The Elephant in the Room

Top 10 Signs that You Need to Improve Product Management

Within many insurance companies, there is an obvious truth that can no longer be overlooked. The elephant in the room is that current manual product management processes – which require frequent collaboration between many different stakeholders – are inconsistent and rob insurers of much-needed agility. If you’re involved in product development, the following situations may be all too familiar:

Top 10 Signs that You Need to Improve Product Management

1. I thought this was the current version of the product specification.
2. Were you waiting for me to sign off? I was waiting for you to sign off.
3. Oops, we accidentally sent the wrong product information to Marketing.
4. We just received a request for rating changes to product A, but we have not completed the changes to product B yet…It sure would be great if we could work on multiple products concurrently.
5. I don’t have to workout. I just chase the product sign-off folder around the office to stay in shape.
6. I think we’re working on version 17 of product 5, or is that version 5 of product 17? They both have the same email subject line.
7. Did anybody submit the product filing with the DOI? Were there any exceptions or was it approved?
8. No one gave IT the heads-up. They don’t have the cycles to code the rate and form changes into New Business, Policy Admin and Illustration.
9. It’s a week before launch and legal just told us we can’t release the product with that name because it’s too close to a competitor’s product name. Guess we should have involved them sooner…
10. This new product looks like a real blockbuster, but when do we get to actually launch?

While this list is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, it points toward serious flaws in the product management process that insurers can no longer afford to ignore.

Inflexible and inefficient processes can add months of lag to your time to market. Poor product management processes not only rob your business of much-needed agility, they significantly increase operating costs. By some estimates, companies can spend between $ 500K and $ 2 million on a significant product change or new product introduction, which makes every product change high risk.

Given the expense and risk involved, why have companies been slow to adopt modern automated processes? One answer is that product management is viewed as “the hard stuff” because it touches every major business unit and involves multiple systems and stakeholders across the organization with typically no single owner of the product or process.

The architecture of current IT systems compounds the problem. Virtually every application that requires product information also stores product information. More often than not, IT teams have to hard-code product data and rules manually into multiple systems. As a result, many organizations tend to think of product development as an IT problem when, in fact, it’s a strategic business problem.

But It’s a Really Big Elephant…

It’s natural to feel intimidated by the idea of modernizing processes. How much will it cost and where do you start? The good news is that there are mature solutions and best practices available to help you achieve consistent automation, audit-ability and efficiency throughout the entire product lifecycle. These product management solutions can be implemented in manageable phases with incremental benefits along the way to minimize implementation risks and realize a faster ROI.

To learn more about the building blocks of product agility, download the white paper:  “Surviving and Thriving with Enterprise Product Agility”

4 Steps to Achieving Enterprise Product Agility

There’s a $100 bill on the floor: Do you pick it up?

Companies that continue to ignore the elephant in the room and go on letting expensive, labor-intensive processes impede time to market do so at their own peril. Not only will they leave significant cost savings lying on the floor, they risk being unable to achieve their growth objectives and losing market share to more product-agile competitors who are able to deliver the right product to the right customer at the right time.

To learn more about the building blocks of product agility, download the white paper:  “Surviving and Thriving with Enterprise Product Agility”

For more information regarding the LOMA Resource Article referenced in this post, visit page 24 of the LOMA Resource July 2010 Issue.

"Inflexible and inefficient processes can add months of lag to your time to market."