The Milwaukee Bucks will try and keep up with the fast paced Phoenix Suns as they wind down a tough part of their schedule.
The Bucks will play their fourth game in six nights and the second game on the road of a three game road trip when they head into Phoenix. The Bucks are off a tough defeat at the hands of the suddenly hot LA Clippers and will look to rebound with a victory over the Sizzling Suns.
The Milwaukee Bucks got the services of shooting expert Brandon Jennings back in the lineup and it has helped the offense, but it has not translated too many victories. The Bucks need hot outside shooting combined with a strong inside game from big man Andrew Bogut if they want to get some victories. The Phoenix Suns are starting to win ballgames by playing great defense.
On Friday the Suns held Boston, the league’s best shooting team (50.1 percent entering the night), to just 34.2 percent shooting from the field. On Sunday, against the NBA’s best scoring defense (91.4 points allowed entering the night), the Suns scored 104 points and reached 92 points with 9:30 remaining. New Orleans entered the night having allowed 100 or more points just 14 times, the fewest of any Western Conference team and fourth-fewest in the NBA overall. Now they will attempt to take that energy over to the game against the Bucks.
The Suns are 38-17 ATS in their last 55 when their opponent allows 100 points or more in their previous game and 5-1 ATS in their last six after allowing 100 points or more in their previous game. The Bucks are 2-5 ATS in their last seven road games against a team with a winning home record and will come up short again with a loss to the Suns.
Met Life in midst of huge reengineering program.
National Underwriter Life & Health-Financial Services Edition September 18, 1995 | Cox, Brian Metropolitan Life is undergoing a massive reengineering program designed to help bolster its earnings by 70 percent over the next three years while providing its policyholders with world class customer service, the program’s director told National Underwriter.
It is likely, however, that the reengineering program will lead to staff cuts and office closings as the company updates its technologies and consolidates services in order to cut expenses and achieve economies of scale, observers said.
Although the reengineering project, called “Met Life Express,” is massive in its scope, it is unlikely to have any significant impact on New England Life, said David Levene, a Met Life senior vice president and chief actuary who is also project leader for Met Life Express.
Met Life and New England Life agreed to merge last month. (See NU, August 21.) “We’re trying to coordinate what we’re doing with New England’s strengths. We’re going to have to have them help us out in the process,” Mr. Levene said.
“But the project itself will not spill over into New England. If they have certain strengths, rather than reinvent the wheel in our reengineering efforts, we’ll adopt that function here. It could also work the other way,” he said, adding Met Life is particularly interested in New England Life’s technological capabilities. go to site met life dental
“That’s where considerable money is spent in reengineering. We don’t want to spend it if New England has already spent it and found a solution and has built a mousetrap around something,” he said.
Mr. Levene said 50 consultants from McLean, N.J.-based BoozAllen & Hamilton Inc., and 70 Met Life employees have been swarming over every aspect of the company’s operations since the project was launched in Met Life’s New York headquarters last October.
According to one source within the company, the re-engineering program is costing Met Life about $1.5 million in fees per month.
“If we do everything we plan to do this is going to be a real revolution for the company,” said the employee who asked not to be identified.
The insurer will enter into the final phase of the four-phase Met Life Express project in the next 4 to 6 weeks. By then a total of 250 Met Life employees will be working with BoozAllen consultants to start implementing recommendations, said Mr. Levene.
He said Met Life hopes to implement most of the recommendations by the end of 1996, but some changes could take up to 3 years to implement.
“We want to become a more cost competitive company. We want to improve our capabilities in terms of delivering product to the market,” he said, adding every department from the carrier’s mail room to its career agency force is likely to be effected to some degree by the reengineering project.
“We don’t foresee any shrinkage in our agent numbers. We really want to make the agents’ job more productive. That could mean putting laptop computers in their hands,” he said.
Twenty-five reengineering teams have been focusing on the insurer’s customer service, retail, information technology, staff services and investment departments.
“We have not been satisfied with the earnings we’ve had. We have an objective of significantly improved earnings,” said Mr. Levene.
In 1994 Met Life posted operating earnings of $160 million, down from $265 million in 1993.
Total revenues declined to $39.3 billion in 1994 from $40.1 billion the previous year, while net investment income fell from $7.9 billion in 1993 to $7.7 billion in 1994. web site met life dental
The insurer, said Mr. Levene, hopes to increase its pretax earnings from $916 million in 1993 and $998 million in 1994, to $1.7 billion in 1997 using internal management accounting.
“That’s a major mover for us,” he said.
In order to reach that goal, Met Life may close some or all of its 55 service centers across the country and open 3 or 4 large state-of-the-art service centers, a source with the company said.
“There’s no economy of scale when you’re operating 55 service centers,” they said.
Additional staff cuts or job transfers could come in the company’s technical support and claims departments, said the source.
Met Life would not say if it is planning to close any of its service sites and refused to comment on other staff layoffs.
“People leaving is probably likely. Clearly there might be some job loss as a result of Met Life Express although its primary emphasis is not on cutting jobs,” said Anne Hayden, senior vice president in charge of Human Resources with Met Life.
“We have kept our expenses under tight control so we’re not talking about the same kind of staff cutting that may go on in companies that have not paid as much attention to that,” she said.
Mr. Levene said it is still too early in the reengineering process to say where or if the company will cut staff “We have this goal of increasing earnings significantly, but we want to get at it not just through the expense route. We’re looking at improving our investment returns. And we want to increase our revenues so we’ll generate additional profits,” he said.
As part of the reengineering program, he explained, the company is examining how its assets have been deployed and will reexamine its investment portfolio to see if it needs a different mix of investments which might give it a better return without taking on additional risk.
“We’ll be looking at how much funds we have allocated to our real estate and bond sectors and there could be some reallocations,” he said.
He also said another major goal of the Met Life Express Program is to improve customer service.
That could mean the creation of a revamped customer service department which would see many customer service functions pulled together to achieve economies of scale, according to a source.
“Our goal is to provide once-and-done service so the consumer can get their answer by making one call,” Mr. Levene said.
He said the company will likely make a “significant investment” in technology to help it meet its customer service and investment return goals.
“We’re trying to eliminate frustrations the customers may have in dealing with us and build relationships. Right now we have too many toll-free numbers. We’re trying to make ourselves clearer to the customers,” he added.
Cox, Brian
