Last month, I was joined by my colleague, Nancy Casbarro, for Novarica’s Retirement Services Special Interest Group session. The conversation covered application rationalization, data quality, as well as strategies for creating a strong and cohesive customer experience across products and lines of business.
Data Quality and Digitization
Data and digital strategies can be difficult to pull apart. Launching a new product or service offering requires high-quality data that has been tested rigorously. This can be a notable challenge, in part because of the siloed nature of traditional insurance organizations. One way to mitigate data quality challenges is to roll out the strategy to a smaller set of stakeholders before expanding use to the enterprise.
This can help work out any kinks as well as build momentum and engender trust throughout the organization. Exercising data is key to building and maintaining quality, so implementation plans that run through call center operations to field partners and eventually to plan members/participants can be a great way of maximizing benefits and minimizing operational headaches.
During the pandemic, retirement service providers digitized many of their processes for their field representatives, including lead generation, quote activities, and analytics dashboards to communicate value to prospective clients. Strong digital tools and a robust data governance practice can position companies to have good results in spite of changes in how business is conducted.
Interacting with clients digitally is likely going to continue for the foreseeable future. Strengthening digital capabilities to create an engaging experience will be a differentiating feature. Since self-service is frequently both the best service and the lowest cost delivery model, carriers will likely focus significant attention here in their future-state planning.
Rationalizing Applications
Application rationalization can help support long-term technology strategies for plan providers while also helping address the margin pressure many are feeling in their existing operating models. Rationalization strategies should account for both the functional needs and size of the block(s) of business, since needs can vary drastically between lines of business. A critical first step should be establishing guiding principles that help shepherd the project and define success criteria.
There are many ways to accomplish rationalization, including retiring the old system post-conversion and using hybrid models, which allow old core platforms to exist for a time as the blocks shrink to something more manageable, and less risky, for future conversion. For instance, an application may not be shut down completely, rather an abstraction layer could be added, allowing a modern front-end experience, while the back end can slowly be enhanced or decommissioned.
Applications that support a single line of business are a common challenge. Different systems can lead to different customer experiences. One strategy to remedy this challenge is to become product-agnostic and integrate the different systems with the administration platform. In turn, the operations and client can have the same experience across different product lines. Irrespective of the approach taken, it is important to remember that these are business projects supported by IT organizations, not the other way around, if companies are looking to achieve the desired operational and financial efficiencies.
We look forward to exploring more topics in the retirement services space in a few months. Registration for the August 26th Retirement Services Special Interest Group is now open. To register, please email Novarica Events.
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