ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an example of a company taking a high-risk course of action that it thought the business environment and the changing competitive dynamics warranted. The Massachusetts Blue Cross/Blue Shield case study describes how information technology was used in the company's effort to reengineer its organization and, in particular, its approach to marketing. The goals were to reengineer people, systems, and attitude: to empower people to act, and to provide the technology base they needed. Information technology has enabled the company to tap into systems that were 20 years old and to use telemarketing, which though common in the overall industry, represented a major cultural business change to Massachusetts Blue Cross. The marketers knew enough about telemarketing to realize it could be the technological enabler; however, the change required a major organizational shift as well as major information technology shift to support the new business concepts.
