How Outdated Technology Causes Delayed Product Timelines & Holds You Back
Given the competitiveness of today’s insurance market, it’s natural for carriers to dream of product development cycles that run at hyperspeed. (Without ever sacrificing quality control, customer satisfaction, or compliance, of course.)
Unfortunately, because of the modern legacy systems so many carriers rely on, they’re still accustomed to development cycles of 18-24 months.
Such cycles simply aren’t sustainable anymore due to customer expectations, pricing volatility, and the industry’s faster-than-expected evolution.
Outdated tech lies at the root of insurers’ speed-to-market difficulties, but a core platform with robust tooling can help carriers make the jump to lightspeed dev cycles.
Modern Legacy: Not That “Modern,” and Definitely Not Fast
Modern legacy insurance core systems do a good job of sounding modern.
- They often claim they’re cloud-enabled. (This is technically true. However, it’s typically via blunt lift-and-shift migration or SaaS hosted on virtual machines, which is far from cloud-native.)
- They may also say that they “are digital-first,” “eliminate manual work via automation,” or, most relevant to product development, drive “continuous innovation.” (This is further from the truth.)
Modern legacy core systems are digitized, not digital-first.
Because they’re not digital-first, cloud-native, or built on MACH architectural principles, they ultimately just recreate old insurance processes in a digital way… including the old, slow speed of product development cycles.
Want to learn how to spot modern legacy systems masquerading as cutting-edge? Read our whitepaper to discover the telltale signs (and learn plenty more about legacy vs. EIS OneSuite).
How Outdated Technology Slows Speed to Market
Everything takes too much time on modern legacy. But the slow pace of tooling on these systems may have the biggest negative impact, due to how inflexible and IT-dependent it makes the development process:
- Virtually every aspect of tooling requires heavy support from IT due to the need for intricate coding, manual integration, and precise customization. IT must also supervise and often hard-code the workflow automation that’d speed up numerous aspects of production.
- Because of legacy systems’ architectural limitations, inefficient data processing, and deficient scalability, teams can’t take the test-and-learn approach that’s ideal for cutting-edge development. (Or at least they can’t do so without risking blown deadlines, in turn running the risk of buggy product releases.)
- Issuing post-deployment updates is yet another cost-inefficient slog. Due to the monolithic system setup, small changes may disrupt other systems.
All of these complications keep speed-to-market at a slow (and unsustainable) pace.
How the EIS Tooling Ecosystem Goes Full Throttle
The tooling features available throughout EIS OneSuite help product teams strike the balance they’ve always wanted between briskly paced, scaled development and a commitment to quality.
Low-code/no-code feature development tools, robust workflow automation, peerless connectivity via open APIs, AI-supported deployment, and other advantages help OneSuite users keep racing competitively. Further, these advantages offer carriers the potential to craft products that take the lead in their respective markets.
Configuration Hub
Strike the proper balance between speed-to-market and quality assurance with Configuration Hub. With all relevant tools in one place, developers can execute changes more easily without switching between systems. GuideMe, the feature’s AI-powered assistant, helps analysts and developers accurately configure policy details and workflows. It locates relevant guidance in real time so users don’t spend precious time tracking it down.
Product Studio
Enjoy the freedom to create insurance products for multiple business lines. Product Studio lets you create essential policy elements (coverages, exclusions, rating factors, etc.) and store them for future use in the feature library. Meanwhile, real-time testing and automated compliance reviews minimize product rollout issues.
UI Builder
Efficiently build and deploy product UIs for multiple user groups (customers, distributors, ecosystem partners, and so on) with UI Builder. The drag-and-drop setup allows easy selection of components from an extensive library. UI Builder also supports speedy delivery of new products and features.
DXP (Digital Experience Platform) and API Documentation Hub
DXP contributes to tooling via API Documentation Hub, which stores the APIs that power app interfaces for UI Builder. Users can easily find ideal APIs using Documentation Hub’s AI-powered search and recommendation features.
EIS Workflow
This tooling feature improves workflow design, automation, and performance management. EIS Workflow users can build product workflows easily on Workflow Designer and rest assured that Workflow Inspect will conduct post-deployment monitoring to continuously assess performance and watch out for anomalies.
OpenL Studio
Devise and implement business logic and rules for product functions using OpenL Studio. Because rules are decoupled from apps, it’s easy to change pricing, policy structure, and other product characteristics in real time. The business rules engine also supports dynamic pricing, rating adjustment, and personalized offer bundling.
Lookup Manager
With Lookup Manager, users can quickly locate lookup values for pricing, risk categories, and other reference data. The feature allows for easy value changes and ensures they’re reflected in the system.
Speed-to-Market Successes Driven by OneSuite
Don’t take our word for it alone. Multiple EIS customers saw outstanding development results thanks to OneSuite’s tooling. Let’s go to the tape:
- Wellfleet Insurance launched four new workplace benefits products in just 12 months with EIS OneSuite as their benefit admin foundation. This launched them into a new market with a bang.
- A leading P&C insurer saw product development cycles become 75% shorter after adopting OneSuite.
- Another carrier reduced the timeline for major cross-system regulatory updates by 2-3 months, which helped speed up product development.
Ready for Lightning-Fast Development?
Give your organization the competitive advantage it needs with EIS OneSuite. Accelerate speed-to-market through best-of-breed tooling while boosting operational efficiency across other essential operational areas.
For a deep dive into the platform’s tooling, read our comprehensive feature overview.
