Liberty Information Technology, otherwise known as Liberty IT announced in the first half of 2011 that they are adding on 35 new jobs.

Liberty IT was created in 1997 in Belfast to provide software development support to its insurance operations throughout the world. This hiring spree was a 25% growth rate for new employees since the beginning of 2010.

“Liberty IT’s software development contributions have helped Liberty Mutual become a leading global property and casualty insurer, and we’re delighted to make today’s announcement of continued job creation in Belfast,” said Edmund F. Kelly, Liberty Mutual’s prior Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, who has since retired. “The quality and dedication of the region’s workforce is superb, which has helped Liberty IT sustain strong employment growth as it supports Liberty Mutual’s strategic technology initiatives.”

James McGlennon, Liberty Mutual Group Chief Information Officer said, “Our technology capabilities must keep pace with the demands and complexity of Liberty Mutual Group’s operations and customer needs, both of which exist throughout the world. Today’s announcement demonstrates our commitment and confidence in Liberty IT and its ability to develop leading edge software.”

In addition to the hiring of additional staff at Liberty IT in UK, Liberty Mutual also opened a new information technology development center in Boston and hired 100 new full-time employees to staff the operation. This is in addition to their expansion to their Back Bay location in Boston in October of 2010.

“Today’s announcement further demonstrates how the strength and growth of Liberty Mutual’s worldwide operations benefit Boston and the region,” said Kelly. “Our IT operations are critically important to Liberty Mutual’s future success as a global insurer and we look forward to attracting some of the best and brightest minds from the area’s universities and deep IT talent pool.”

Despite the economy, Liberty Mutual appears to be doing well with their expansion efforts as well as expanding their staff by at least over 130 people across the world. For a deeper dive of all Liberty Mutual’s initiatives as well as org charts, contact info, IT highlights, business drivers, insights to budgets, IT projects and major initiatives, check out the free Liberty Mutual sample CRUSH Report in our eStore.

Trish Ellis
Marketing Manager
SalesQuest
trisha.ellis@salesquest.com

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Panasonic just announced a new organizational structure that is to be implemented in January 2012.

This new alignment is aimed to achieve goals that is set out in Panasonic’s Green Transformation 2012 (GT12) to fulfill their vision of being “the No. 1 Green Innovation Company in the Electronics Industry” by 2018, which is their 100^th anniversary of its foundation.

Panasonic has set its sights high. The last year of GT12, fiscal year ending March 2013, Panasonic sets the following targets:

• 5% or more in operating profit ratio
• 10 trillion yen in sales
• 3 year accumulative total of over 800 billion yen in free cash flow
• 10% in ROE
• 50 million ton reduction in CO2 emissions

This new organizational structure is in line with Panasonic’s three basic concepts:

• Maximize value creation by strengthening contacts with customers
• Realize speedy and lean management
• Accelerate growth business by boldly shifting management resources

Panasonic's New Organization Structure

Panasonic is expecting their growth to be driven by six key businesses by fiscal ending March 2013:

• Energy Systems Business: 16% increase
• Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Business: 7.4% increase
• Network AV business: 10% increase
• Healthcare, Security & LED: Targeting 540 Billion Yen from these three businesses

There is a lot going inside of Panasonic right now. They have tons of internal goals that they want to reach by fiscal year end 2013. They hope that these initiatives will help in their overall goal to be the number one green electronics company by 2018. For a deeper dive of all Panasonics initiatives as well as org charts, contact info, IT highlights, business drivers, insights to budgets, IT projects and major initiatives, check out the Panasonic CRUSH Report.

Trish Ellis
SalesQuest
trisha dot ellis @ salesquest dot com

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

We all know outsourcing has becoming increasingly popular especially over the last decade. In HR, not only has it become the trend, but it’s growing into other aspects of HR. In the beginning, it was common practice just to outsource payroll administration. Now it’s expanding to include recruitment, payroll and benefits.

According to studies, companies that outsource payroll, workforce administration, time/attendance and benefits administration will save approximately 18% more than a company who uses outside providers. Everybody is looking for more ways to cut costs and HR outsourcing may be a solution.

For example, Prudential Financial Inc. outsourced its HR responsibilities to Exult Inc., and the 10-year $700 million contract is set to expire in 2012. The human resources outsourcer took over Prudential’s HR systems and administrative functions including U.S. payroll, HR call-center management, information systems and support, employee data, staffing and records management.

Sharon Taylor, SVP of Corporate Human Resources at Prudential Financial made the decision in 2002 to sign this outsourcing contract. She was criticized and a lot of skepticism went in her direction because it was really the early days of HR outsourcing.“Keeping with our organizational goals, we did not want to invest in HR. We wanted to carve a lean organization [and] get rid of non-core functions,” says Taylor. “There was a cultural readiness within the organization to outsource, and outsourcing HR was a radical but logical step.”

And to make matters, the contract was signed with Exult, who was not widely known. Exult later went on to merge with Hewitt. (And Hewitt was later purchased by Aon)

Companies everywhere are turning to outsourcing to help their bottom line.  Not only in HR, but IT, customer support, hosting services, data center management, etc. As technology continues to evolve and cloud solutions also on the rise, it will be interesting to see the role that outsourcing has not only in HR but in IT as well.

To find more information on Prudential, you can download the free sample CRUSH Report from our eStore.

Trish Ellis
Marketing Manager
SalesQuest
Trisha.ellis @ salesquest dot com

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

In today’s highly competitive economy, sales and marketing departments really have to stand out amongst the crowd. The messaging has to be personalized and clearly state what you have to offer that can save them time and money.

One of the worst approaches in sales and marketing today is the “data dump”  of product features. Understanding the customer is vital in today’s society. What challenges are they facing? Are they focused on specific initiatives? Knowing the answer to these questions allows messaging to be tailored and specific to your prospect and will help grab their attention.

The best way to truly understand what is going on within the company is by research and understanding your prospect’s business drivers. As defined by BusinessDictionary.com, business drivers are, “People, knowledge, and conditions (such as market forces) that initiate and support activities for which the business was designed.” Understanding the people within a company, their knowledge and the conditions of their current business strategy will help sales and marketing reps get compelling messaging across the right people.

Our analysts have created a section in our Fortune 1000 CRUSH Reports called Technology Business Drivers. These initiatives, problems or challenges are pulled from earnings calls, annual reports, executive presentations and interviews. They are based on corporate strategies, business initiatives and projects directly tied to IT architectures, IT budgets, executive management changes and new investments in enterprise technology.

Our customers use this section as sales leads, so they can align their business solution to the relevant business problems, opportunities and initatives. This kind of customized approach to business needs is the key to gaining trust and outselling your competitors.

Here’s a sample list of the type of fortune 1000 business drivers that we include in the CRUSH Reports:

• Strategic initiatives
• Expiring contracts
• Restructuring initiatives
• Acquisition integration
• Technology investments
• Data center changes
• Corporate collaboration
• Cost saving initiatives
• Customer service initiatives

Click here to find out more about Technology Business Drivers. Or go to our eStore and download sample CRUSH Reports and see the Technology Business Drivers section.

Trish Ellis
Marketing Manager
SalesQuest
Trisha.ellis @ salesquest dot com

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Insurance remains to be a very competitive industry. Companies, like Nationwide, are focused on the data analytics surrounding the insurance industry. The real competition is based around that data and how to analyze it and use it to their advantage to surpass the competition and create space between them and the rest of the pack.

Rebecca Amoroso, the Vice Chairman and insurance sector leader for Deloitte is convinced that insurance carriers will quickly move to data analytics to improve their predictive modeling to use the information that is freely provided by its customers to make improvement to their organization and product.

The question now becomes how does a company like Nationwide catch up to Progressive and GEICO who have proactively published apps that have engorged their databases?

Nationwide’s problem may be with not having the right analytical software as it currently employs several data analytics solutions including Oracle, SAP, and TIBCO.  Nationwide seems to think its problem is data. More specifically, not having enough of it.

In 2011, Nationwide will be in process with three different projects to up its data collection.  With mobility being a hot topic in any industry, Nationwide has been eagerly expanding its customer facing solutions to improve the ease of data collections as well the quality being collected.  Dennis Giglio, Associate VP, Distribution Marketing comments that, “We wanted to build on this success by expanding the reach of our mobile capabilities to a wider range of customers by adding an Android app and improving our mobile Web site.”

Nationwide is also targeting customer service as a point of data collection, which needed improvement. Their 2011 customer service directive will focus on programs that help to understand the customer and evolve consumer preferences.

Since Nationwide has the tools to analyze all this new information there was likely only one piece left that they needed, a place for this information to call home. In December of 2011, they will open a new Albany data center to help them handle all this information.

Data analytics is a trend that will not soon fade into the limelight. With the leaders, Progressive and GEICO, trudging forward, others must look to quickly catch up. Some companies will need to invest in data analytics software to meet their needs while their competitors, like Nationwide, need to make sure they have the information to analyze.

For detailed industry profiles and account intelligence reports on the Fortune 1000 and Global 500, check out the CRUSH Reports for Nationwide, GEICO and Progressive featuring org charts, IT landscapes, major initiatives and contacts on our eStore.

Trish Ellis
Marketing Manager
SalesQuest
Trisha.ellis @ salesquest dot com

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.