If you fail to embrace change, there’s every chance customers will fail to embrace you.
Digital transformation creates fundamental changes in how businesses operate and deliver value to customers. Some of the many benefits include:
- Boosting customer experiences with omnichannel communications, self-service features, online purchasing and engaging customers through any device such as apps, websites, mobile phones and social channels.
- Capturing data insights from customer interactions to better understand individual needs, buying cycles, price points or simply cultivating relationships to build awareness and loyalty.
- Enhancing collaboration with distributed employees using digital conferencing tools to work cross-functionally in bringing different perspectives together to solve complex problems holistically.
- Bringing solutions to market faster by automatically gathering billing, pricing and product combinations from various administration systems to deliver the right solution at the right time.
The idea behind becoming a digital business is setting organizations apart by unlocking efficiencies and simplifying the way organizations engage with customers.
Let’s look at what a digital business might look like for an insurance company.
Digital Transformation in Action
Today’s digital-savvy insurance customers and distributors expect on-demand service and functionality with experiences like their other day-to-day interactions. That means moving from paper forms, manual underwriting and month-long policy processing to convenient self-service tools, personalized product offerings, electronic submission and automated fulfillment.
Doing this requires an insurance company to adopt digital technology and automated business processes across the enterprise. A digital platform enables real-time data exchange between multiple layers of interaction, such as a user interaction layer, a data analytics layer and a product layer. Integrated together, users can be more responsive and work efficiently. Here are some examples.
TRANSFORM – Bringing digital sophistication to the front-end.
Using digital applications and automation, insurance advisors and salespeople can eliminate errors and produce In Good Order (IGO) submissions the first time, every time. Digital applications run through an automated underwriting engine, which streamlines processing and shortens the sales cycle for a better overall experience.
TRANSFORM – Integrating administration and product development systems.
On the back end, automated straight-through processing speeds the transaction cycle by eliminating manual intervention and hands-on data re-entry. Claims, which used to take months to process, are managed faster. A simplified digital product portfolio makes it easier to personalize product offerings that match individual needs. A digital environment helps prototype, develop and rapidly deliver new products to market faster as demand changes.
TRANSFORM – Changing the way users work and interact with customers.
An end-to-end digital experience begins with meeting customers where they want to be met … through an app, a website, a mobile device or other online channels. Each engagement channel becomes a sales lead opportunity, where employees can proactively advise or cross-sell within one overall digital platform. Customers can manage their accounts online in a central place and use self-serve tools to enroll or adjust their portfolio. This is made possible by integrating a wide range of data systems in different locations into a centralized digital platform.
TRANSFORM – Improving data access through information hubs.
Powerful digital information portals help plan sponsors, plan participants and advisors access information when and where they need it. Plan sponsors can tract participant activities and help them set goals or manage their plan objectives. Plan participants can interact directly online to open accounts, seek advice or track goals. And advisors can access a dashboard to view clients’ entire financial picture so they can recommend IRAs, annuities or additional insurance protection.
TRANSFORM – Guiding customers using smart intelligence.
Business intelligence tools help build customer relationships and boost productivity. These smart tools make it easier to capture and track thousands of customer conversations, emails and phone calls. Insight from this data opens the door to offer personalized solutions or develop new ones based on what is learned from the exchanges. By digitizing operations of each phase of a digital experience (sometimes called the customer journey), advisors can recommend portfolio consolidations, investment reallocation or new solutions to meet life-event changes.
TRANSFORM – Bringing products to market faster.
Using digital tools, automation and analytical capabilities, users can bundle solutions tailored to each customer’s situation in real-time. A digital platform allows multiple systems to talk to each other, enabling users to pull internal and external data about customers to customize products. Outside partners and third-party administrators collaborating with insurance companies can “plug and play” their platforms with the insurance company’s digital platform to help offer complementary portfolio solutions or create market opportunities.
Conclusion
A digital environment can create an exciting and meaningful online experience. Everything is digital. Information is available on demand. And fulfillment is fast and efficient. It is all about putting convenience at the heart of improving both customer and employee interactions using digital technology and digitized business processes.
Let us help you in your transformation journey. Check out Managed Services: The Fast Lane to Digital Transformation to learn more.
