World Insurance Report 2018 revealed, these “emerging technologies” are being used by insurers to improve efficiency, lower costs, and get offerings faster to the market.
Additionally, more insurers are strategically leveraging data and gleaning meaningful insights from that data, allowing them to provide personalized offerings for customers. The personalization and new technology utilization is allowing insurance companies to enrich the customer experience.
As one of the world’s largest IT consulting, outsourcing, and professional services companies, Capgemini is well-suited to help these companies find the right mix of technology and business solutions that can help them with their bottom line. Capgemini has long been a dynamic leader and partner to organizations modernizing their technology and business processes, delivering solutions designed to help them meet their strategic goals.
For most organizations, strategic goals inevitably center on the customer’s needs and desires. The modern customer wants quick and easy interactions with all their service providers, and while insurers have slowly but steadily embraced the Internet of Things to provide innovative products such as car devices and building sensors, Capgemini takes it one step further. With an integrated ecosystem of service offerings, they have helped clients reinvent customer service.
For example, several Capgemini clients offer both a roadside assistance product and traditional insurance in separate silos. If a customer’s car breaks down or they get in an accident, different processes are required, Rachlin explains, but from the customer perspective, their only need is for immediate help.
“We provide solutions to insurers that incorporate the customer perspective,” Rachlin says. “For the insurer, it is more about providing the benefit that customers place the most value on to deliver a meaningful experience. For us, it’s all about how we can get as wide as possible within that enterprise to reflect the digital realities that customers experience.”
Capgemini wields end-to-end expertise across all industries to facilitate each phase of a client’s business transformation, from testing to integration to management solutions. Its unique flexibility optimizes traditional functions—such as finance and procurement—while also developing applications within newer spaces like green IT and mobile.
Additionally, it helps its clients remain compliant with ever-changing privacy laws. The privacy environment is in flux, with Cambridge Analytica’s woes and the new European privacy law—General Data Protection Regulation—making headlines. Mastering those data requirements while also taking stewardship of that data is a crucial seesaw that balances benefits and risks, according to Rachlin, that his team helps clients navigate.
That dexterity is what transforms a forward-thinking approach into the sustainable business model that has cultivated Capgemini’s legacy of innovation. In 2017, Capgemini celebrated its fifty-year legacy with the launch of a brand refresh targeting the human factor in the digital age. The investment in such a transformation pinpoints the emerging trend that Capgemini has seemed to know all along: people first.
The handwritten feel of the new logo has the feeling of being in motion, Rachlin adds, which is reminiscent of how Capgemini is propelling the business world forward into the future. The philosophy? Technology is essential but ineffective if it doesn’t place people first.
“Capgemini will continue to push the envelope of innovation,” Rachlin says. “We have a vision of what a true twenty-first-century insurer looks like, and by leveraging our data insights and capabilities, we will provide a better understanding of the customers and processes needed to adapt and transform in the changing marketplace.”
“Whether you’re in retail, insurance, or banking, you’re dealing in a world where everybody feels change is a constant,” Rachlin adds. “That transformation is the new normal.”