DaveBirchall.com on Business Technology

Many software companies have targeted the insurance industry with a software product offering in the last few years. These software products are able to be taken off the shelf and seemingly dropped into production.

The apparent speed of deployment can be appealing to a business that is striving to get things done and kick goals in the shortest time frame possible. The lure of such a solution can be all the more appealing when the other option is a custom software project which (as reputation would lead you to belief) can take several months to design build and then test. Although the custom software approach would inevitably lead to a better fit for the business, efficiency is sacrificed for the sake of apparent speed of deployment.

This view of insurance industry software is to my mind far too simplistic and fails to take into account a best of both worlds approach which has been developed and refined in recent years.

Every insurance company is different. By their nature, they need to be different in order to gain competitive advantage over their competitors. The way risk is calculated, premiums and pricing are calculated are all highly specialised and are often updated and refined on a frequent basis.

BA’s, Risk Managers and Actuary’s need to be able to make changes to such calculations without having to add to the work load of IT managers. Long and convoluted change management processes simply become an unnecessary stumbling block for a department focused on getting things done. By the same token, the IT team can be hesitant to give untrained personnel access to business logic in a business critical system.

The solution lies in using a Business Rules Management System (BRMS) to seperate out the business logic and make it accessible to the people that need it. Rules or sets of rules can be locked down using role based security to prevent unauthorised changes to business logic. As well as speeding up the change request process, a collaborative approach to business logic can then harnessed allowing the business to catapult into a new realm of business agility.

In addition to all this, the software development cycle is significantly reduced, allowing insurance businesses to reap the benefits of their investment sooner.

A BRMS approach to insurance industry software allows you to enjoy the benefits of off the shelf software (rapid deployment, stable code base,) with all the benefits of custom software. (efficiency, fit, usability, performance)

To find out more about how BRMS can work for you, register for our forthcoming the webinar at

http://www.solentive.com/software-events.html

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