As the former President of Risk Sciences Group and CIO of Crawford & Company, I took a keen interest in a recent press release indicating that my former company was exiting the “unbundled” RMIS business.  While there was an underlying sadness to see a once great RMIS company moving in a different direction, I was not surprised at this move from a business perspective. I speculated that given the relative size of RSG compared to the parent company, and the expenses required to keep a legacy RMIS system on the cutting edge, why not use RSG’s real strength (great people providing great support) to enhance the offerings of the much larger parent.  I see this as a good strategic move from Crawford’s point of view.

I was confused, however, by one aspect of RSG’s “client-only” press release that seemed out of sync with the heart of the RSG that I knew.  The announcement indicated that RSG had taken the liberty of deciding which system their clients should move to and had, in fact, arrange incentives to make sure their client base went to their preferred vendor.  In fact, there was language in the memo that if a client even compared RMIS vendors in a new system search, the incentives would be immediately rescinded and that RSG would pull some of their transition support services off the table.

This was curious to me and made me wonder “Why would a company seem to care more about the number of its clients transitioning to the new vendor than about taking care of the ultimate RMIS needs of their client base?”  I will not speculate here other than to say that there seems to be a benefit in place that makes volume very important for RSG.  To me – that doesn’t sound like a client centric approach.   As a former RSG’er and Crawford-ite, I can only hope that the client’s needs are first and foremost in this transition.   To say that all of one’s clients are best suited to one vendor would indicate that this preferred vendor, in open market competition, would be the winner in 100% of their head to head competitive sales opportunities.  I know for a fact that this is not even close to the case.  I hope those RSG clients who are not interested in being forced into a pre-determined box will be able to secure good treatment from their current RMIS vendor over the course of this transition.   I know some of these clients personally and I know that there are better options for the more strategic and complex among them.