May 26th, 2009 | 
Author: You can always count on good stuff from Steve Snell. Recently rif’d by Cventry [sic] (as they position the company for sale, cut the best and brightest resources, eliminate all technology and innovation projects, and put thousands of people out of jobs in the process – geez, I wish I didn’t share the same last name with the culprit), Steve has about as deep of a resume with insurance technology, and the ROI there-of, as anyone I know. I think readers/listeners will appreciate the reinforcement of knowledge as well as perhaps some less well-known concepts. Btw, Steve is ‘available’. Anyone that ends up with him is going to ROCK! – if they turn him loose. Meantime, have a short-term project? Hire Steve as a consultant?!
Please come back to the blog and ShareThis on your Linkedin page and/or post a comment or two at the bottom of this page. Let’s see if we can take the conversation even further and really nail the subject.
Steve’s background eAMS, WellCarePro.com, secure broker portals, automating contacting and appointing, etc.
My favorite points:
Often over-looked item – compliance and avoiding regulatory fines for failure to comply with a bullet-proof audit trail.
“A bad business process automated is just a bad business process made faster.”
Intangible ROI:
- Perception of being easy to do business with
- Don’t have to be the cheapest rate
- Don’t have to pay the highest commission
- Nimbility
- What else do you think? Comment below.
Tangible ROI:
- Reduced headcount – 53 people on a process that should be done by 4-6 people.
- Increased productivity of existing agents, selling more product faster in more states
- Increased number of agents who want to do business with a savvy, not just a me-too, company
- Nimbility
- What else?
Problem: These sites are viewed as technology projects instead of ‘products’. Listen to Steve’s take. What’s your take on this idea? Might explain the insurance executive mentality of ‘expense’ versus ‘investment’ and the “sea of mediocrity”?
Agile versus Big Bang deployments – What’s been your experience?
“…very difficult to get that money back…” Yep
“The days of enterprise software are over.” Amen, bro.
“Now is a good time to be investing in this technology.” Several very valid rationales. “…first out of the flames…forethought…vision…”
Please comment. Lurking is lame!
Steve and I at a Tribe game couple years ago
Posted in Insurance-Technologies
Of all we talked about during this Podcast, the most important point I’d like to drive home is that (health) insurance company leaders mistakenly believe that their “products” are simply packages of copays, deductibles, and coinsurance. They’re wrong. They also naively believe that they must offer the lowest price on the street in order to win. Again, they’re wrong. There are many, many other ways to win – subjects for future Podcasts? Perhaps.
You are both dead on about having the web technology be driven by marketing and not IT. Look at the incredible success realized by Gieco, Progressive and Esurance. Their technology is driven by marketing, not IT. IT, at the end of the day, is the entity providing a service. Marketing is the entity directing how the service will be used. Think about it – who has a better understanding of the customer? Marketing or IT?
I worked with Steve at AMS, where Steve was VP of Marketing and I was VP of E-business. Steve remains one of my favorite people to work with, and I always welcome the opportunity! A great visionary and powerful business leader.
Although prior to my AMS days I was in IT, I always fought for Business to control and prioritize technology. When I came to AMS, I asked that E-business report to the business, and have a dotted line to the CEO. This became very important while Steve and I fought together for the successful design and execution of eAMS- a very new and controversial technology.
The need for technology to serve the business becomes more and more important every year as technology gets closer and closer to – and becomes more and more dependent on- the customer and his/her needs. The company that meets those needs succeeds. Pure and simple.
With any technology, it’s important to understand and be driven by 1) who are your customer groups and 2) what do they want. Seems simple, but in my years leading and consulting in technology for Insurance, I am continually shocked over how seldom the customer is considered except possibly anecdotally.
Another important point- while technology should be run by the needs of the business, IT is often the owner of PROCESS, for logical reasons (for years their methodologies and deliverables and project management disciplines have driven change, and that does not necessarily need to stop just simply because Marketing knows the customer best). IT needs to build and enforce a practical, accountable signoff process that elicits and requires business AND CUSTOMER input and signoffs. NOW you have a process and a resulting technology that EVERYONE can buy into and support… most importantly the customer.
Only a handful of folks “get it” the way Mark Seghers does. He’s right on about the overall lack of customer-centricity, and so much more.
Expanding a bit on Mark’s thoughts, I also believe much of the problem lies in the business’s mostly poor understanding of technology, integration, security, business process automation, project management, resource prioritization, etc. I believe business leaders would be well-served by rolling up their sleeves and getting into the trenches with their IT colleagues so they can better understand this mission-critical support component. That’s what makes Mark so good at what he does — he’s lived on both sides of the business/IT fence, so he has perspective that few others do.
By coincidence, I just did an ROI exercise for a client. Here’s what I came up with relative to overhauling a site and converting from PDF download to an e-app for term life:
Tangible Revenue gains, so NEW revenue, that should come from the following sources as compared to the site in its current state:
Higher conversion rates from existing traffic flow with existing product set. This factor alone could fund a significant initiative.
New traffic, and possible enrollments, from new viral marketing components
Perhaps even higher conversion rates with the ‘new traffic’
Increased persistency rates due to automation
New revenue from automated cross-sell and up-sell processes
Tangible Bottom-line cost reductions:
Straight-through paperless processing (HUGE cost savings)
Automating the provision of ID cards and policy information – e-Issue (BIG cost savings)
Possible member self-service automation
There are also several significant intangible ROI possibilities. And as always, there are also significant positive ROI things that will become apparent post-launch.
One definite intangible – collecting prospect/new client contact information, esp email.
Spot on comments. Look forward to more. Topic for me is the tension between legacy and new technologies and methodologies. We are working on big ticket upgrade to the back end stuff right now and the challenges of moving fast and smart are huge. This is high risk stuff in a risk adverse business. I live smack between the business(s) and the IT teams, pretty interesting and glad to say some progress in our world but long way to go still to bridge the gap.