Analysts are projecting a tough economic environment for the property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry for 2009 — and possibly beyond. With carriers struggling to remain profitable even with a hardening market, there is an increased focus on performance improvement across all operational areas. This is especially true in claims, typically an insurer's largest expense area.

Unfortunately, claims is a particularly difficult area within which to realize rapid and cost-effective performance improvements. This stems from the tremendous dependence on — and staggering complexity of — existing claim technology. Adding in the human factor, claim management's limited understanding of IT requirements further complicates this environment. The typical P&C carrier maintains approximately 60 different claim applications. This technological complexity and dependency increases both the expense and time to market for any strategic claim initiative.

Bridging the gap between human activities and computer interactions across a diverse set of claim systems is the first step in addressing this complexity. Business process management (BPM) software provides users with a "dashboard" — a high-level view of the operation that crosses application boundaries. The dashboard integrates with all of the applications that perform processes as well as related databases. It can be used to trigger the start of a unit of work, and it provides a single interface for the end user. This integration across applications enables a level of oversight typically not available when claim processes are spread across applications. A BPM system can monitor and analyze claim activities in real time and set off alerts when specified limits are exceeded or a response is not received within a specified time. It can also automate the typically ad hoc, manual processes associated with responding to these alerts.