ASPs can support cross-entity transaction business operation models. Peer-to-peer services can support collaborative business operation models. Both have some advantages over what we've been using; namely, the paradigm that each business is an island with its own self-sufficient computer system.
Until the last few years, by and large, every business was expected to have its own computer system, loaded with the data and providing the functionality the business needed to operate. Each business was to be a self-contained, self-sufficient entity or node.
That technology model and business operations model works tolerably well for activities within the boundaries of an individual business, but it causes real problems when data and activities cross business boundaries, whether with customers or suppliers. In those cases of inter-entity communication, the process has often been manual paper-based data transfer, and thus inefficient and slow. In the independent agency world, the fix was to be standards-based EDI - that is, ACORD-based, AL3 batch (SEMCI) interface. But even after 20 years effort, industry EDI falls far short of the ideal.
Some suggest that interactive, standard XML interface will finally solve the problem of inter-entity data transfer. Probably not. Early indications are that companies are reluctant, for practical reasons, to embrace XML. Their mainframe systems may be batch oriented. They already have an investment in AL3-based batch interface. Some are using translators to convert incoming XML to AL3 and the reverse on the out-going side. It's going to be a while before XML is widely supported.
Even when agency and/or company systems are hosted via ASPs (application service providers), inter-entity data communication remains a big problem because the technology paradigm, independent self-sufficient systems for each entity, remains in place.
However, a new sort of ASP is making an appearance - one based on providing a transactional-cross entity technology service model. So for instance, some ASPs support all the steps and all the entities involved in certificates. Others focus on the claims process. Under the transactional ASP model, the transaction takes precedence over the entity, neatly turning the prior model on its head.
One could imagine a population of ASPs supporting end-to-end, cross-entity processing for a great many insurance and business activities. The transaction would be a kind of ASP river the participants dipped into when relevant. Under the past model, each entity was an island and the problem was to shuttle messages in bottles among them.
An interesting question today is whether the island/node/EDI technology model or the river/transaction/shared data technology model makes more sense for the insurance industry. Before the Internet, it did not make sense to ask the question. Now it does. What we're likely to see in coming years is an emergence and increasing importance of the transactional model. It's really the only way that the transactions, the processes, the reality of business operations can be supported efficiently.
Collaboration supporting, peer-to-peer technology (see the article on Groove), in which there is no central server and each entity stores identical data, is a third technology model than may have applicability to the insurance process. If the nodes are islands and transactions are rivers, p-to-p networks are boats in which people get together to work on short or persistent projects. Under the peer-to-peer model, neither the entity nor the transaction is the focus; rather, it's the collaborative group. Were the p-to-p model applied to insurance generally, a great number of peer-to-peer networks would be established, each including the relevant insured, agent, underwriter(s), auditor, adjuster, and whomever. Each party would have all the data relevant to them on their own system to use as they needed to create a global (cross project) view of their own affairs.
The node model got along fine without the Internet. But neither the transactional/ASP nor collaborative/peer to peer models were practically possible before the Internet. (Although one could claim that in its early years, Lloyds was a collaborative/ peer environment.) From my point of view both the transactional/ASP and collaborative/peer-to-peer models have great potential for agents to provide significantly improved and less expensive service to their customers.
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