This episode features Chetan Kandhari, Chief Innovation and Digital Officer at Nationwide. They cover Nationwide's customer-driven innovation, the impact of generative AI, and the importance of modernized digital infrastructure, and much more.
This episode features Chetan Kandhari, Chief Innovation and Digital Officer at Nationwide. They cover Nationwide's customer-driven innovation, the impact of GenAI, and the importance of modernized digital infrastructure. Throughout, Chetan emphasizes integrating technology with business goals to deliver real-time digital experiences. In his final thoughts, Chetan shares how Nationwide is leveraging digital innovation to not only drive future growth but also enhance protection and care for businesses and individuals.
--------
Guest Bio:
As Chief Innovation and Digital Officer, Chetan is accountable for leading the company’s digital vision and maturing our enterprise digital capabilities and expertise while creating new customer-centric products and services for members and partners.
Chetan is a visionary leader who has repeatedly developed high performing teams to work towards a common vision and purpose. During his 18-year career at Nationwide, Chetan successfully delivered several of the industry’s largest transformations, with more than $1B in investment towards creating single core platforms for Policy, Claims, Customer and Data.
In his tenure as the leader of digital and innovation, Chetan and his teams have advanced Nationwide’s strategy through digitization of customer journeys and the development of a robust innovation portfolio. Leading with a people-first philosophy, Chetan has fostered a culture of experimentation and collaboration, guided by a strong commitment to customer-centricity and focus on technology based innovation. His ability to anticipate and embrace change has accelerated innovation efforts and amplified key business outcomes for Nationwide.
Chetan holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from The Ohio State University, a Master of Science in Information Systems from Miami University, and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Muskingum University.
---------
Guest Quote
“Digital is when your consumers of your solutions, be it associates, be it intermediaries, be it your end customers, can get their solutions in real-time, on demand, in the moment. So pause for a second. Why did I say that as a definition? What is the purpose of having something on your mobile app versus not? Because you can do something in the moment.”
---------
Time stamps:
*(00:00) Episode Start
*(01:18) Chetan's career journey
*(10:32) How Nationwide drives innovation
*(16:02) Empowering enterprises with digital fabric
*(19:35) Delivering value through cutting-edge innovation
*(22:48) Challenges and opportunities of GenAI
*(33:28) Crafting a winning digital customer engagement strategy
*(39:18) Boosting employee engagement for better results
*(43:55) Future innovations at Nationwide
--------
Links:
[00:00:00] Ian: In the ever evolving world of business Revolution is underway. Welcome to Hyperconnected Journeys where the future of success begins. Right now, I'm your host Ian Faison, and I'm joined by my co-host and industry leader, Raj Purkayastha, to guide you through the intricacies of network transformation. We're here to be your compass in the realm of network transformation in a world that's customer centric and interconnect.
Join us on unleashing the Power of Hyperconnectivity. Welcome to Hyperconnected Journeys. I'm Ian Faison, CEO of casting studios. And as always, I'm joined by my co host Raj. Raj, how are you?
[00:00:38] Raj: Good, yeah, and how are you doing?
[00:00:41] Ian: Excited to chat with our good pal, Chetan today. Chetan, how are you?
[00:00:45] Chetan: I'm doing fantastic. Thank you for asking.
[00:00:49] Ian: Yeah, we've, uh, uh, got to know each other over, uh, over the last, uh, you know, prep call and getting into today. And I've obviously interviewed you in the past, so super excited to dig into Uh, a lot of what we're going to talk about today, which is hyperconnected journeys, as always. Um, in addition to, you know, building a digital foundation, enterprise was different in Nationwide and all that.
But zooming out, tell us a little bit about your current role as CIDO at Nationwide.
[00:01:17] Chetan: All right, well, thanks for having me on this, Ian, and always a pleasure to talk to you and Raj. Uh, like you said, it's not, uh, the first time that we've got connected. You know, my role at Nationwide, uh, is kind of, I think of it kind of in three buckets if you will.
The first is, you know, really driving and championing innovation across the company. And one of the things that I'm really clear about it is, it's not innovation's organization to innovate. It's the enterprise, the complete organization to innovate. But we're here to serve as catalysts for that, for us to force the thinking, for us to champion areas that need A little bit more for us to think longer term and force that dialogue, which, by the way, is not always easy.
So that's the first thing I think about is really accelerating, championing, and acting as a catalyst. The second is when I think about emerging capabilities. Emerging trends, and specifically, the adoption of those in large enterprises, it's sometimes a challenge. Not because people don't want to do it, not because they don't have the ability to do it, it's because they don't have the time and the thinking to do it.
And so, for me, an example of that today is generative AI. And that's one of the things that I am accountable to help drive. In partnership with the businesses, in partnership with the technology platform leaders, but really kind of make that come from concept to reality. Third is I have enterprise digital assets under my accountability.
So what is that? That really is enterprise mobile application, enterprise texting capabilities. Mobile, uh, responsive, web, consumer front end facing, along with enterprise digital assets. We actually have a digital platform that we want partners to engage with SART. So for me, it's to apply the thought leadership from my team to keep driving that forward, along with operating that most efficiently as a single set of applications for the enterprise with economies of scale.
And economies of scale. Just to summarize it, I think of those three elements as being core to my function and role.
[00:04:01] Ian: And so Chetan, I'm curious, how did you, how did you get into, uh, into this role? You know, obviously IT has been sort of responsible for innovation, like you said, either, either part and partial or, or as a catalyst, uh, for, you know, quite a bit now, but that's taken sort of an accelerated, uh, direction.
And then now here you sit, uh, you know, there aren't a ton of companies that have a chief innovation and digital officer, um, but maybe there should be more.
[00:04:27] Chetan: Yeah, you know, I think, I think it's, it's kind of interesting if you will. And yeah, a lot of credit to obviously, you know, my, my leaders here at Nationwide to see kind of innovation and digital really as a mutually symbiotic relationship to accelerate it.
The businesses. I mean, that would be one. The second is, we often, you don't see people coming from technology to lead an innovation function. You know, my background has been in technology for over 20 years, 25 years. You know, really been the CIO for a couple of the business units at Nationwide, ran large programs and I would say when I say large, I'm talking about very large and really executing to always a vision.
And so what that did for me. I think it opened the aperture for me to have a very strong technology foundation, yet though, a very strong understanding of our businesses that we work in. And so it's like this, what I consider a nice, good understanding of the business with a stronger understanding of technology and trying to see how the two can work hand in hand.
When it comes to digital and innovation. So it's, you know, you see in the industry, a lot of folks who are running innovation are typically from a very much a product background, you know, in our space, that's what our businesses do. They innovate on the products day in and day out. So I think. We have to know that in the space of innovation, we're really, as A, as an extender, reducing all these tools to our disposal, and really, from my perspective, getting a really good, deep understanding of the business.
and understanding of technology and the environment. So I felt like I've always sat in that very much a sweet spot between the two. And very often if you ask people who didn't know me and I came out of a meeting, they probably didn't know if I was a technologist or if I was a business representation.
So I think those are the things that kind of helped. If you will, put me in this role.
[00:06:47] Ian: Then how do you think about connectivity as it relates to, you know, innovation and achieving business objectives?
[00:06:55] Chetan: Look, there's no point in doing innovation, there's no point in anything, the companies understand achieving business objectives.
And so to me, you've got to be very clear with the outcomes in mind. Now, that doesn't mean that there's not space for experimentation or there's not space for improvement. Exploration, but you have to be very disciplined. In fact, exploration and experimentation require more discipline than not, because it's easy for them to own you versus you owning it.
And by that, I mean, what's the right time to say, we've done too much exploration in the area. When do you say that this initiative is not going to work? I think about hypotheses a lot. One of the things we talk a lot about is hypothesis based innovation. And at what point do you have enough signals that the hypothesis is going to eventually be something we want to invest in more?
Or do we say enough is enough? So to me, The first and most important thing is where do you start? What's the front end of innovation? And the way we've laid it out here nationwide, it's really three areas that you originate and innovation originates on. What I consider customer led innovation, business led innovation, i. e. strategy led innovation, And finally, tech. And so the predominant areas that I'm leaning in very heavily on is customer and strategy determination. Where does a strategy outline our beliefs? What does a strategy allow relative to our long term growth area? And then what can we do in the shorter term to cement those hypotheses or beliefs in the strategy and help us long term innovate?
On the customer side, we know customers have pain points. Whether it's nationwide products, services, and we really think about ways that are exponential to today's solutions in helping them see nationwide as a primary company to help their protection needs. So, from my perspective, those are the two genesis areas of customer based innovation and strategy.
Now, third, technology. Often we use the phrase, is technology a look, a hammer looking for a name? And by the way, I think one out of 10 times, it's okay to do that. Not all the time, because it is okay. When can you experiment for a bit? Do you know the technology is the right tool for the deal versus I am not looking for the deal.
And so those are the three areas that I think about how we need to think about the front end of innovation and connecting all of that ultimately to customer needs, business strategy needs, And then, of course, the technology based innovation. Those are the connections, that's how I think about it. Is that helpful?
[00:10:07] Ian: Fantastic. All right, let's get to our first segment, building a digital foundation for enterprises. Because y'all are enterprise, uh, specifically, you know, like insurance, financial services, is there anything different of, uh, you know, how you think about, uh, This stuff versus, you know, some of your peers who are at smaller companies or maybe not in insurance or fintech or financial services or anything like that.
[00:10:31] Chetan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Ian, I think, I think there is, there is, um, look, there's elements of similarities, there's elements of differences. I think what's really important to know is who your stakeholders are relative to your consumers of your digital solutions. So I think about digital agenda in three fronts.
What are you doing for your associates? What are you doing for our customers? In this case, customers being intermediaries for us along with the end customers. And finally, what are you doing to digitize the company? Those are the three things. If I had it my way to define digital, it may not be evident the way I would describe in terms of people thinking that that's the simple way to define digital.
I think of it pretty simple, simply. Digital is when you can, when, when your consumers of your solutions, be it associates, be it Be it intermediaries, be it your end customers can get their solutions in real time on demand in the moment.
So pause for a second. Why did I say that as a definition? What is the purpose of having something on your mobile app versus not? Because you can do something in the moment. You can go online and just do book your ticket. Go on your app and book a ticket, or you want to go on your app and change your policy, change your beneficiary if you're a nationwide customer, for like a life insurance, or change your withdrawal if you're a NIOD member, or change your car driver if you are auto holder, but you're doing it at the moment.
You happen to use a phone because that's the easiest, frictionless path without having to call somebody and spend maybe 15 minutes, it's taking you two minutes. If you didn't take it two minutes, if it took you 45 minutes to do the mobile ad versus three minutes to make the call, more likely you're going to make the call.
And so to me, where I am in all of this is, we have to create capabilities. that are available in a real time world, in a real time nature, in an on demand world, in an on demand nature, and in the moment that somebody wants to crew a transaction. And to me, when you can do those three things really, really well, you've actually achieved, I think, being a digital company.
Because you need digital capabilities to do those things. It's no secret that people think about companies like Amazon when they think about digital. And the reason they do, what is Amazon trying to do? Even delivery, what are they trying to do? They're trying to shorten the delivery cycle. Every day, same day delivery, four hour delivery.
It's all getting to the real time world. You now know if something's delivered, then put a notification in your Alexa. Because it's all about getting to know things in that time. So what is different? That's all that's common. Those are the common elements. What's different is we are an intermediate business for most of what we do at Nationwide.
What's different? We are sometimes a business that is misunderstood or a lack of understanding. It's a mystery. Most people you say, what is an annuity? How many people can articulate that apart from, yeah, maybe I get some kind of money every month or every so often, right? How do you plan for annuity?
What's the right strategy for annuity? What's the rights? Commercialized insurance, excess and surplus insurance. These are, we are in a complex industry that the industry has not been able to demystify. So I think the demystification process over time is going to happen through digital, through things like generative AI, because now you can take the complex language and simplify it for a broader set.
So when you're intermediated like we are, The digital means slightly different. That's one big difference is the nature of our distribution. Then it's the nature of the complexity. And finally, in our industry, amongst, I would say compared to many other industries, you're probably the value chain, which is really where this profit and loss that happens is in the underwriting, it's the risk selection, it's in the actuarial science of things.
And sometimes that's not understood as well. Hopefully I gave you what I think is similarities where the consumer wants everything real time, people want the digital access, they want the optionality on different channels, but fundamentally they want that. On company differences, it's how we intermediate it and where value gets added.
[00:15:48] Ian: You all have talked about, uh, this framework about digital fabric for enterprises. Can you talk a little bit about digital fabric and what that means and how enterprises can use it?
[00:16:00] Raj: Sure. Um, you know, it's very interesting what Chetan just shared with us because You know, he talked about instantaneous, he talked about how customers needs and strategic needs should actually come before technology needs, right?
Now, if you think about what happened last weekend, you know, I'm sure everybody got impacted in. Some manner, per se, and that's because we are living in a hyper connected ecosystem, right, uh, and there's a digital fabric which is kind of connecting everybody, right, and if you think about this hyper connected ecosystem, it's, it's heavily connected.
You know, tech dependent. It's, it's where applications, enterprise, infrastructure, processes, skill, everything comes together to help, you know, what Chetan just mentioned, uh, you know, customers to collaborate with other people, right? Uh, it may be associates, it may be the intermediaries, and so on and so forth.
Now, I'm sure when Chetan thinks about it, he thinks about delivering experiences, right? And, and that experience is for His, uh, you know, intermediaries, his, his workforce, his customers, his partners. And he has to think about multiple areas which needs to come together, like collaboration, cloud, edge, IOT, you know, he talked about Gen AI.
And these all coming together has incredible level of complexity, which he needs to address. Plus, he needs to think about the organization silos and so on and so forth, right? So when Tata Communication thinks about the digital fabric, we talk about how we can bring all the different platforms, all the tools, all the solutions and technology together and simplify it for the CIOs and the CDIOs, right?
Because at the end of the day, what Chetan talked about really loved it, right? That he talked about that, hey, technology is, is not the top one. What is in the top is, is what the customers are asking for. What is on the top is what the strategy is asking for. Technology should lead to it. Uh, Chetan, if I, if I misread what you're saying right now, you, you can correct me.
[00:18:30] Chetan: You got it, Raj. You got it. Yeah. I mean, that's certainly, certainly the way we think about it. That's how you connect to those outcomes. And, you know, the other thing that is really, really important. You know, all of this is balancing the short and the long term and, and, or, or appropriately, um, intentionally managing how much you're trying to test out for the long term for strategy, how much for the short term.
But you cannot do that without knowing where you want your growth, where you want your profitability, where you want your expenses. Those key, key metrics as,
[00:19:11] Ian: Yeah, I'm curious, um, what are some examples of innovation that you, that you've done, uh, or some projects, uh, some things, whether it's on the customer side or internally, uh, that, that achieves some particularly good, uh, results? And we can, we can jump into Gen AI here now, or we could save that for, for next.
[00:19:31] Chetan: Let me address the first part of your question, because it's often the question that, you know, Innovation leaders get, which is what's been done, what's been delivered, and I will tell you, I cannot be prouder for what, um, the team at Nationwide, collectively, and I use that word intentionally, the team at Nationwide, not my team only, across the Nationwide, um, organization, what we've done, um, certainly parts of it being part of my team, um, But I think this is something that's a team sport.
And let me just give you a few examples. We just actually as recently as last week, really under the sponsorship of a live business, we rolled out a whole new way to illustrate live new policies, which is going to be, I think, game changing in the industry. Um, so that's part of what I consider what I call value chain innovation tied to the strategic outcomes of knowing that we have very, we need to have a simpler, more easy way to illustrate new life insurance applications, right?
Real, I'm giving you something which is very real. This is not some conceptual abstract that's going to be out there, a certain number of our advisors are going to use that. Number two, we rolled out as early as earlier this year, something called Home Journey Guide. What's really important for our customer base is to value and protect their homes.
Well, we've always thought about insurance to be a risk mitigation, but what are we doing here? Our prevention and what us really help the customers understand. Is the value of those going up or down? So we rolled out something called Home Journey Guide that's available for, we actually have agents as well, they can talk to their associates, their customers about it.
We've got, we rolled that out earlier. We experimented late last year with parametric insurance in a couple of states, knowing that in the world of Today is climate change and other things. Should we think about more of our parametric insurance? That was rolled out last year. Last week, I think we, we launched something which is our proactive hail notification for our customers.
If they're on the path for hail damage to their cars, can we proactively give them that warning and for them to move it out of the way? You know, so these are things that, you know, we are on the side of the customers. This tells you, then I can go on. The list is long. Um, and I'm, and I'm really proud of what, you know, the collective teams have done.
We rolled out, you know, and Asia was a leader in telematics in our personal ads group. Uh, we've done a lot with rolling out, um, smart home devices, you know, we've actually prevented fires from occurring in people's homes because again, prevention side. Because of this, that we've rolled out in people's homes.
Um, and they get an alert and they, we've actually got some testimonials from folks. So the list is long. It's not short. Um, and our belief is not to go out there and my group is going to go create the next big giant P& L. We're here for the businesses for the most part.
[00:22:35] Ian: Those are great. Let's get into Gen AI. Uh, what are y'all doing?
[00:22:42] Chetan: I mean, like many other companies, you know, we are looking to see, I would just break it down into three things. The first is, Really making the understanding what and where are the large language models going to be and how can we leverage them across our groups. We know that the space is growing fast.
One day model, one model is good, another model is better. The evolution and the speed of the innovation within the large language model space is something we have to keep an open and keen eye towards. So we are certainly looking at that. We've got a slew and plethora of use cases across the world. Our businesses and our functional groups, whether it's claims, whether it's with our annuities group, um, we experiment, you know, right now we still made the call to have a human in the loop and, uh, we have this concept of human machine teaming, concept of the bionic operating models.
So really what we're looking at is use cases across those groups to see how can we get them more productive, more efficient, virtual assistants, can we really get to a place where we can make those more ubiquitous? and valuable. And the real point there is augmented intelligence, not really as artificial intelligence.
That's the way we think about it is how we're using this to augment our frontline associates or our back end folks to really get more productive. And then eventually, over time, can you really get data that's internal with the language models to play in a way that we can really make them way more powerful in decision making for our, for our associates.
[00:24:36] Ian: Anything that surprised you at this, at this point in time? Like, something that maybe people are using or maybe something people are not using as much? Like, I'll give an example just on my side. Uh, and I saw this somewhere. I think it's Benedict Evans was talking about how, uh, it's like 100 million people or whatever the number is have tried ChatGPT.
But, uh, I don't know the exact numbers, but a large percentage of those have only tried it once. And then they sort of haven't come back to it yet. Sort of speaking to the like, what is the use case for the, you know, the every person? It's like, well, maybe there's not one. For business, a little different, right?
You know, marketing or sales or things like that, obviously very clear use cases. But anyway, it's just on the usage versus non usage side, what has surprised you?
[00:25:23] Chetan: You know, I think, you know, I think earlier on there was a lot of usage on certain things. And then I think when, when, when the accuracy of certain functions is not there, you start seeing a drop down in usage patterns.
And so to me, I think what's really, I won't say surprised me as much as I think it's not as fast as I would have expected has been how you can take your internal data. and really tune it with large language models. That's, you know, that's taking a little more time. And I think testing of these solutions, you know, has taken a lot more time than expected.
On the flip side, I feel what's getting clearer and clearer is how we can actually make these solutions to be adopted at mass, but within certain segments of your organization. And so I think that's getting clearer. Um, I think we all jumped in on use cases, use cases, and I think now we understand where it could be true value.
[00:26:33] Ian: Roger, what about you? You know, uh, you obviously talk to a lot of, uh, clients, you know, and being a provider of IT infrastructure services. What challenges are you seeing with Gen AI, uh, or machine learning, um, for folks that maybe, you know, haven't modernized their infrastructure yet?
[00:26:52] Raj: Brilliant question, uh, Ian.
Um, let's, let's, uh, kind of think about what Gen AI today is, right? Gen AI today is where You have large language models, you have, you know, very high powered, uh, your, you know, GPUs and NPUs, which are there in the data center, right? Think about tomorrow, Yen, where, you know, your phone, uh, and your laptop is going to have a GPU and an NPU.
By the way, that's, that's becoming real because if you look at what Intel is doing, they're releasing something known as the Lunar Lake, uh, which has, uh, You know, 100 tops in terms of capacity, which means it'll have a GPU and an NPU, which means that your laptop is going to have a GPU and an NPU going forward, right?
Now, today's problems is where, you know, uh, Chetan just talked about what's, what's the use case. Is getting, you know, a, a second glance, if I may use that word. And first is, you know, where it can it be used, where it is giving more value and so on and so forth. In tomorrow's world, when each customer is going to have A-A-G-P-U on, on, uh, on the phone or on the laptop, the problems are going to be multifold, right?
Now that's where, uh, specifically if an enterprise does not have their entire digital infrastructure optimized or modernized, there will be kinks in the armor, right? Uh, you know, think about it like this. I'll give you a simple example. Uh, you're in an office and, uh, that office is Wi Fi. Now, you have generated a model which says, if the Wi Fi goes down, do not use this room.
Go and use some other room. You know, Chetan is sitting in a room at this point of time, do not use that room. Use some other room because the LAN is down or whatever, right? It should go and pop up in Chetan's, uh, you know, outlook, uh, and his calendar should tell him that. Now, uh, The Gen AI model or the AI model is telling Chetan that, but if the infra behind does not support things like that, which means the other room should have the necessary, you know, lighting, bandwidth, blah, blah, blah, which means that you do not have a digital infra which is then helping the model to implement what it is saying, then, you know, it doesn't make any sense, right?
And that's where. The baseline is extremely important. The baseline in terms of what is there as, say, your LAN, what is there as your WAN, what have you done? You know, in terms of modernizing your LAN, your WAN becomes extremely important, right? And I'm sure Chetan would be kind of thinking about, hey, you know, is it really that, uh, you know, I have to actually think about connecting the dots?
And I'm, I'm kind of sure that, you know, this question has hit him like multiple times till now. Chetan, if I'm mistaken, please correct me.
[00:30:04] Chetan: No, I think you're, I think you're absolutely right. I think the, having a modern set of infrastructure applications are also important, you know. And if you think about the journey that Nationwide has been on, we invested a lot in transforming our core applications.
You really couldn't do truly a digital transformation without having your application modernized. You couldn't create an API layer. which could then be somewhat, you know, modular, you know, single page apps. I'm just kind of going into details here for a minute. You can't do that when you have a very big monolithic backend application, if you will.
And so, same thing with, you know, cloud, if you're on a cloud journey, Are your applications architected for the cloud, taking advantage of infrastructure, taking advantage of, you know, hyperscaling, if you will. And so all of these things require a complete architecture view. And so what you're alluding to is going beyond just the consumer end, but what's all the back end?
Thank you. Thank you. Communication, building infrastructure, etc. that's needed to be able to take maximum value.
[00:31:25] Raj: 100%, you know, I think about it like this, Chetan, that, you know, you're in the room, say the, you have efficient energy systems and your AC is switched off when, when this room is not being used, right?
What if the AC is not switched on when you walk in? And it's not connected, right? That's what hyper connected ecosystem is all about, where everything comes together, even the building management system, the IOT systems, blah, blah, blah. Everything comes together and helps the organization or the enterprise to also meet, for example, the sustainability goals, right?
And that's something that is being discussed at boardrooms, I'm sure, for every company at this point of time.
[00:32:10] Ian: I mean, if my AC doesn't come on, I'm not making this podcast. Let's just say that. If the AC's not coming on in my office, uh, I can't, what am I going to do, podcast while I'm sweating? Come on. Uh, no way.
All right, let's get to our next segment. Let's talk about driving loyalty through customer engagement. Jayden, you know, obviously, y'all, a digital first insurance provider, uh, you had mentioned sort of how much you think about customer engagement. Is there, is there any sort of, like, metrics in your, in your strategy that you really look at and then you sort of, like, build projects around sort of trying to improve those things?
You know, you mentioned something like, you know, proactive hail and things like that. It's like, as complex as it could be, you're predicting the weather, right? So it's like, you know, these are things that, uh, are, are really as hard as it possibly could be. Um, but you know, that makes a big difference for, uh, for obviously customer, um, experience customer engagement.
So. Just curious, like how do you look at metrics and, and, uh, uh, and, and then, you know, project around those things?
[00:33:15] Chetan: Yeah. Look, um, I think the simplest way to describe this by getting to elaborate is we look at adoption, adoption of the digital solution, digital channels. And so to me, um, that's what I consider a lagging indicator or leading indicator.
Once you get through, okay, our customers actually leveraging the capability, what's, why not? If it's not, it's usually friction. Some level of friction or some level of lack of awareness or lack of knowledge. One of those, those are two of the highest categories. So we look at adoption and when we don't see adoption numbers, then we go back into kind of peel the onion to why, why, why, why.
Um, and then the leading indicator, the lagging indicators on that is usually, uh, things like expense reduction, things like cycle time. You know, how long something will take from the first course of loss claim to actually getting that, uh, Estimate completed for a claim. You know, you look to see kind of what the cycle time as an example.
So we think of adoption from digital capabilities. We think about cycle time. Then we have what we consider overarching to see things at scale is a number of journeys we're working on. We have listed a number of journeys. We have over, you know, 500 different journeys across the company. You know, what journeys are we prioritizing?
How many are we actively working? And then what is the outcomes against each of these journeys relative to adoption and other KPIs that you might have. And so really you start with putting a foundation in place and then you try, you know, kind of go operate one after the other.
[00:34:51] Ian: And Raj, what are you seeing in terms of best practices for, for customer engagement?
[00:34:57] Raj: Oh, uh, you know, if you think about specifically the industry that Chetan is from, the insurance industry, right? The first one Chetan talked about, which is customer communication. Uh, you know, you should be able to tell, for example, when your insurance is coming up for renewal, And Chetan told me something new, you know, next time when there's a hail, I'll, I'll hear from Nationwide that, hey, there's a hail, move your car.
[00:35:25] Ian: That's pretty insane, by the way. It's really, it's just.
[00:35:28] Chetan: By the way, that's an experimentation though, but that's the point, right? It's an experimenting in a certain, in a sub, sub region, but.
[00:35:35] Ian: But that's, I mean, it's really, I mean, I lived in Colorado, there was a lot of hail. Uh, and, uh, I definitely had all the dings and marks to prove it.
But, but it is, it is, you know, same thing with the, with the roof, right, is, is, uh, you know, you had to repair your roof every, you know, so many years, and we used our insurance to do that, and, uh, I'm sure it was nationwide, I have no doubt. And, uh, uh, but you know, those things, you know, you can't put a, can't put a,
[00:36:03] Raj: that actually differentiates companies.
[00:36:05] Ian: Yeah, without a doubt.
[00:36:06] Raj: I was like, wow, you know, somebody is thinking differently and I love it.
[00:36:09] Ian: Well, with my marketer hat on too, right? It's like. That's the sort of thing that the ad writes itself. I mean, you can imagine the nationwide jingle, uh, you know, uh, with, uh, with, you know, with hail on there. But I think that that is one of the things that, that stems from a real world problem, a business, you know, a real world problem that is a business problem, right?
That customers have. And it works way back into an experimental phase that like, yeah, maybe it could never actually be fully done. But, uh, but even, you know, you figure like. When you're thinking about customer experience, 30 seconds could matter if you're like, well, all we could do is we could just send a push notification when the hailstorm is imminent and you save a minute of time that person can run out, you know, run out of their, their house, get their car in the garage or something like that.
Like those are the like, you know, minutes matter, seconds matter. Those are the sort of things that are so exciting. 100%.
100%. And yeah, and that's where the, you know, I, I'd say in the insurance industry, what we're seeing. Uh, now automated customer support, right? You talked about push notification, and now utilizing multiple CPaaS solutions, you can push those notification to customers without human intervention, right?
And, and many a times the customer, as a customer, I'd like to chat with, with somebody, right? And, and that chatting may again be with a bot, right? How do you, how are you automating and Chetan touched upon that. Uh, the next one is when, when we think about insurance industry, you know, claim processing, how are you streamlining it, becomes extremely important.
Policy management and renewal, how are you doing that? And, and, so, In all these things, you know, technology plays a very important role and specifically the CPaaS and the UCaaS space plays a very, very important role in helping customers, right? Whether it's a push notification, whether it's a contact center, whether it's Omni channel that you talk about.
All these things come together and help ensure us to give more value back to the customers. Yeah, and Chetan, you know, one thing that I forgot to mention is also about fraud, right? And, and fraud prevention and fraud protection is something that we are hearing. A lot of issues talking about and, and, uh, you know, how do you help customers ensure that you, you're not falling in the trap.
So you know, again, technology can play a very important role, but taking back to what Chetan mentioned in the beginning, right? It's all about what the customer wants, what the strategy is, and then how technology is going to help that. Right? So that's, that's the way we also look at it.
What about, uh, employee experience?
How do you think about, sort of, like, unified communications, uh, employee experience, and, and, uh, uh, and your role there in innovation? I know we touched on it a little bit, but
[00:39:04] Chetan: Yeah, you know, I think, um, you know, while, yes, you know, it is a lot, but the technology, I think, employee Experience also hits our HR group, and there's a cross functional group that actually sits to look to see the employee engagement and, you know, employee engagement and employee connectivity of employee experience from a technology or digital perspective.
They're not all disconnected, and we actually measure, you know, whether associates have our, the right tools and resources to execute their work, and that's heavily on the technology front. And so we see what we can do. You know, as a company, uh, that doesn't sit within my realm of accountability, but as a company, we certainly see that.
And we do UX, UX runs just like we do for customer. We do that even for specifically for associates and see where we can make improvements in the UX or our capabilities. Um, you know, at the end of the day, um, I think you're seeing more and more emphasis now, especially when you think about Gen AI and data.
I think that's where it really needs to improve the enterprise experience. because you need data at your fingertips to make the right decisions as rapidly as possible. I think that's the most important piece that companies are going to start thinking about. Maybe do their associates have the right data at the right time to make the decisions that are needed.
[00:40:35] Ian: And Raj, what about you? How do you think about unified communications?
[00:40:40] Raj: Um, you know, when you think about unified communications, think about it like this, that in a hyper connected ecosystem, right? what's important is human to human, human to machine and others, right? And Chetan just talked about how data is becoming a very important or uh, you know, binding layer out here.
Now, Again, I'm sure if you look at very large organizations, one of the things that you'll see is there is there are silos, right? There are a lot of things which which are there and I've seen companies which have teams which have zoom, which has, you know, a whole lot of different UC implemented, which doesn't help One employee talk to the other employee, right?
So that's, that's the kind of islands that are there. Uh, in, in, for example, you know, if, if Nationwide tomorrow, uh, you know, buys another company, uh, merges and acquisition is very real. And, and say, Chetan uses Zoom at this point of time and the other company uses Teams, then there's an island which is, which is getting formed, right?
This is where, you know, workforce collaboration has some potential. How do I put it? You know, some fragmented architecture and some hurdles to cross, right? And, and that is where the, it's very important that all these things come together, specifically in a hybrid world. And you're also ready for the future because, you know, tomorrow, somebody like Chetan cannot say, okay, this is it, I'm not going to do any more changes, right?
There will be other changes which is going to come in because there will be mergers, there will be acquisitions, there will be growth, there'll be something new which will come in. So how is your Uh, you know, architecture flexible, it can co exist with something else, so that at the end of the day, me as an employee, I can just go in and watch it and talked about some, sometime earlier, right?
I can open my phone and instantaneously do what I want, which is collaborating with somebody else. I want the thing to be done. You know, I should be able to do it, uh, without, uh, you know, escalating to somebody or waiting for 45 minutes, right? Whether it's remote workforce, whether it is training, uh, whether it's about compliance and so on and so forth.
So that's, that's what, you know, EN is, is what we are seeing with, with a lot of companies.
[00:43:11] Ian: All right. Let's get to our final segment here. Vision for the future. We're going to pull out the old crystal ball, look ahead, um, Chen, what's on, what's on the, uh, what's on the horizon for Nationwide? I know you can't spill all the beans here, but, uh, what's on, what's on the, uh, on the docket, what are you working on, uh, and how are you thinking about, you know, innovating over the next 24 months?
[00:43:39] Chetan: Yeah, I think, you know, we kind of covered most of it right already, but if I had to kind of just say, you know, The most important thing to me is keep getting closer and closer with our business goals. And really, really driving that from that customer and strategy led innovation is I guess that's the terminology that I use.
Um, you know, we will continue to push on using generative AI as well in the context of those business outcomes, in the context of the customer journeys, in the context of our intermediary journeys, um, and that will continue to play. Our mission at Nationwide is to protect people, the people. Businesses and futures with extraordinary care.
And for me, for my team, for us, is we take that to heart and say what is extraordinary care and how can we innovate for that piece? And then we think about protection. Where does the world of protection head? Towards prevention, towards other things. So we'll continue to explore those areas. And from a purely digital standpoint, we've got to go back to when I started this conversation.
With the capabilities we have, we've got to make it real time, on demand, and in the moment. And keeping that in mind, we've got to keep driving.
[00:45:07] Ian: Raj, what about you? Um, looking forward in the crystal ball. What are you seeing?
[00:45:12] Raj: Well, I couldn't agree with Chetan more, right. At the end of the day, whether I'm a customer and I'm an employee, I want to collaborate.
I want to have things on my fingertips. I don't want to wait, right. And that's that's the fast pace of the world that we're living in at this point of time. So, When I look at, uh, my CIO or my CDIO, that's my expectation. And, uh, you know, when I speak to a CIO and CDIO, that is their expectation from me, right?
So, uh, you know, when, when we think about technology, therefore, that's where, Uh, what I believe is, build the foundation first. The foundation needs to be extremely strong, and on that you start building other things, right? Uh, whether it's, it's, it's about, uh, how is your network, how is your security, how is your cloud, how is your UCCC architecture, uh, and how they are, uh, you know, if, if your company strategies that move to cloud do not keep things within yourself, how are you doing that?
And how are you driving that? And then start bringing in other things, right? What's happening in the network space? What's happening in the cloud space? What's happening in the UC space? What's happening here and there? And then bringing all the things together, whether it's in the form of, you know, uh, say, for example, JNI that, That's caught everybody's attention at this point of time, or, you know, you think about quantum, which is going to come up later, and, and so on and so forth, right?
Whether it's, by the way, there's a whole lot of things which is happening in quantum, whether it's quantum security, quantum computing, and so on and so forth. Which is going to catch attention going forward, but it's not going to be in the next 12 months or so, right? It's going to take around three or four cycles.
But at the end of the day, if it is not addressing what me as an employee want, what me as a customer want, doesn't make sense. I couldn't agree more.
[00:47:17] Ian: This has been a fantastic conversation for our listeners. Go check out Nationwide helping protect families, businesses, and futures. Go to nationwide. com. Uh, Chetan, any final thoughts? Anything to plug?
[00:47:28] Chetan: Oh, no. Thank you very much. And I like what you said. Go to nationwide. com. Um, you know, there's a lot of great things happening at Nationwide. And I'm proud to be a part of the company that's going to be around for the next hundred years and, and, uh, already been here close to that.
[00:47:45] Ian: Fantastic. Thanks so much for joining and, uh, take care. Thank you, Stephen. Thanks, Ian. Thank you for joining us on Hyperconnected Journeys, where we explore the minds of technology innovators future proofing their digital infrastructure. Go ahead and leave us a comment to share your thoughts on today's episode.
Be sure to hit that subscribe button wherever you listen to podcasts to stay updated on our latest episodes. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, unleash your own power of hyperconnectivity.