Virtual delivery: The new normal for core system implementations
Insurers are finding online communication and collaboration tools are helping them better meet policyholders’ needs.
From increasing levels of online purchases to reduced travel to a shift to work-from-home, the insurance industry, like most industries, has been and continues to be impacted by COVID-19.
Despite the pandemic, a recent survey of P&C insurers about switching to remote implementations found that when it comes to actual IT project delivery, 58% indicated they have “continued successfully,” 22% of projects were “already remote,” 11% have been “more productive,” while only 9% were characterized as “delayed or strained.” The show must go on, and insurers must adapt to the new normal by providing a paradigm that fully supports the virtual delivery of core system implementations. Here’s how.
SaaS enables future-readiness
SaaS lays the foundations for strong operational and business resilience. With software hosted in public cloud data centers and delivered as a service, there is no longer a technological prerequisite to have teams of architects, technical product subject matter experts, and other personnel at a customer’s location to set up physical infrastructure and hardware.
Insurers that rely on SaaS solutions can leverage automation and commence an implementation project immediately after a contract is signed — and focus right away on configuring different applications.
Leveraging online communication and collaboration tools
Online communication and collaborative authoring tools, including the likes of Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Office 360, and Azure DevOps help insurers better meet the needs of their customers. Utilizing cloud-based source control, developers can hand unfinished configuration output and extensions of carrier insurance products, business rules, and policyholder and agent user interfaces back and forth and submit completed work items for review in real-time. Edits and comments from senior staff may be performed live with developers via screen share so that understanding of methods and techniques is not hampered by distance or location.
While an initial kickoff meeting in person can be helpful, we’ve found there are a lot of benefits to remote work and that turning on your web camera as opposed to having an audio-only meeting is a must. Also, while past engagements may have been dependent on the right architect resource(s) flying in and joining design phase sessions on-premises, the shift to remote work has given architects additional time back and made them more productive — enabling them to not only have more hours each week to get work done but also giving them additional flexibility for scheduling meetings.
Remote work also creates a mindset shift; while in the past, it may have been all about who shows up in-person to the “war room,” today, it’s easy to tap into a broader team of staff if needed — whether that be certain subject matter experts or a more diverse set of testers as part of QA.
Delivery assurance programs
Delivery assurance services can help maximize project speed to market and minimize delivery cost and schedule overruns, scalability and performance issues, and design rework. For the past several years, we’ve seen success running these types of programs as a mix of virtual and in-person review meetings, and so providing them in a fully remote model was the next logical progression, accelerated by the pandemic.
We’ve found that as long as these meetings are aligned with project inception and major program milestones, the workshops can be run effectively via meeting software and screen share for reviewing and demoing documented deliverables and functional objects.
Adaptability in a remote world
In a time when the pace of change in insurance is accelerating, carriers need speed and agility to act on opportunities as they arise. This allows them to implement remote projects successfully and more efficiently, with improving customer experiences as their end goal.
Rob Savitsky is the senior manager of product marketing for Duck Creek Technologies. Contact him at rob.savitsky@duckcreek.com.
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