Understanding the Impacts of Digital Transformation in the Service Industry: the Mutation of the Back-Office Function in the Insurance Sector

John Levesque , Cédric Dalmasso (1) , Sophie Hooge (1)

1 CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3

This paper aims to investigate how the digital transformation of the insurance sector has impacted its Back Office function, and how the evolution of the core Claims Administrator profession affects the larger service production process. Our work seeks to confront the established organizational design literature of customer interactionbased activities, with more recent literature on major contexts of service disruption, such as digital transformation and the Covid-19 pandemic. The study is founded on empirical data obtained from semi-structured interviews with Back Office practitioners from three large insurance firms based in France, which was analyzed using an inductive qualitative content methodology. The paper identifies three key results: 1) the multi-dimensional impacts of digital transformation have caused a paradigm shift for the professionals of the BO function; 2) the brutal and unforeseen nature of 2020 and 2021 nationwide Covid-19 lockdowns did not translate into specific transformations of the BO function but accelerate the pre-existing ones from digital transformation implementation (mainly, on resources and tools Management; training and structure); 3) the evolution of the BO function is marked by a shift towards a new dual customer interaction model that significantly transforms the insurance sector’s service production process model.

Mots clés: Back office; Digital Transformation; Customer Interaction Model; Organizational Design; Insurance sector

Domaines: Gestion et management

John Levesque, Cédric Dalmasso, Sophie Hooge. Understanding the Impacts of Digital Transformation in the Service Industry: the Mutation of the Back-Office Function in the Insurance Sector. IPDMC 2022, EIASM, Jul 2022, Hamburg, Germany. ⟨hal-04068150⟩