To drive adoption of technology, you must understand what motivates the users and what kills buy-in, according to a posting on Property Casualty 360.
According to a recent Novarica study, 51% of insurers plan to increase their technology budgets. Getting adoption rates up will be key to successful implementations. Mobile technology, cloud computing and policy administration systems are all on the list for upgrades, but without end-user buy-in, those “improvements” could be a costly headache. Innovations that are cool in theory could cause marginalization of large segments of your staff if they are clunky or esoteric.
We must make applications work with producers instead of making producers work with technology. “Meeting agents where they are is a key to securing their acceptance of technology,” says Jim Ferrell, VP of product management at Insurance Technologies.
Technology solutions need to be as available and flexible, and as intuitive, as the producer’s old way, Ferrell suggests. His top tech priorities include:
· Processing benefits that make transitioning clearly worth the effort
· Supporting tablet devices united to a single business process across platforms
· Disconnected support for business anywhere, any time
· Multiple electronic signature capabilities
· Electronic payment processing
· Intuitive processes that require little training
· A look familiar with current forms and screens.
Clear value and ease of use are key drivers of behavioral change. If technology isn’t providing that, it has little chance of adoption, Ferrell says. The first step in developing automated solutions, he says, is to ask what value must be provided to get producers to migrate.