What were some of the critical success factors for the technology integration?
Campanella: We realized right off that our people – and their talent and knowledge – were a very important resource, and we made a commitment to integrating our people first and viewed the platform integration as secondary. Prudential Annuities is a product-driven business. We were going to keep the American Skandia line of products and needed to build those products into the new platform. This requires a great deal of knowledge – you just don’t bring in new people to rebuild products. We also needed people who understood that we were one team and one company with one goal. The tack we took throughout the whole integration was that we needed to make people feel that it was important to get to the place we needed to be as a company. I&T: During the implementation, staff often worked weekends with no vacations. How did you keep them motivated during a difficult time? Campanella: Yes, for a long period of time people put in a lot of time, but they were driven. They wanted to accomplish th
