Gregory Maciag: Standards as a Best Practice

Monday, 18 December 2006

Standards as a Best Practice

Insurance Networking News (December 1, 2006) ran a piece by Philippe Lafreniere titled the Top Ten Best Practices for Product Development.

Lafreniere's #10. "A scalable, open and flexible technology platform."

He goes on... "Invest in technology platforms that integrate product management solutions with other enterprise systems via standard interfaces. Platforms should support key industry standards such as ACORD XML and service-oriented architecture (SOA). Companies can't rely on yesterday's policy admin systems - they must consider current "best of breed" solutions to leverage existing IT resources, such as admin systems, while providing the functions and flexibility to survive in today's-and tomorrow's-insurance market."

He is spot on (as my friends in London would say) and his other nine are also excellent. Unfortunately, the expression "Best Practice" suggest that it is not the norm. Yes, we also use the expression. I am looking forward to the day when industry standards are no longer a best practice, but have become de rigueur. It will be sooner than you think.

Posted on Monday, 18 December 2006 in Standards | Permalink

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New Book

My latest book presents the challenges members face when adopting industry standards as well as the opportunities that come as a result. It features my discussions with many people over many years and follows the foundation I set in my first book "The Business Information Revolution".

Industry standards are never adopted in a vacuum. They become part and parcel of all the trials and tribulations managers face in their day to day work. ACORD Standards are always part of a larger software development project that brings along people, priorities and politics. Adopting industry standards isn't simple, but the benefits far outweigh the problems of building and maintaining proprietary alternatives.

I trust that you will appreciate my frankness, identify with some of the challenges and learn from what others have done to pave the way.