PolicyWriter, by Adaptik Corp., is like no other P&C policy administration solution on the market and we’re happy to prove it. Today’s Adaptik Blog entry highlights the software’s unique upgrade methodology. Want to read more about what makes PolicyWriter different? Click here.
You’re about to invest in a brand new vendor policy administration system (PAS). The current functionality seems almost perfect for your needs. You will invest 12 to 18 months to implement and roll onto the new solution. So far, so good for Day 1. But have you thought about Day 2? Are you signing up for another 12 month project every time you take a new release?
"In the market right now, some leading vendors proudly tout “successful” upgrade projects that took more than a year to implement."
Software upgrades are a natural part of vendor PAS product evolution. They should be expected, and must be understood in terms of the effort and disruption implementing the upgrade will cost your business. You will want, need or even be required to take upgrades. Even if you can choose to skip some, it is never a viable business plan to skip upgrades forever.
In your initial evaluation process of competing PAS vendors, find out specifically what they have done to ensure the ability to smoothly support implementing upgrades to their software without losing your customizations/configuration, without disrupting your ongoing business and maintenance, and without requiring an initial implementation-size project for each upgrade. Understand their history of upgrades with existing customers, but be fair: Understand what portion of each upgrade timeline was due to a customer’s own procedures and which aspects which could not be avoided.
In the market right now, some leading vendors proudly tout “successful” upgrade projects that took more than a year to implement. When we first heard of this, we thought we misunderstood. Then we started to understand the difference between their product and PolicyWriter. Three major differences became apparent once we took a deeper dive.
First, where we have carefully considered backward compatibility in our upgrades, others have not. Adaptik strives to make sure that configuration specific for a customer will still work without being redone when there is an upgrade. We compare this to reports from others that their “configuration” (which was really proprietary scripting language code) had to be largely rewritten to work with the competitor’s upgrade. So if it took six months to write the “configuration” the first time, it would take almost the same amount of time for the upgrade. Again, not so with Adaptik’s PolicyWriter, because there is no need to re-configure.
Second, out of the box, Adaptik’s PolicyWriter provides a facility to take in a software upgrade such that business development and maintenance configuration can continue without disruption simultaneously for both the old and the new releases. Compare this to our competitors who recommend freezing business development and maintenance for the duration of the upgrade process. Telling the business there is a 6-12 month moratorium on changes does not win popularity contests.
Third, one of the inherent strengths of Adaptik’s PolicyWriter is its integration architecture. Our integration architecture is specifically designed to be codeless. The beauty of the design is not just in how rapidly we can integrate with almost any service out there, but also in what it means when there are upgrades on either side. When a competitor’s software is upgraded, APIs to integrated services typically must also be redone. If 50 services are used in the solution, you can see how the effort balloons. Not so with Adaptik’s PolicyWriter. You don’t have to rewrite anything. The services will continue to work.
Your company may have its own processes it applies to upgrades, and we at Adaptik can’t necessarily reduce that time. But, we can get your product upgraded and ready for testing in days if not hours. Compare that to 12 months.
