Insurance agencies are in the process of engaging in a once-in-a-lifetime business change and replacing their core systems like policy administration, claims, and billing. As a software provider industry has matured over the past few years, there is a growing belief among a lot of insurance companies that a software provider solution can solve all the problems that they are facing with their old platform, and increase their chances of success in this competitive and brutal insurance market.
Do you want to know the history behind insurance technology and the development of applications? Click here.
The big question is, “What is the best insurance software solutions provider to help change the organization for the better?” What are the highest rated industry research reports say? The one with the best capabilities and functions with the lowest price will win the bid.
By replacing the old system with a new one and doing nothing, a lot of carriers are missing significant opportunities to make competitive advantaged, including improve the future operating model, a far superior customer service experience, enhanced distribution functions, and re-engineering the whole process.
Who should decide on choosing the right software? Carriers that limit the decision-making capabilities to one department of the company like the procurement or the IT department run a significant risk of misguiding expectations with business owners, second-guessing all the decisions, waste money and time when it comes to re-evaluate the past choices, and missing a lot of opportunities to stay competitive.
Carriers should let industry competitiveness, as well as business priorities; drive the process of choosing the core system provider. Successful companies follow a procedure to evaluate the providers and make the right informed decision.
Do your due diligence in researching the core software provider
There are plethora of core insurance software providers with different strengths and weakness. In fact, it is easy to get overwhelmed by all the options available in the market today. We recommend that you define and prioritize at least four guiding principles that can inform the kind of research data collection every software provider SchemeServe are providing.
The goal is to filter out the software providers that don’t have the same business objectives as the carrier. A lot of carriers target a short list of providers, more or less five vendors. Although it will depend on how narrow or broad the guiding principles are. Insurance companies consider the following when they are defining the guiding principles:
Experience in the industry
Insurance companies should find software providers that have a lot of experience when it comes to insurance markets as well as their business models. The experience can include products (commercial or personal lines), geography (state-specific or North America), and distribution (independent or captive).
Modern technology platform
A lot of insurance companies look for higher speed and flexibility to market with their newly acquired systems. For most companies, important dimensions mean good ability to integrate easily with an in-house application, and the ability to take the software upgrade easily to stay competitive. Some companies also look for cloud-based and hosted solutions, because it reduces the dependency on the outdated infrastructure environment.
Click here for the lists for cloud-based solutions that can help small business enterprises.
Breadth of solution
A lot of insurance companies are looking for end-to-end software components to deliver a quality and full solution. Over the last few years, software providers have responded by offering a single integrated suite solution to minimize the technical complications and lower the implementation support cost.
But the definition of a single suite continues to grow and evolve. In today’s market, it is a policy administration, claims, and billing. Tomorrow, it could include additional factors like document generation, portal, as well as the data warehouse.
Industry standard compliance
Because of the faster speed to market, a lot of insurance companies are using the changes to closely align their companies with industry standards like ISO, NCCI, and AAIS. A lot of companies look for software providing solutions that can help provide the tools to refresh contents and stay updated and compliant with the standards.
Curious about AAIS or American Association of Insurance Services, learn more about them by visiting https://www.irmi.com/term/insurance-definitions/american-association-of-insurance-services.
Fiscal stability
For a lot of companies, this will be a long-term business investment. Companies should review the financial as well as marketing and sales stability of the provider, and also their recent market momentum, to be confident that the software provider they choose will be with them long-term.
Proof of concept and vendor demonstration
After the Request for Information scoring, insurance companies will have narrowed down their list on one or two potential software providers. Companies will conduct their due diligence of researching before making the big decision.
Do you want to know more about PoC or Proof of Concept? To learn more, you can visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_concept.
It will include asking the other providers to demonstrate their software system features as well as capabilities and provide information to the insurance company that the right thing to do is to choose them as a provider. Core business change is fundamental to every insurance company conducting businesses related to insurance.
The software provider selection process is not just simply selecting the cheapest and the best software system. It is an excellent opportunity to unify everything under one vision, generate company enthusiasm, and prepare the company to improve or change the business significantly. We all know that change is inevitable.
You can’t move forward if you don’t embrace change. It is the same with the insurance industry. The insurance world ten, fifteen, twenty years ago is not the same with how insurance world is running today. If your company’s software is not up-to-date, there is a big chance that your company will be left behind by its competitors.
Change is good, but you need to make sure that you find the right person or the right software your company will be hiring or using. Technology is evolving by the minute; companies need to keep up to meet the consumer’s demands.