How can insurers best maximize their BPM investment? A new report from Boston-based
The report, authored by Celent Senior Analysts Benjamin Moreland and Donald Light, says BPM can make a difference in a variety of operational areas across the enterprise. “A BPM solution will make processes more efficient, consistent, and compliant,” the report states. “It can make an insurer a better business partner for an independent agent or broker and get the right information to an underwriter at the right time. It can increase a service unit’s productivity or decrease cycle times in a claim group.”
The authors contend that insurers should view BPM less as a one-time technology installation than a tool for continuous process improvement. As such, a comprehensive strategy for BPM must precede any installation. “The first step in maximizing ROI probability and reducing project failure is establishing BPM governance to provide consistency and repeatability from one project to the next,” the report states. “Only after establishing an enterprise BPM strategy and direction should insurers focus on individual projects.”
Yet, the report notes that the maturation of BPM technology is a relatively recent development. “It is only in the past few years that BPM has emerged as an important horizontal application category within insurance,” Moreland and Light state. “Six or seven years ago, an IT analyst would look over a landscape of workflow, enterprise application integration (EAI), and image and content management applications.”
With the array of vendor options now widening, the report provides guidance on what insurers should look for when adopting BPM. “A complete BPM solution has six elements: process design and integrated development environment (IDE); process repository and management; process execution engine; monitoring and management; execution history; analytics, modeling, and optimization.”
