In the insurance industry, most people think of ‘outsourcing’ as delegating low value tasks at the lowest cost possible. In reality, we outsource mission-critical work all the time – legal, accounting, tax filing, marketing, IT and more – without any hesitation and with a clear understanding of the benefits. So, for lack of a better term, what if you could ‘outsource’ your Research & Development (R&D)? And more importantly, why should you consider it?
Most small and mid-sized agencies struggle to fund essential functions like business development, customer service and basic technology needs. Given this, having a dedicated internal team or person tasked with technology innovation or basic R&D on improving operations is a rarity and may not even be effective. But in the evolving insurance industry, organizations that want to maintain relevancy need to innovate. Fortunately, innovation can be acquired and it often leads to an ROI.
Innovation = Relevancy
Early on in our own evolution as a company, we realized that one of the most valuable benefits we can provide our customers is knowledge. And by working with industry leaders, in every state, across all lines and on every management system, we’ve developed truly unique insight.
To maintain our own competitive advantage and to provide our customers with the same, our team of dedicated professionals are continually researching and developing best practices, work flows, automation technologies, and analytics for the insurance industry. Expanding on this, we recently launched the Innovation Lab. It’s made up of licensed agents, robot engineers, data scientists, lean experts and our clients! Yes, clients.
We partner with our clients to solve their most pressing business challenges by using technology, analytics and process expertise to innovate new solutions. Here are examples of two of them:
Smart Process Automation – when one of our clients was unable to integrate two systems that weren’t interoperable, they asked for help in developing a solution that eliminated the need for them to manually transfer data and documents from one system to another – a waste of cost and time. To solve this, we created a simple process automation robot that links between the two systems. It’s a seamless, safe and direct process that allows the company to keep their existing systems and save the time and money previously spent on the inefficient manual processes.
Performance Visualized – a major leading retail broker client felt they were lacking financial performance insight to make data-driven decisions. With an understanding of their business and the industry, along with the ability to organize their data, we created an interactive dashboard that brings together disparate systems. Now their management can mine and understand their key performance indicators, then take proactive, informed action.
You’ve Already Outsourced Some R&D
Most brokers have used their management system vendors as quasi innovation partners. And while they may have extensive knowledge about their software, system or platform, they often lack holistic industry insight. It’s the multi-disciplinary insider perspective that we find produces exciting and relevant solutions. Consider outsourcing your R&D by taking your next operational challenge to a strategic partner that’s immersed and focused on the industry.