May 08, 2024
Author: Joanna Hagelberger, Vice President Customer Success
Productivity, Efficiency, Experience, oh my
I have been a member of the insurance compliance technology community for 20 years now and these buzzwords never go away. They inspire people to invest in new technology and explore new ways to do business. New buzzwords come out all the time – blockchain, IoT, AI, Big Data – but Productivity, Efficiency, and, in our case, Producer/Adjuster Experience (vs Customer Experience) are solid ways to measure Return on Investment (ROI) for any technology spend.
Productivity (doing more with less) is easy to measure at the beginning of a technology initiative. It used to take 12 people what it now takes 8 people to do. Ta-Da! Instant ROI. Bu that productivity is only gained once. How do we continue to re-evaluate our technology and our processes to achieve greater productivity gains over time? In compliance, productivity gains are achieved through simplifying processes, following best practices, dividing up responsibilities in a thoughtful, meaningful way, preventing duplication of effort, etc. Some of this is an evaluation of current business processes, but technology can help with other aspects to ensure you have transparency and visibility into the work being done.
Efficiency (doing less) is oftentimes scary in the beginning. Automation is the quickest path to efficiency, but if I can’t see what’s being done, how do I know the system did it? As Ronald Reagan often said (by way of an old Russian proverb), trust but verify. How? Work closely with your business partner to ensure the automation processes you are building accomplish your business needs. Monitor them over time to ensure no steps have been missed and no extra actions are being taken. Ensure you have solid exception reporting to address any actions that need to be taken manually as a result of your automation. Automation can be created to do anything your team currently does manually on any repetitive basis – updating producer/adjuster data, processing license applications and renewals, requesting information from your producers/adjusters, notifying your producers/adjusters of upcoming license renewals or CE that is due (including pulling transcripts) – anything!
Experience is a broader term that encompasses your producers/adjusters having a better experience with your company, which makes them want to work with you and want to get done the things you need them to do. If an agent can complete their onboarding/contracting paperwork in one seamless interface that allows them to attach documentation, leave and come back to complete the process later, and enter all the information you need, they will be ready to sell faster and you will have a quicker time to revenue. If an agent doesn’t complete their CE, their license lapses. Appointments get canceled. Work is created all around. By improving that experience through automation that reminds the individual not only that their CE is due, but how many credits they have taken and how many more are needed, you have provided actionable insight to the individual and given them a better experience. This is measurable in several ways – retention of agents, fewer lapsed licenses, etc.
Return on Investment is a measurement that most people look at early on in the acquisition of new technology (as they should), but continually revisiting that technology to see how you can improve productivity, efficiency, and experience is a valuable exercise. That “value” can be measured not just in hard dollars, but in happier employees (who are no longer doing repetitive, redundant tasks), a healthier business process and most importantly, an improved compliance stance.