What is a vision for an insurance company’s IT group? What good does it do? Should it ever change? Does every IT group need one? This report provides answers.

In a new report, Visions and Re-Visions for Insurance Technology, Celent looks at the concept of an explicit, persistent vision for an insurer IT group. It describes the characteristics of a good vision statement and best practices for integrating the vision into the group’s budget and planning cycles. The report includes case studies of how two insurers created and used a vision.

The report also offers a Celent template for an IT vision.

“By its nature, an IT group vision does not represent empirical or quantifiable goals,” says Donald Light, Senior Analyst with Celent’s Insurance Group and author of the report. “But over a period of several years, having a vision allows the question to be asked, ‘Are we appreciably closer to our vision than we were two, or three, or five years ago?’”