| News
for Monday, May 24
LOMA President Welcomes
Attendees and Keynote Speaker
Monday, May
24
Tom Donaldson
introduces the ISF keynote speaker |
LOMA president Tom Donaldson
introduced ISF keynote speaker Daniel Burrus and
took the opportunity to extend a warm LOMA welcome
to attendees at the event’s second general
session today. In his
remarks, Donaldson characterized the new century
as bringing a host of challenges and opportunities
and the path to customer satisfaction, profitability
and success is more difficult to navigate than
ever before. “It is an uncertain world,”
he told attendees. “LOMA is prepared to
help you and your company navigate the chaos
presented by all of these challenges.”
“LOMA has heard your
concerns and our partnership with ACORD to present
this Insurance Systems Forum is just one of the
important ways we can help you meet the challenges
of the coming days,” he continued.
Donaldson then introduced
the keynote speaker Daniel Burrus.
VIEW VIDEO of
Tom Donaldson's welcome: (6 mins 48 secs)
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Futurist Daniel Burrus
Outlines Future and Opportunities to ISF Attendees
Monday, May
24
Daniel
Burrus discusses the role of technology
in strategic planning |
Futurist and author Daniel
Burrus outlined the opportunities available and
how people can get there to most of the 2400 attendees
of the 2004 ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum.
His keynote address focused on how everyone can
and should mold and shape the future.
Burrus discussed the global
changes affecting all of us today as "the
world is shifting...rolling...and churning."
The important thing is to plan strategically.
People must now seek an advantage and not just
do "enough." You must think strategically
and give customers even more than they ask for
to become a leader and have the advantage. This
is where the leaders emerge.
"The number one competitive
weapon we have," according to Burrus, "is
speed, and the pace of change is speeding up."
Burrus also discussed how we
are all doing more with less and technology was
thought to be the tool to save time. However,
as he points out, no one seems to have more time.
Technology alone cannot create time. "It
is not just the technology, but how we use the
technology." It is through technological
and innovative thinking that solutions can be
found.
From there, Burrus focused
on change and how individuals create change.
"Change is often from the outside in,"
he said, adding that those changes are "crisis
management." Innovative changes, according
to Burrus, come from the inside out.
Those changes often involve
new technologies but many companies do not want
to be on the "bleeding edge" and would
rather allow others to take those risks. By looking
outside industry silos and taking and adapting
technologies from other industries, new solutions
can be found. Driving those changes and facilitating
their applications are standards, such as ACORD
data standards.
A packed
house listens on |
Even with all these discussions
of technology, he emphasized the importance of
people. People create the innovations. People need
to be trained and kept current. We must also, Burrus
said, "upgrade people skills. One organization,
he said, said they didn't want to spend money on
training people because "what if they leave?"
Burrus' response was, "but what if they stay?"
This directly linked
to another driving concept, the future is not
a single solution, it is "Both/And."
Both/And refers to the fact that as new innovations
come into use, we do not and need not eliminate
the old. "We are wireless and we are wired,
we have fiber optic but we still have copper."
We will never have a paperless world because
people still want paper, he added.
Pulling all of this together
and making the future possible are global data
standards. Standards are what make it all work,
according to Daniel Burrus.
You can learn more about
Daniel Burrus at http://www.burrus.com
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