How to Unlock the Most Value from your Digital Transformation
Modernising existing systems goes beyond updating technology. It involves reshaping business processes, addressing organisational culture, and fostering a mindset geared towards continuous improvement and innovation.
Drawing on over 30 years of experience, Andy Watts, INSTANDA’s Business Development Director (EMEA), shares how adopting a Benefits Realisation approach can help ensure that a digital transformation program delivers tangible financial, operational and strategic objectives.
The Essence of Benefits Realisation
Benefits Realisation is a systematic process that helps organisations – in this case insurance companies – to identify, plan, manage, and measure the benefits provided by digital investments. The approach helps to make sure projects are completed on time and within budget and achieve the intended outcomes that justified the investment in the first place.
For insurance companies operating in a sector characterised by complex regulations, products, systems and processes, the approach is particularly impactful. It provides a framework for ensuring that digital transformation initiatives directly contribute to enhanced customer experience, improved risk assessment, streamlined operations, and ultimately, better financial performance.
Key Components of a Successful Strategy
Clear Identification of Benefits
The first step is to develop a clear vision of the desired outcomes and identify the dependencies and key success factors critical to achieving them. This could range from realising faster claims processing times to improving customer satisfaction or reducing operational costs through automation.
Alignment with Strategic Objectives
Digital transformation efforts must be closely aligned with the overall strategic goals of the business to maximise the value of IT investment. This ensures that IT initiatives are not operating in a vacuum but are contributing to the broader business objectives such as market expansion, product innovation, or operational excellence.
Robust Implementation Planning
Implementing digital transformation projects requires meticulous planning, encompassing everything from technology selection and integration to change management. A key part of this planning involves establishing metrics and KPIs to measure the attainment of benefits over time.
Ongoing Measurement and Adaptation
Benefits Realisation is not a one-time task, but an iterative process. Performance of digital initiatives against the expected outcomes must be monitored continuously. Crucially, there must also be enough flexibility within the existing strategy to respond to changing market dynamics, customer needs, and technological advancements.
Stakeholder Engagement
Finally, realising the benefits of digital transformation requires buy-in across the organisation. This includes not only the C-suite, but also employees and brokers using newly introduced technologies and processes. Effective communication and training are critical to ensuring that everyone is aligned with the digital transformation goals and equipped to contribute to its success.
Role of the Centre of Excellence
The role of the Executive Sponsor and Centre of Excellence (CoE) in insurance digital transformation is critical.
As INSTANDA covered in its Centre of Excellence whitepaper, the CoE serves as a hub of expertise, best practices, and governance in digital transformation initiatives. It adopts a results-driven approach, ensuring that initiatives are not only innovative but also aligned with the company's strategic goals, delivering tangible value.
After all, successful digital transformation requires more than just the deployment of modern technologies; it demands a cultural shift and cross-functional acceptance. The CoE actively involves key people within the organisation in defining the expected benefits, thus ensuring broader acceptance and commitment to the change process.
Crucially, the CoE utilises Benefits Realisation to manage this change, anticipating challenges, mitigating risks, and ensuring that the implementation team remains flexible and responsive to evolving market demands.
Most importantly, at the heart of this approach is Agile working for the benefit of the business. By leveraging Agile practices, insurance companies can rapidly design, launch, test and iterate on insurance products and services based on customer feedback. This iterative process ensures that the product is closely aligned with customer needs and expectations, enhancing satisfaction and loyalty.
The Benefit of INSTANDA
INSTANDA, of course, goes hand-in-glove with this approach. As we explore in our comprehensive guide to ‘Navigating Innovation in a Legacy Landscape,’ INSTANDA empowers insurers to rapidly bring products to market and helps overcome the prolonged and capital-intensive overhaul associated with core system modernisation.
With INSTANDA, product design and distribution cycle times are typically five to ten times faster than a legacy equivalent, and implementation costs significantly lower than typical policy administration systems. This agility not only accelerates time-to-market but also enhances ROI – two key measures of any Benefits Realisation approach.
To learn more about the INSTANDA’s capabilities and to find out why insurers, MGAs and brokers across the world choose us as their technology partner, see the system in action.
