Last week I had the privilege to attend Ventiv’s customer conference in San Antonio, Texas. The intimate size and setting of this conference made it very easy to interact with both Ventiv’s senior executives and customers to hear what is happening in the risk management and insurance space. Plus having just recently joined Ventiv, to lead their product marketing team, it was a great opportunity to get the pulse on the market.
The highlight of the event was an excellent keynote from Tammi Jo Shults and her inspiring story from one of the first female naval pilots to hero when she safely landed a commercial jet when the engine blew out mid-flight at 32,000 feet.
I learned a lot from the rest of the conference and my three takeaways were:
- Analytics and AI - The theme of the event was “actionable insights” and it is obvious that analytics and AI are here to stay. There was a lot of positive discussion about Ventiv’s new analytical capabilities. This includes Ventiv Predict, an industry leading solution with a series of pre-built predictive models to optimize claims processing.
- Vendor relationship – Ventiv’s new Global Head of Customer Success, Jonathan Nichols, shared a heartwarming story of his amazing relationship with his teenage daughter. But building on this theme, just as important is the vendor / client relationships. At another recent event I attended, the question “What makes a good vendor?” was put to a panel on industry executives and the overwhelming answer was Trust. Organizations are looking for vendors who are willing to invest either time and / or money to deepen the relationship.
- Innovation – Industry analyst Karen Furtado in her session on “Trends Re-shaping Risk” spoke about how the pace of change through technologies advances is dramatically increasing. This was reaffirmed by Ventiv’s CEO, Salil Donde, in his keynote where he spoke about Ventiv investment in new products and solutions including the upcoming Ventiv One solution.
As I indicated at the beginning of this article, I recently joined Ventiv and I am looking forward to helping Ventiv with its Go-To-Market strategies and product launches. So, to re-quote either Fat Boy Slim or Jesus Jones, depending on your musical tastes, it is great to be Right Here, Right Now.
