Don’t Pardon the Disruption

Given much of what we see and hear — much of what appears in but is not limited to the trade media in insurance or any other industry — we’re frequently reminded of the lyrics from the old Buffalo Springfield song, “For What It’s Worth”:

There’s something happening here.
What it is ain’t exactly clear.

The part that ain’t exactly clear has to do with disruption. According to Merriam-Webster, disruption is, “the act or process of disrupting something : a break or interruption in the normal course or continuation of some activity, process, etc.” That’s where things start to get muddy.

Homework Worth Doing

In much the same way that innovation is now interpreted to mean change, disruption is now interpreted, at least in many quarters, to mean improvement. Compounding the problem posed by the interpretation (and introducing irony into the equation) is the fact that many companies that promise disruption (meaning improvement), actually deliver disruption (meaning operational catastrophe). And every organization can tolerate (let alone afford) just so much disruption.

To minimize disruption (meaning organizational chaos), we employ what we call PREP (Project Risk-Elimination Planning). Here’s what we do:

• We come to your location for a few days.
• We get to know you, your organization, and the way it operates.
• We review your systems and their functionality, as well as your LOBs and their state variations.
• We show you our workflows for Policy, Billing, and Claims and review our Design Studio toolset.
• We validate the necessary integrations and share our implementation methodology.
• We discuss roles, responsibilities, and resources.
• We give you a project-management overview and develop a data-migration strategy specific to your needs.

That enables all of us to become familiar with each other, our respective organizations, the way each organization does things, and why. And it shortens the work of work associated with contracting because we’re already … well … prepped.

No More Disruptions

The last thing we want to create — and the one thing our customers can least afford — is operational disruption. If we can’t keep you online, conducting day-to-day business without interruption, as we deliver our system to you (improvement), we’re doing it wrong, regardless of what it means.

We don’t mean to suggest that our way is the only way. But it’s the best way we know to minimize disruption (meaning business disaster).

Some disruptions just can’t be pardoned.