Providing key indicators for evaluating the e-business context for improving performance of insurance companies in Iran

Abstract

An insurance industry as the financial services has gone through a tremendous transformation over the past decade. Insurance company's management is facing challenges of innovative information and communication technologies, so implementation of their bodily processes into the new electronic marketplace environment is needed. Transfer to e-insurance will lead to market expansion and will straighten competition between insurance companies. More than one-half of all insurance shoppers today use the web to scout their options, and many further seek to Obtain quotes online. Although there are more than 100 websites that offer insurance services in Iran, but unfortunately they have low financial transactions. To discuss the reasons for this problem, aware of the reasons for the failure of the Iranian insurance websites appears to be essential. This paper aims to identify key performance indicators in the assessment of insurance websites in Iran. By using the Delphi technique, data collected through a survey by questionnaires. This article provides the combined model of Balanced Scorecard with DEMATEL technique, which is rarely being used to evaluate websites in Iran. So 107 effective indicators in each four balanced scorecard perspectives were identified. And causal relationships between four perspectives were identified with DEMATEL technique. The findings show that "financial perspective", has the most important role and followed by "customer", " learning and growth" and "Internal process". In this article, through a quantitative analysis and comprehensive assessment, some key performance indicators on the mechanism of electronic insurance were founded. Also the adequacy of the designed model was evaluated very well using Structural Equation Modeling by the SMART PLS software. We hope that the results of this study help managers monitor the development of insurance websites and to be useful to increase the operational capabilities of e-insurance in Iran and to improve organizational performance and to create a competitive advantage.