JMR UK Consultancy Ltd

Archive for November, 2011

Why Insurance Projects Fail – Top Tips

Monday, November 28th, 2011

Kali Bagary discussing project issuesInsurance Projects Failure – Our top Nine Lessons

If you are working IT, most likely you are working on projects and it doesn’t matter what you role is. For example, you could be an IT network administrator, a java developer or work in computer operations. Your users see IT as the main channel to deliver business and technical change and they have projects that need to get done and you’re expected to do them.

The Potential Number of IT Projects is Endless

In many organisations, there is no limit to the number of IT projects businesses will undertake. In the insurance sector, there are large industry wide change programmes, eg Solvency II. For many insurance organisations, cost savings are important so your insurance organisation may be looking to save costs by moving more of its IT operations and applications to the Cloud. For other insurance businesses, automation is the name of the game so many insurance organisations are looking to automate their front and back office functions.

And if you’re lucky, your are a dedicated full-time IT project manager. This means that you have to wear many hats as “IT Project Manager.” In this series of posts we are going to review the top pitfalls that can cause many projects to fail or not reach their full potential and here we are going to discuss Pitfall number 3.

Project Management Pitfall #3 – Taking on the Subject Matter Expert’s (SME) Role

Project ManagerIT projects can be very complex undertakings and include a whole range of technologies and business challenges. It is very common for people who are new to project management or leading project teams to feel embarrassed to admit their lack of experience in a particular aspect of the project. There is a great temptation for project managers to take on too many roles and not delegate and trust their project team. For example, building complex versions of a program or coding a Java function, you might be tempted to think that it is not too complex and start to think:

  • How hard can it be?
  • Will it really take that long?

This again is where you truly need to know your team and be able to trust their expert assessments. As Project Manager you are right to question assumptions and timescales with your team. However, remember that you are the project manager, not a developer, not a software engineer, not a network expert or a licensing expert. Too many Project Managers get too wrapped up in the “hows” of doing particular tasks and lose focus on the “what” to be delivered. They try and “do” the project themselves and not rely on their team members – big mistake!

Project Managers Need to be Project Managers

As Project Manager you need to focus on providing your project team with accurate and clear expectations as they have been given to you by the stakeholders or project champions. Your job is not to know how to do their job – your job is to deliver the expectations to the experts and see the project through to completion. With the right information, your SMEs should be able to provide you with a dependable, cost-effective solutions in the expected time frame.

How JMR Consulting UK Ltd can Help Your Insurance Organisation

IDIT LogoWe have worked very successfully with some of our major clients to deliver fairly complex business projects. Here at JMR Consulting UK Ltd we promote the use of project management best practices on all our projects. If you want advice or help with your projects or project tools and software, please contact us.

To find out more about how we can help you with project management, please get in touch by using the contact form, sending an email to info@jmruk.com or calling us on 0845 052 0900.

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Why Insurance Projects Fail – Top Tips

Sunday, November 20th, 2011

Insurance Projects Failure – Our Nine Top Lessons

project management softwareIn our first post on project management failure we discussed the topic of inaccurate project sheduling. We will continue with this series of posts and discuss the major project failure points that cause so many projects to fail to deliver the business and technology change that is envisaged at the outset of the project. These project failure points are not in any particular order of importance but the occurrence of any of these risks to your project can have a very detrimental impact on your project objectives. To a Project Manager, using the right tools is critical to the success of any project so we will now discuss another important risk to an IT project – Project Management Software and Tools.

Project Management Pitfall #2 – Lacking Project Management Tools

Because this particular post is a discussion of potential project management failure points, I’m not going to list product names. The type of project managment toolset that you need will depend on many factors that are specific to your organisation and project. So, instead, let’s just say for certain that most of your large projects or enterprise businesses will benefit greatly by standardising on a project management software toolset that best suits your needs. Not having one will more than likely cause your project to fail, or at the very least fall short of expectations. So, get a project management software tool. You can start by using Mr Google to search for project management tools and there are lots, so pick one that is suited to your organisation and project or here at JMR Consulting UK Ltd we can help.

IDIT_IDI_Technologies logoFor example, suppose you have a large project team of 20+ members. You handle projects that span multiple cost centres or some other outsourced vendors and outside suppliers or freelancers. In that case, your business would want to consider choosing a project management tool that provides the ability to function over multiple, non-standard platforms and has a Web-based interface or access via an online portal. As a minimum you will want to look to make sure that your project management software includes features for estimation and planning, scheduling, cost control and budget management, resource allocation, collaboration software, communication, quality management and which can be used to deal with the complexity of large projects.

So Project Management Lesson Number Two is to make sure that you have a selected and are using an appropiate project management toolset for your project. Ask yourself how important software is for managing projects? How much time will it save? How much it can help you in delivering a successful project? What parts of it are lifesavers and what parts can you live without?

JMR Consulting UK Ltd can help you with your answers to these questions

JMR Consulting UK LtdWe have worked very successfully with some of our major clients to deliver fairly complex business projects. Here at JMR Consulting UK Ltd we promote the use of project management best practices on all our projects. If you want advice or help with your projects or project tools and software, please contact us.

To find out more about how we can help you with project management, please get in touch by using the contact form, sending an email to info@jmruk.com or calling us on 0845 052 0900.

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JMR Consulting UK Ltd and IDIT Technologies Ltd attend the Future of General Insurance 2011 conference.

Monday, November 7th, 2011

Future of General Insurance Conference 2011

The Future of General InsuranceJMR Consulting UK Ltd and our technology partner IDIT Technologies Ltd attended The Future of General Insurance Conference in London. This conference brings together the key players in the insurance industry. The aim of the conference is to equip insurance executives and senior managers with the insights to adapt to the insurance market of tomorrow. The conference is in its 11th year and there was a range of programmes and seminars on offer to enable insurance practitioners to gain insurance leading critical updates on developments with consumer behaviour, pricing and risk, innovation in distribution, regulation, claims and more.

Why this General Insurance Conference is important for us at JMR Consulting UK Ltd

The conference was held at the Grange St Paul’s in London and here at JMR Consulting UK Ltd the main reasons we attend this conference every year are:

  • The conference has been running for 11 years and has a good a track record of senior speakers delivering useful and insightful content
  • Every year there is a well  researched agenda, informed by discussions with senior insurers from across the market
  • Focused on the GI industry to provide consistently relevant insights.
  • An varied speaker line-up providing a wide range of perspectives
  • The right mix of strategic market insights and practical discussions
  • An opportunity for us to reach out to our current customers in a relaxed but focussed manner
  • We can showcase our general insurance offerings to the general insurance market
  • And many more reasons

Future Focus for the General Insurance Industry

Kali Bagary chatting with Customers at the Future of General InsuranceThis years conference featured an innovation forum for the general insurance sector and there were some very interesting streams with parrticular reference to innovation and new approaches. The Future Focus session allowed delegates to suggest potential technologies or methodologies that might revolutionise the future of the insurance sector. An expert panel was on hand tocomment on the likely impact of these developments and how the insurance industry can prepare to make the most out of them.

The voice of the general insurance customer

One session that we though very useful was the Peer-to-Peer Discussion Session. The voice of the customer was brought right into the conference room through a series of customer interviews, highlighting public opinion and the vaired attitudes towards insurance products and the industry as a whole. Delegates were then split into smaller groups to share ideas with their peers on the implications of these opinons and discuss potential strategies to deal with the challenges they pose.

Interactive voting session – delegate driven debate

This interactive session provided invaluable insights into the levels of confidence across the industry, as well as providing predictions for the future. Delegates were given the opportunity to vote on the likely outcome of key industry developments before our expert panel comments on the implications of these predictions. aswell as stimulating thinking on the day.

JMR Consulting UK Ltd cloudWe found all these sessions very useful and provided us with some very insightful and interesting data to share with our colleagues back in the office and with our customers and future prospects.

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