Social, mobile and cloud computing technologies will largely define the technology landscape for insurers in 2012, according to a report issued Friday by New York-based Deloitte Consulting L.L.P.

The report, “Insurance Tech Trends 2012: Elevate IT for digital business,” said insurers need to leverage a host of disruptive technologies in order to achieve differentiation in the marketplace. In the case of social technologies, the report says that in addition to using social media for customer-facing channels, insurers need to figure ways to use social media internally to improve business processes and bust information silos.

“Social business can shift an organization's dynamic from isolation to engagement by providing vehicles for discovering, growing and propagating ideas and expertise,” the report states.

Social technologies can spur operational efficiencies and ultimately have a bottom-line impact, the report contends. “Consider the range of interactions between agents, underwriters and marketers that may be required to shepherd a single policy through approval,” the report states. “A social business essentially flattens the process, allowing for much faster, more effective communications between these groups. And that can have a serious impact on costs.”

Likewise, insurers face a host of challenges surrounding mobile technologies. While insurance companies are rapidly expanding their mobile capabilities they must do so with issues such as reliability, security, performance and maintainability firmly in mind.

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“Mobility is quickly becoming one of the most important battlegrounds for business innovation,” the report states. “Operating models are being redrawn for consumers, employees and business partners alike. This puts enormous pressure on insurance (chief information officers) to determine exactly how to put mobility solutions to work in their organizations—now.”

The shift to embrace cloud computing may not be as urgent, but it does entail equally weighty questions about technology strategy, according to Deloitte. Because the number of cloud-based technology offerings has exploded in recent years, insurers embracing the technology need to focus on orchestration and service delivery management, the report concludes.

“Most insurance organizations are behind the maturity curve on cloud technology, but there is broad acknowledgement that they need to catch up quickly and proactively develop a cloud strategy before one is thrust upon them,” the report states. “Given the proliferation of cloud solutions, the lack of a coherent strategy will lead organizations to adopt cloud point solutions in a reactive way, which will result in needless complexity and delay or dilute the benefits.”

The confluence of social, mobile and cloud technologies as well as other trends such as big data are ushering in a “postdigital era” the report contends.

“The postdigital enterprise will be a business that thrives in that emerging future where operating models, business models and even markets and industries are transformed.”