Practice Makes Perfect

What are some best practices insurance carriers use to manage rapidly evolving mobile technologies? Tech Decisions asked a group of analysts and consultants for their views on what insurance carriers need to do to gain better control of their mobile users—both internal staff and policyholders.

Karen Pauli
Research Director, Insurance, TowerGroup

Leading insurers are partnering with technology providers that have specific and focused mobile competencies. This comes from the realization that it is not realistic to keep up with the requirements around the rapidly evolving mobility space, particularly in terms of things such as security and platforms.

Some insurers believe that internal development of mobile capabilities is how to keep younger IT workers engaged, but for the most part that is allocated resources to a sandstorm of continually shifting skills and competencies that the majority of insurers can't afford.

An adjunct to this is that when insurers are choosing technologies that have a functional relationship to mobile capabilities, such as core billing, claims, and policy admin, one of the key qualification points should be the vendors' articulated mobility strategy.

Insurers cannot adopt core systems that are architected around a "nothing prevents it" capability.  It must be with a vendor that can state and demonstrate a studied and purposeful architecture that supports mobile adoption of functionality.

Gerald Shields
IT Practice Director, Robert E. Nolan Company

Adoption of mobile technology by customers, business partners, and employees is rapidly outpacing carriers' capabilities. Best practice carriers are responding by developing a comprehensive strategy covering the full range of mobile technology issues beyond just what applications to put on mobile devices.

This strategy must guide important decisions such as: platform selection, consolidated development, securing data, BYOD policies, and how mobile and web apps should work together.

The first step, as always, is to clearly understand business value, business requirements, and priorities. We are helping carriers implement a framework that addresses all the components necessary to successfully build, deploy, and support mobile technology, devices, infrastructure, developers, testing, and maintenance—with a focus on business results and long-term sustainability.

Mark Breading
Partner, Strategy Meets Action

One of the best mobile technology practices in insurance is what I call capability bundling. In the early stages of building custom mobile apps, it was typical to focus on a single purpose—things like agent locators, first-notice-of-loss, and financial calculators. These apps helped insurers gain experience, but the download and usage statistics were often low.

Mobile device users typically download apps that they plan to use frequently. Some of the early insurance apps were, by their very nature, low usage apps. For instance, once you have located an agent, you usually don't need that app again. And no one really wants to think about needing an FNOL app.

Increasingly, insurers are bundling related capabilities that deliver more value. The results are more downloads and usage.

Not all of these capabilities are purely insurance transactions, but they are logically associated with the insurance needs of policyholders. Bundling-related capabilities is a win-win approach for both customers and insurers.

Ellen Carney
Senior Analyst. eBusiness and Channel Strategy, Forrester Research

Usability testing is an area that's overlooked in a lot of mobile strategies, but it will be critical in moving mobile from being fun experiments to delivering real business impact.

Usability testing ensures that customers can find the content they need and functionality to help them execute the tasks they need done.

Begin by placing popular and critical elements on the opening screen. Test page layouts for specific onscreen placement, the formatting of lists and search results, and the balance of text to graphics.

And don't forget to think about your usability testers—if you have employees that fit your mobile customer profile—they are often willing to provide unvarnished opinions into what you could have done better.