Insurers can build better products faster using process mining

When the insurance industry thrives, so too does the economy. But if insurance is outdated, inefficient, and slow, companies stop taking on new risks. That stalls growth and innovation. 

McKinsey reports on the current timeframes as: “Incumbent insurers generally spend six to 12 months bringing a new product to market. This pace is partly attributable to factors such as legacy IT and a lack of agility. By contrast, a digitally enabled direct-to-consumer insurer might require two months or less to develop and launch a new product and less time for product changes.” 

In addition to preventing incumbents from keeping up with more nimble competitors, the slow development life cycle leaves companies unprotected: did you know forty percent of small businesses in the United States have no insurance at all? 

Outdated processes slow down product development 

Several factors contribute to the slow progress: changing regulation, legacy infrastructure, business silos and outdated processes, among them. To move toward more efficient product development, insurers need to break down silos and reduce product and process complexity.  

It’s a tall order. No doubt about it. But it can be achieved with the help of Celonis’ market-leading process mining technology and Execution Management System (EMS). 

Here’s how. A typical product development journey will include lots of different people working across various departments, using different systems (desktops, apps, etc.). They’re probably not going to play nicely together – the systems, not the people that is. This amounts to a good deal of complexity and this complexity incubates hidden inefficiencies. 

Use data to inform and improve decision making

One big source of complexity is siloed systems. Left unresolved, siloes make it incredibly difficult for insurers to access and use data that could otherwise speed up and improve company performance. Products can’t get better if you don’t have the right data to inform decisions. 

But by using the EMS, insurers can integrate data from across transactional and analytical systems at scale in real time. That means rendering a holistic view of business processes. With that information, companies can reveal and fix the inefficiencies getting in the way of performance. All of a sudden you see how work gets done, and more usefully how it doesn’t, across the development lifecycle. 

“We help growing IT organizations get a better, more objective view on the product life cycle and understand where the process is not meeting KPIs. Those KPIs are typically high rework rates, long cycle times before release, and even the continuous need to update success criteria,” says Jared Helfand, Senior Solution Engineer, Celonis. “By having insights into how the process is truly running, IT leaders are able to adjust and standardize the process allowing them to meet their goals.”

Going one step further, insurance firms can automate those parts of the processes suited to it. In doing so, freeing up people to work on what adds the most value: next generation product features and capabilities at speed, anyone? 

Edward Baggaley

Senior Content Marketing Manager

Edward writes for and about Celonis from London.