BOSTON, MA -- (Marketwire) -- 09/24/12 -- Strategy Meets Action (SMA), a leading insurance strategic advisory firm, announced the winners of the SMA Innovation in Action Awards during its first annual SMA Summit at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Boston.

The 2012 winners in the insurer category are GuideOne Insurance and Great American Insurance Group, and SAS in the IT solution provider category for its SAS® Fraud Framework for Insurance solution.

"The quantity and quality of submissions in both the insurer and solution provider categories were indeed remarkable!" said Karen Furtado, SMA Partner. "This confirms that real innovation is occurring in the insurance industry, and much of that innovation is possible because insurers are actively leveraging next-generation technologies."

The SMA Innovation in Action Awards are presented each year to celebrate innovation in the insurance industry. SMA launched this award program to inspire, share, and recognize solutions that enable an insurance company to move beyond modernizing and optimizing to real innovation and transformation, ultimately creating differentiation and competitive advantage. The program spotlights both insurers and solution providers that have successfully implemented solutions that best leverage one or more of these five next-generation (next-gen) technologies: mobile, collaboration, analytics & big data, social media, and cloud.

SMA Innovation in Action Award winner GuideOne Insurance exemplifies what it means to be a data-driven company, where analytics and data enable the standardization and socialization of information, reporting, and metrics across the enterprise. Using the iPartners Insurance Scorecard™ business intelligence (BI) solution, GuideOne Insurance has created an environment for effective decision-making, thereby empowering executives to guide the business by analysis.

"Today, executives, actuarial, claims, underwriting, sales & marketing, and finance have immediate access to current data, reports, and dashboards for informed analysis and improved decision making," said Tom Fischer, SVP and CIO at GuideOne Insurance.

Great American Insurance Group received recognition as an SMA Innovation in Action Award winner for a suite of mobile apps they developed to give equine and trucking customers instant access to claims and billing processes, lists of approved service providers, and coverage verification. Great American was able to conjoin these mobile apps with a transformed, modern core system platform that includes in-house built solutions integrated with purchased packages including Guidewire BillingCenter® and Guidewire ClaimsCenter®.

"A flexible SOA infrastructure and up-to-date core solutions made the integration of these mobile apps much easier," said Jane Bracken, divisional SVP at Great American. "Great American has been able to proactively meet the special needs of our customers. The value extends beyond excellent customer service to competitive advantage."

SAS, the winner in the IT solution provider category, for SAS Fraud Framework for Insurance, provides a cutting-edge solution by combining key next-gen technologies to allow insurers to detect and prevent both opportunistic and organized claims fraud. The SAS Fraud Framework for Insurance supports proactive approaches to fraud detection, prevention, and management, and has successfully been implemented at leading insurers. By combining advanced analytics and social media data, the fraud solution provides insurers with the ability to process large amounts of data from multiple sources (including external social media networks) through a single system.

The insurance company award winners were selected by the partners at SMA. The SMA Insurer Forum, a community of over 200 insurance decision makers and influencers, selected the IT solution provider award winner. The SMA Summit, where participants were given a unique opportunity to experience and explore how next-generation technologies can be used to drive differentiation and value in insurance, provided a perfect time to distinguish those that have demonstrated exemplary innovation.

Inquiries for additional information about the award program or the 2012 winners should be directed to Karen Furtado, SMA Partner, at kfurtado@strategymeetsaction.com or 978.239.2741.

About SMA Strategy Meets Action

Exclusively serving the insurance industry, Strategy Meets Action blends unbiased research findings with expertise and experience to deliver business and technology insights, research, and advice to insurers and IT solution providers. By leveraging best practices from both the management consulting and research advisory disciplines, SMA's services are actionable, business-driven, and research-based -- where strategy meets action -- enabling companies to achieve business success. For more information, please visit the SMA website at strategymeetsaction.com.

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