Cigna Case Study

In 1993, CIGNA Property & Casualty (P&C) was having difficulty influencing the direction of their numbers. Experiencing serious weaknesses in management and poor supplier relationships, CIGNA P&C appointed Gerald Isom to head an executive team that would lead to the company’s future success in the industry as a top-performing property and casualty specialist. In order for long-term economic improvements to be made Gerald Isom believed that a business process transformation needed to take place and this transformation needed to encompass the reevaluation of the company’s communication system and the sharing of intellectual assets.

An extensive evaluation of strategic goals was made by top management and eight main core competencies were determined. The new system would transform CIGNA from a generalist organization to a specialist organization with a client/server database that enabled knowledge and communication across all divisions. These eight competencies included the ability to expand and enter new high-profit markets, to create and maintain customer relations in order for claims frequency to be reduced and to better identify market hazards. To CIGNA, BPR was viewed as a vehicle to realign strategy, operations, and systems to deliver significantly increased financial results.

BPR at CIGNA began as an experimental pilot. The success of this pilot led to the company’s dissemination of implementing other BPR projects throughout the entire organization. Although the process was initiated by top management, ownership was moved down to the people who would be most affected by the changes made. The CIGNA IS group had to develop a new set of basic values that reflected a change in focus from technology to a focus on business processes and results (Caron et al. 1994). The specific business divisions led the BPR initiatives and the IS groups served as partners in enabling the radical changes. To respond to customer needs as a specialist...