Fergal Heffernan, Customer Engagement Manager, FINEOS
Some of the oldest industries and traditional companies are being disrupted by a new wave of technology, not all survive – existing players in the Insurance industry are not beyond this threat.
This was the core message from Larry Wilson, non-Executive Director at FINEOS, at the 2013 FINEOS Global Claims Summit in Toronto, Canada.
To mitigate this threat, Insurance companies must therefore keep their technology platforms up to date to not only stay ahead of their market competitors, but to protect their business from new entrants that may not come from the traditional insurance “blood lines”.
However, in order to get budget approval for an upgrade project, business managers are frequently requested to produce a business case, unfortunately simply quoting from Larry Wilson’s presentation is not enough!
Over the past 12 to 18 months, many of our customers have upgraded to the latest version of FINEOS Claims.
Increasingly, our customers are asking us to advise on how to “quantify the benefit” value in dollars and euros, when producing the business case for upgrade.
This decision making process makes sense – this is a capital expenditure investment to enhance an existing asset – as an expenditure item, it needs to be tested for return on investment over a set number of years.
Rather than be treated as a frustrating pre-requisite for project approval, our experience is that customers who embrace this part of the process, actually benefit more from their upgrades. In identifying new product features in the (pre project) business case, it provides more focus on the management team to deliver that value.
Clearly, upgrading for solely technology compliance purposes is not reason enough to upgrade and maybe nor should it be. In reality, each of our new releases offers tremendous new opportunities to improve business performance.
Today, insurance companies face a market of fast changing consumer behaviour, coupled with newly available (cheaper) innovative electronic devices affecting the way services are delivered to us. The FINEOS product roadmap keeps our customers ahead of the curve.
Consequently, FINEOS customers use the upgrade to take advantage of new consumer expectations and new trends in the industry, for example analytics, cloud or mobile for better business outcomes (market competitiveness, better service and lower leakage).
The business case will pre validate the value of the upgrade and be a benchmark to judge success post project.
How FINEOS can help calculate this value
Mostly, customers want to know which opportunities will benefit their specific operation when leveraging the new FINEOS platform – FINEOS can assist to call these out. The standard approach to creating the business case follows 4 simple steps:
- Current State – assess operations within the context of current market landscape
- Future State – map out operation with new version of FINOES
- ROI – calculate the Return on Investment from leveraging the new enhancements
- Present – Package ROI and strategic benefits to upgrade
We have devised a template guide to help business managers define and quantify the value to their business of the new product platform.
With the assistance of our customer account managers and business consultants, we can help business managers quantify the value of new product innovations in the context of their specific operation.
In the FINEOS product roadmap, our primary focus is to deliver value in to each of our new releases under the following strategies:
- Superior Customer Service
- Improved Claimant Outcomes
- Efficient Claims Administration
- Insight & Improvement
- Support for Emerging Business Models
As Larry pointed out in Toronto, having the right technology is key but how we apply that technology is where the value is.
The pre project business case is a great way to ensure the upgrade delivers on the promised value – the technology is there to be used … maximise it.
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FINEOS 8.0 is released in June 2014…
Please contact your FINEOS Customer Account Manager for further information on the ROI Calculator
