Making a Case to Modern Product and Pricing Management in Commercial Insurance — Rob Tyrie February 15, 2024
When taking on new technology it’s often hard to get an organization to take on the risk of deploying the software solutions that will impact multiple groups in the company. This is the nature of breaking down silos, so there should be expected friction. One of the techniques that I use is senior management team communication.
In conjunction with the business team it’s important to have a solid, tight narrative to take on the risk of new technology. I work with senior program leaders who want to take on these initiatives and iterate through a beginning point like this.
Here is summary memo in a two-pager format in the style that Amazon uses to brief executives on a business case to deploy Coherent.Global’s Spark to create a Product Factory using Excel as the creation tool and Spark as the conversion-to-API platform tool to scale and share the product rating APIs across systems like the policy admin system and the broker portal. This is a sample draft start with as a template and then iterate with the champion on the team who wants to take on the challenge.
Subject: Coherent – Excel-Powered Product Agility for Exponential Growth
Problem Statement
Our current product development cycle is hindered by bottlenecks, technical overhead, and misaligned team efforts. This limits our ability to:
* Respond quickly to market demands and pricing opportunities.
* Innovate with new product offerings at a competitive pace.
* Optimize for profitability through pricing experimentation.
Proposed Solution
Coherent Spark empowers us to create a new Product Factory that transforms product development.
1. Excel as Source: Business analysts, actuaries and underwriter’s leverage Excel, already a familiar tool, to define product logic, rules, and pricing in a structured format in an Excel workbook with formulas and data. Data could be included dynamically from external data stores.
2. Spark-Powered Conversion: A custom conversion engine, built on Spark, takes these Excel inputs and generates digital-twin of the Excel Workbook and the Cloud APIs. These execute with unlimited performance characteristics and security in a cloud environment. APIs can be shared safely with external partners like MGAs and brokers to integte in their systems.
3. Business User Autonomy:Users directly, make product changes and updates, run batch tests, run simulations, calculate premiums, complete price monitoring and test what-if-scenarios – with minimal IT intervention.
Key Benefits
Unleash Agility: Drastically accelerate product changes, updates, and new rollouts, boosting our responsiveness to market trends. Go to market faster.
Collaboration Supercharged: Seamless exchange between underwriting, actuarial and IT teams for streamlined development and optimized pricing.
Efficiency & Cost Savings: Reduced IT hours spent on minor product iterations, freeing them for innovation and slashing ownership costs.
Transparency & Auditability: Improved tracking and control of changes, enhancing compliance.
Implementation & Impact
API Delivery: These product APIs integrate seamlessly into our admin systems and broker portals for real-world access.
IT Governance: IT oversees converter capabilities, secure model and code deployment, and monitors utilization to optimize scaling and performance.
Proof of Concept: A trial with any one of Private Company or Fleet Auto will showcase potential gains in both timelines and bottom-line benefits.
Financial Upside: Projections outline expected ROI based on reduced TCO, revenue lift from faster-to-market offerings, and potential increase in pricing accuracy. Is it expected that for products that have a rating workbook in existence it will take 4 to 12 weeks per product to create new APIs. This will allow us to get new products to Market well short of the 6 to 12 months it takes with our legacy approach. There is no coding of product models in the policy main systems are updating specialized tables for rating in this approach.
Decision Requested
Approval to initiate Coherent’s proof of concept. Upon success, Coherent Spark becomes a foundation for our Product Factory model, dramatically scaling our ability to iterate and win new business.
To complete the business case additional information is required including some financials, a project plan with milestones, team roles are responsibilities and agreed upon conditions of success.
**Appendix**
* Deeper technical specs on Spark converter model
* Initial estimates for costs and potential gains
* POC timeline for the Specific Product Line that is chosen.
— — — — — — -
**Notes on Style**
* **Action Oriented:** The focus is on the result ("exponential growth," "product agility") not just the technology.
* **Benefits Front and Center:** Leads with how it solves the key business problems - increased revenue, speed, etc.
* **Brevity is Key:** Only critical detail to support the decision is included.
It’s always worth iterating this brief with input from key business or technical team members to tailor it closer to your COO’s preferred presentation style. Let me know if you want to refine any sections further.
[this document was created using Gemini 1.5 in a test of the mixing up experience, communication models and structure communication management]
Rob Tyrie is an advisor and technologist in the insurance industry for the past 3 decades. He is the former global lead for insurance at Salesforce.com and has started or grown more than 15 software companies in his career. He is also a founder of The Grey Swan Guild an International Virtual Think Tank. A software designer and programmer by training, he helps build out big business programs that work.
He lives in Toronto, his second city is New York and he loves to travel using an old jeep and the internet. A a reformed developer and systems architect who’s trying to make the world a little bit better and a little bit easier for everybody involved. You spent over three decades in software and big organizations and one of the things you learn is that there’s always more things to learn... and RTFM. If you’re interested in talking and sharing ideas I’m always reachable on social media @robtyrie is it a good way to reach me or you can shoot me an email - rob.tyrie@gmail.com. Live long and prosper 🖖🚀.
