Norwich Union Signs New Contract With IBM

IBM to Work With Norwich Union Life to Transform Its Business Services Capability

London, 01/20/2005, Leading UK life insurer, Norwich Union, has signed a two and a half year contract with IBM to provide programme transformation expertise for its business services division. A team of specialists from IBM Business Consulting Services will work with Norwich Union Life to transform its business services division which consists of internal consulting, application development and maintenance. The project will enhance business services’ ability to deliver quality services to the rest of the Norwich Union Life business. It will also enable business services to help lead the broader transformation of Norwich Union Life, provide enhanced customer service and be more responsive to market changes and needs. Financial terms were not disclosed.

“The deployment of effective innovation and programme delivery is critical to our ability to drive forward competitive advantage,” said Cathryn Riley, business services director, Norwich Union Life. “In working with IBM, we benefit from their expertise in consulting, process design, innovation and programme delivery as well as the outstanding combination of industry skills, business transformation framework and proven track record from strategy right through to delivery.”

“In this highly competitive environment it is no longer enough to simply focus on integrating isolated process optimisation initiatives,” said David Dockray, managing partner for IBM Business Consulting Services. “The success of business transformation initiatives that seek not only to gain significant cost reductions, but also to achieve competitive advantage, will depend on the adoption of and adherence to strategic business models that will allow companies to respond on demand to changing market conditions.”

The business services function provides Norwich Union with services including the delivery of complex programmes, the provision and maintenance of IT systems and the delivery of innovation through business consulting. As part of the assisted transformation initiative, specialists from IBM Business Consulting Services will work with business services on a number of work-streams:

-- Winning and Capable Team -- a change programme to transform business services’ culture, organisation design, people management, skill development and resource deployment capabilities to enable it to meet the highest standards and achieve PCMM level 3 (People Capability Maturity Model) certification. Once successful it will become one of the first UK organisations to achieve this.

-- Process Improvement -- a programme to analyse and improve the existing processes of business services and manage the deployment of new processes to enable Norwich Union to deliver more effectively, efficiently and reliably. This work-stream will result in the achievement of CMMI level 3 (Capability Maturity Model Integration) certification.

-- Business and Architecture -- the design and execution of a model that will improve the interfaces between business services and the rest of Norwich Union Life, focusing in particular on relationship management, requirements definition, innovation and architectural models. This work-stream will capitalise on IBM’s component business modelling techniques.

-- Delivery and Service Excellence -- these two work-streams represent the delivery of consulting, projects and service and are where the transformational activities delivered in the other work-streams are embedded in the organisation.

Notes to editors:
PCMM and CMMI are standards defined by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), a federally funded research and development centre at Carnegie Mellon University that is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. The SEI aims to help companies make measured improvements in their software engineering capabilities and ensure that they develop the right software, delivered defect free, on time and on cost, every time.

About IBM Business Consulting Services

With consultants and professional staff in more than 160 countries globally, IBM Business Consulting Services is the world’s largest consulting services organization. IBM Business Consulting Services provides clients with business process and industry expertise, a deep understanding of technology solutions that address specific industry issues, and the ability to design, build and run those solutions in a way that delivers bottom-line business value. For more information visit www.ibm.com/bcs.

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