Case Study: HDFC Standard Life

The private sector life insurance company, HDFC Standard Life rolled out its
first policy in December 2000. Now, three years later, the first of the policies
would mature and that’s when the insurance business gathers action and
momentum. Says Sunil Rawlani, head, IS and IT, HDFC Standard Life, "The
insurance business is inherently process-centric–the fulcrum of the business
is process knowledge management between products and services. With any change
in product or service, the fulcrum moves."

"Right from the start, the business had to have a focus on process; having the right process the first time" Sunil Rawlani, head, IS & IT, HDFC Standard Life

Therefore, right from the start, the business had to have a focus on process;
having the right process the first time. Consequently, a separate management
function called ‘process’ was instituted right from the start. The
joint-venture partner in the company Standard Life also brought in a lot of
process knowledge to this function.

If process was important, so was the administration and management of the
process. Hence, it was decided that the workflows within the process had to be
managed using IT so that four key process objectives were realized: processes
are standardized, processes can be changed, processes can be measured, and
process MIS is available. Additionally, it was required that productivity of
people allocated on the processes could be measured so that resources could be
better utilized.

After considering a slew of products and vendors like Newgen, e-process-Filenet,
Dess, Hummingbird, Savvion, MQWorkflow, and Domino.Doc among others, the choice
fell on Staffware Process Suite v2. New business acquisition was the first
process that was taken up. The next one being considered is policy servicing.
Claims processing being a very complex area will be taken up later. The ultimate
objective is to run an enterprise-wide workflow management using Staffware.

Easwar S Nair in Mumbai