April Leadership Council Update

market conditions & regulatory changes

We had an open discussion around the changing environment and how it impacts our business and clients. From high-inflation to the Consolidated Appropriations Act, we were open about what pressures this puts on our business, client expectations and our staff. We will be staying close to these topics in support of our team and clients.

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TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY

Provided an update the technology roadmap and what large initiatives are underway. We’ve listened to employee feedback, and believe our user and client experience will be enhanced by moving away from thin clients…and providing every employee with a laptop. In addition to modernizing our equipment and performance - this will enable more seamless communication with each other and clients - through cameras, microphones. Additionally, we will be moving to Office 365 with some file storage in the cloud.

These are foundational shifts in the way CG approaches technology - and a successful laptop deployment will require several major upgrades to our  existing infrastructure. While this will not be a quick thing, we are      targeting this upgrade later in 2022 — a tentative date will be shared as  soon as we are able. We’ll also be cognizant of workloads and seasonal  busy times.

BUSINESS CONTINUITY

Discussed the recent downtime at one of our carrier partners, West Bend. West Bend had a situation where they were unable to operate for days. Thankfully, West Bend did have a system to communicate with all their agent partners and clients. We discussed how we would handle a similar situation. What if we had a total downtime in a system and it impacted our ability to serve our clients?

We created a plan to make a master client contact list within one tool. Having a centralized list would enable us to quickly communicate with all clients or clients by department should Christensen Group experience a full outage.

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