Digital transformation with new Agency Management System is difficult but may be required
Every Agency, big or small, new or old, personal or commercial lines, P&C or L&H, would use some kind of a system of records, typically called under a category “Agency Management System”. Once an Agency starts working with an Agency Management System, its processes are built around it, sometimes with lots of excels and emails to complete the workflows. Changing it is a significant exercise.
But Agencies undertake this initiative when they have reached a certain realization:
Challenges
Studies and researches have reported that only about one third of such digital transformations deliver the expected results. The key success factors depend upon the path that the Agency chooses, how that approach is executed in practice, and how the risks around that are mitigated.
Road to success
Nest's experience indicates that there are certain best practices that can facilitate a higher rate of success.
Prepare well
a) Assess business rationale
Business volumes in terms of users, sales partners, data volume, reach
Targets of automation in terms of potential gain through productivity improvements
Scope and criticality of processes improved v/s risks of transition
Impact on total cost of ownership v/s cost of changes
b) Assess system landscape and application health
In-house and vendor applications
Level of package customization
Technology standardization
Interoperability
Scalability
Common infrastructure sharing
Technology currency
Choose from the available options carefully
a) Buy-build-harvest
Based on the type of the application classified in light of the above attributes, the decision to expand / replace / harvest / integrate are taken. May be some of the applications in existing IT landscape can be re-used; may be all should be replaced as the process itself is undocumented; may be integration with external point solutions will deliver value quickly.
b) Sequence and time-lines
Decide based on the following:
Volume and complexity.
Health of the system in terms of maintenance hygiene.
Benefits from individual improvements.
c) Evaluate before choosing
With respect to objectives and requirements, it is important that potential benefits as well as the potential risks are considered upfront and finalized; all may not be feasible, but a suitable mix of must-have, required and nice-to-have should be in place. Then on the assessment on system components need to be undertaken, based on which transformation plan would be decided.
Execute with built-in assurance
Collaborative project planning should address multiple dimensions of deliverables, activities, target deadlines and resources without neglecting contractual restrictions around specific system components, if any. All should be traceable.
Change management being most critical, a core team should be established along with well-defined communication plan and a reporting regimen that addresses all stakeholders. Training should be planned with care to facilitate a good level of adoption by business users.
System requirements should be given a lot of importance; it must be remembered that the Agency’s business practices with inherent complexities built over years of experience must be addressed as comprehensively as possible in the new system and the processes around them; spending time and effort for a good level of requirements may be critical for success.
Non-functional requirements should not be neglected, such slippages can result in delayed transaction performance, information security lapses and cross-system latencies, each of which could end up increasing the total cost of ownership.
Assurance should be built-in at every step of the transformation exercise; adequate time, resources and budget should be dedicated towards validating user experience, functional correctness and non-technical deliverables.
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