| Business Area |
Business Challenge |
Real Solutions from some DEA Clients |
| Managing Products |
You have a continuous need to develop and roll out new products to keep up with market demands. The development process requires collaboration across your organization, and the ability to react and make revisions quickly. |
Redesign annuity transfer process The largest life insurance company in North America found it difficult to assemble the information for an annuity transfer transaction due to poorly documented business rules, complex state regulations, and a paper-based submission process. Both customers and employees were frustrated. The supporting system only showed the total number of transactions currently in the system, preventing management insight via metrics
Developing New Insurance Products: A Modeling Approach (white paper) |
| Acquiring New Business |
You need to empower agents with timely quotes and rapid processing of new applications via a web portal for straight through processing. Detailed and rigorous business requirements are a prerequisite for effective implementation. |
Change from a paper-based system to a web-based agency portal This premier P&C personal lines company faced increased competition in the region's auto insurance marketplace by national direct insurance writers. The company wanted to implement a paperless method to receive new business applications from their agents as well as externalize and manage changes to their automobile product rules for future offerings.
Implement new rating and classification algorithms A leading insurer wanted to make extensive changes to its rating and classification algorithms for workers' compensation premium calculations. The company's management recognized they did not have a solid requirements process in place to ensure the development effort would be effective and meet the tight timelines. A comprehensive approach to communication and training was necessary to roll out the new changes
Revise requirements for workflow project A large life insurance company contracted a system vendor's services group to implement its imaging and workflow product for the company's new business underwriting group. The system was intended to improve productivity and reduce cycle time. However, upon implementation, new business cycle times dramatically increased. In addition, functionality issues seriously impacted producer/agent and customer satisfaction, forcing management to engage in damage control. |
| Client Services |
From a customer's perspective, your insurance company is only as good as the service you provide. Call centers and other client service capabilities must operate efficiently and cost-effectively. |
Improve customer call center service after merger A merger of two insurance companies impacted the Call Center , which was responsible for handling contacts via phone, email and fax for 70,000 internal and external customers. Call Center management wanted to identify areas of opportunity that would improve productivity and ensure continued customer satisfaction. |
| Claims |
Improving claims processing, including the use of a web portal, is a major challenge for most insurance companies. It demands a thorough evaluation of all operational processes. |
Improve claims process to handle increasing volume and complexity The claims processing operation of a leading P&C insurance provider was rapidly growing in size and complexity. As this company's portfolio continued to expand, claims processing needed to change to keep up, requiring substantial re-design, enhanced technology support, and new ways of managing the business itself.
Improve Sarbanes-Oxley compliance This Fortune 500 insurance company was struggling with a Sarbanes-Oxley compliance project. Business process information was difficult to capture in a spreadsheet, and version control became unmanageable. A better approach using better tools was needed.
Create reporting and analytics requirements for business intelligence project While implementing a new claims processing system, the project team of a large health insurance company was faced with eliciting and documenting requirements for a business intelligence project. The requirements team needed an effective strategy for gathering these requirements from the business subject matter experts. |
| IT |
60-80% of project failures can be attributed to poorly defined requirements. This fact speaks to the urgent need for a better way of doing business: the use of Business Analysts to help define project requirements. |
Improve requirements process After suffering a costly failure on a major initiative, this company traced the root cause to poor requirements. DEA was engaged to assess the current state of this major insurance company's requirements process and their Business Analysts, as a first step to establishing a world-class Business Analysis Competency Center .
Improve effectiveness of in-house and contracted BA team members To support the start of a mission critical, multi-year initiative, this major insurance company needed to augment its in-house team of Business Analysts (BAs) with new and contracted staff. This resulted in a loosely-knit group with varying skill levels and experienced in different requirements methodologies. How could the company ensure that the team would effectively perform its duties over the lifetime of the initiative?
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