The policy administration transformation effort includes many phases that present the carrier with unique challenges. Survey respondents were asked which phase was the most challenging. Planning resulted in the most issues, while post-transformation was cited as the least challenging.

Scope Management Is a Critical Success Factor

The planning phase is crucial to any implementation, and the size and complexity of a policy transformation is significant because it serves as the system of record and integrates with many other functions throughout the organization. If a policy transformation is planned incorrectly, carriers must deal with staffing concerns, improper future state requirements and other potential issues.

These issues are likely to lead to scope increases, which frequently constrain the budget and push timelines, causing carriers to place a priority on scope management. These increases can be functional or arise from underestimating the effort or cost to complete the work. Survey respondents that were in the process of or had completed their transformation experienced many examples of these scope increases during their transformation.

In observing the occurrences for scope increase, respondents cited four functional activities as causes: increased customization, added internal user needs, added third-party data and added external user needs. The first three activities were also ranked as the three most frequent occurrences of either type (functional or underestimation) identified by respondents in the survey. (Added external user needs ranked sixth.) This was consistent across all lines of business.