"CRM is a very important business solution. Our [customers] want better tools and capabilities and product options, and they’re driving us into this space," says John Ounjian, senior vice president and CIO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, which recently launched an integration effort similar to Cigna’s. "But there’s a heavy risk involved. How you connect CRM to the back office and bring customers on board makes all the difference. When you stumble, the very credibility of your company is at stake."

Starting Off Behind

Cigna’s facility in Bloomfield, Conn., where Anania spends half her workweek (she spends the other half in Philadelphia), could be mistaken for one of those sprawling, sterile junior highs that scarred the suburban landscape in the ’50s and ’60s. And, in fact, the cluster of glass buildings just outside Hartford is one of America’s oldest office parks, built in 1958.

The dining room where Anania meets a visitor for lunch also seems a throwback to an era when top executives dined in country club elegance. Anania herself is petite and perfectly coiffed in a charcoal suit worn over a pastel tee. She has a gracious, unruffled demeanor, but when asked about her responsibility for the problems with Cigna’s IT transformation, a note of helplessness creeps into her voice. "What could one individual do?" she asks repeatedly. "There’s only so much one person can do."

Anania became CIO and executive vice president of systems for Cigna Corp., the corporate umbrella for three primary divisions?health care, retirement planning and employee benefits?in late 1998, after being hired by the insurance company in 1995 as IS officer for its retirement division. She was promoted to CIO of that division shortly afterward. In 1999, she embarked on an effort to restructure the way the company’s IT staff of 3,000 was aligned in an effort to improve working relationships within the IT community.

At the same time, she began working with Cigna HealthCare on an ambitious plan to consolidate and upgrade its antiquated IT systems, some of them dating back to the original 1982 merger of Philadelphia’s Old Insurance Company of North America and Connecticut General, which created Cigna Corp. The idea was to have an integrated system for enrollment, eligibility and claims processing so that customers would get one bill, medical claims could be processed faster and more efficiently, and customer service reps would have a single unified view of members to accomplish that. This meant the company would have to consolidate its myriad back-end systems for claims processing and billing and integrate them with glitzy new customer-facing apps on the front end. There would actually be two integrated systems, one for customers of Cigna’s managed care offerings (HMOs) and the other for its indemnity products, including its lucrative business of administering self-insured plans for very large employers. (IDG, CIO’s parent organization, is enrolled in Cigna HealthCare.)