Real World Solutions the Focus at ACORD

With the “Real World Solutions” theme, the annual ACORD Conference will take place May 19-21 at Walt Disney World’s Dolphin Resort in Orlando, Fla.

The theme will focus on the role of standards for insurance and reinsurance corporate business strategies, forced to consider new trading partners, global forces, new marketplaces, partnerships and competition.

Addressing that issue will be John Sculley, a partner at the private investment firm Sculley Brothers LLC. Sculley, who helped bring big brand marketing to the personal computer industry in the early 1980’s, will underscore the value of standards and technology within successful business strategies. Among his remarks, he will be looking at inflection points in the value chain of the insurance and financial services industries where marketing ground rules can be changed and where there is an opportunity to become the number one service in the related industries.

The conference program is slated to help attendees learn how to create a vision, strategy, and plan that can implement those “real world solutions.”

“It will consist of four tracks—Business, Technical, Distribution, and an Implementation Case Studies track which will offer real world examples of practical implementation strategies and the use of standards to enable business,” Denise Garth, vice president, Marketing and Member Services, commented.

Along with the approximately 60 workshops and general sessions, the conference will host the “tradeXpo” of more than 115 solution providers, along with the networking opportunities for the 1,700 or more expected attendees.

Also slated for this year’s event will be new ACORD awards to be given to companies who have either implemented ACORD standards for a particular business process to improve automation, redesigned a business process by using ACORD standards as part of that implementation, or have implemented ACORD standards with the widest number of trading partners.

The 2002 awards program will also recognize early implementers of the P/C Reinsurance/Large Commercial XML 2.0 standards, and implementers of the ACORD/NAILBA and ACORD/NAVA standards.

“Being recognized as a market leader in adopting standards is critical for competing in today’s marketplace,” Gregory Maciag, CEO and president of ACORD, remarked.

The new overall awards, which will recognize implementation of ACORD XML for Life, ACORD MXL for P/C and Reinsurance/Large Commercial EDI and/or XML are: Business Automation Improvement Implementation Award; Business Process Redesign Implementation Award; Trading Partner Implementation Award; Dollar Volume Implementers Award; and Certification Honoree Award.