[caption id="attachment_147958" align="alignleft" width="616"] Carriers are looking for reliable business partners who can help them with manage expenses and serve their clients. (Photo: Shutterstock)[/caption] For many years, procurement was simply the department that bought and sold services. This outdated view ignored the fact that suppliers are critical to finding success in the market and attaining profitability. Today, they should be considered as a part of the overall business strategy that will give your company a competitive advantage. During our tenure, which has spanned everything from claims management to business process outsourcing, we have had responsibilities that included vendor management. Not a day went by when someone wasn't knocking on our door. However, what we were looking for often wasn't what they were selling. Our biggest frustrations in these roles were vendors who tried to make our processes fit into their product rather than taking the proactive role of innovating their products to improve our processes. Now we find ourselves on the other side of the business, selling services to carriers. To really understand what carriers are looking for, we decided to reach out and ask. In speaking with claims and procurement executives at a variety of leading national and international carriers, we learned a few key things.

What carriers want

Carriers want an ecosystem of reliable business partners with the ability to affect everything from indemnity and expenses to customer service and retention. This is driven by the following seven key areas.   There are many unrealistic asks, often by both sides. Finding a happy medium to protect both sides is always the key to success and the development of a longstanding relationship. Chris Tidball ([email protected]) is vice president of claims transformation strategy at EXL. His career has spanned 25 years in the P&C industry. Sean Allen ([email protected]) is vice president of EXL with over 19 years of business development and strategy experience. For more information on this topic, consider attending the America's Claims Executive event in Las Vegas, June 24-26.  See also: Year in review: 5 factors affecting the insurance claims industry InsurTech blends microservices and modern core systems