CLIENT OVERVIEW

Headquartered on the West Coast, this usage-based insurer offers personalized pricing based on vehicle data in the Midwest region of the United States. As part of a navigation and location-based services company, and underwritten by a national personal lines carrier, the insurer offers value-added services, such as route and safety suggestions, as well as rewards for safe driving scores through apps and in-vehicle infotainment systems. Its business model includes agency and direct-toconsumer distribution, straight-through processing, and all-electronic submissions and document delivery.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

The client, a small greenfield insurer, knew that to build up its customer base and expand its opportunities for growth, it needed to roll out its offerings to a more extensive geographical area. With this goal in mind, the insurer decided to roll out in all 50 states.

But in order to achieve its ambitious expansion plans, the insurer wanted to develop a repeatable strategy to simplify and accelerate rollouts to multiple states in parallel while taking into account the specific requirements for each state. The carrier decided to take a phased approach by initially rolling out in four new states in the Midwest.

The insurer had previously implemented Duck Creek OnDemand’s Policy, Billing, and Insights for a single state, but its team was dealing with application instability, especially with the billing platform.

In addition to seeking to define a rollout strategy, the insurer also wanted to shore up its internal team to be able to support its Duck Creek applications, especially Billing. Without internal resources skilled in these platforms, there was no one on hand to train their team. The carrier also needed input on how best to incorporate an external rating engine, how to conduct effective quality assurance on its systems, and how best to maintain and support its technology infrastructure while embarking on its growth goals.

SOLUTION OFFERED

The carrier, which had worked with ValueMomentum previously for managed services, once again turned to ValueMomentum to develop a multi-state expansion strategy based on its Duck Creek State Rollout Framework. These goals included moving each of four new states into production within months and developing a repeatable multi-state strategy to achieve nationwide coverage.

A cross-functional ValueMomentum team, including on-site and offshore members, brought together business analysts, a Duck Creek Policy architect, multiple developers, a quality analyst, and a project manager. Within three months, the teams designed the system architecture, rolled out the four new states (three in parallel) plus renewal automation, and helped integrate an external proprietary rating engine in one, per the client’s preference, replacing Duck Creek’s native rating system.

Leveraging its Duck Creek State Rollout Framework, ValueMomentum helped the insurer consolidate business requirements, identify commonalities and differences in state regulations, and create an internal structure and architecture to support base and identity deviations from state to state. This enabled the insurer to implement several states simultaneously and reduced implementation time to as little as three months. In addition, ValueMomentum provided consulting and design for optimizing the parallel implementation and maintenance processes, including an internal knowledge base for rules, rates, differences, and other domain knowledge.

The newly developed process allowed the carrier to maintain parallel development and release, allowing the organization to ensure rapid time to production across parallel releases.

VALUE DELIVERED

The client successfully rolled out in four additional states with minimal delays or issues during the project. The newly developed process allowed the carrier to maintain parallel development and release, allowing the organization to ensure rapid time to production across parallel releases. With ValueMomentum’s input, the insurer was able to account for statespecific requirements.

The modified forms architecture and automated renewal logic have made forms implementation and renewals processing for new states significantly quicker. Furthermore, consolidating the business requirements for all 50 states and enabling the system to identify and compare differences and similarities will expedite future state rollouts and support continuing growth.

Requirement walkthroughs and sprint planning sessions were found to be effective in preventing defects and ensuring clarity on sprint scope. Proactive communication and collaboration with stakeholders led to better understanding, reduced rework, and improved overall quality.

In addition, ValueMomentum helped the customer become self-sufficient at reducing newer implementations’ defects and incidents. On top of smoother rollouts, the insurer was able to build its own in-house team to maintain its Duck Creek Billing product effectively.