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Page 77 GO IT ALONE!
past, if you worked with people in other locations, you had to physically send them pictures. Each change required another set of pictures and introduced delays into the process. Now, we can be looking at a prospective rendering via the Internet, the designer can be located anywhere, and we can agree upon and instantly see changes to the design in real time. You can’t underestimate the importance of this kind of collaborative tool, particularly since we were rushing to meet a delivery deadline. We are working with specialists we have never met face-to-face. It’s just impossible to imagine this kind of thing happening just a few years ago.
Irwin believes that in certain situations, small firms relying on outsourced teams have an advantage over their larger competitors. “Typically, it takes eight to ten months to bring a product to market. The demand for the i-TOP was so high that we did it in four months. This, in itself, is a remarkable accomplishment.”
Case Study: Marketing in the Health Insurance Business
A final example of unbundling and rebundling resulting from the growth of the Internet is the rise of financial services—including health insurance—sold through Internet-based comparison services. The largest player in this arena is eHealthInsurance (www.eHealthInsurance.com). Here’s how it works: For individual health insurance companies, a major source of new policies is the aggregator, such as eHealthInsurance, which provides consumers with extraordinary choice among many plans from top health insurance companies in each state. Through its Web site, eHealthInsurance leads prospective customers through more than 4,000 policies from over 140 health insurance companies nationwide to compare
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GO IT ALONE! Copyright 2004 by Bruce Judson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
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