A new implementation project kickoff is always a buzz. We are in Thailand this week, kicking off our latest Sentro implementation with a major Thai insurer.
Project kickoffs always serve to remind you of all the emotions that accompany changing to something new. Handling change well is the make or break success factor in every implementation project.
With every new implementation there is excitement. The decision to switch to something new is driven by something that is causing you to leave behind the something old. The reasons for change in policy admin systems are many and varied. But there is always a reason.
However, changing to something new is never an easy thing. Teams have spent years building skills and experience around systems and processes to conduct business. All of a sudden, they are asked to learn a new system and new ways of doing things. Yet they are already stretched to the max in making existing business run. Even if the current systems and methods are clunky, they are well understood.
A new system means that the screens and processing sequences that are so familiar you can do them in your sleep, suddenly have to be unlearned and relearned. This change can be traumatic for some. They were very comfortable with their mastery of a process - now it's back to square one.
At Sentro, we have learned that the confidence of the group operations team is the key success measure in every implementation.This is the team that know where all the workarounds are. They know who their most demanding customers are. They know how to knit together processes to satisfy internal stakeholders while delivering great service to customers and their service delivery partners. They know which plans have all the tweaks and special cases. In short, they make it all work.
For these teams, every step saved is like manna from heaven. Little things can mean a lot. Being able to invoice multiple customers in a single billing run. Having columns in an upload file automatically match to the correct field. Automatically calculating reinsurance coverage. Each seemingly small, but when executed across hundreds of groups the time savings can be massive.
When operations teams start to see how their work can be done in Sentro, magic starts to happen. We use the configurability of Sentro to run familiarization sessions early in an implementation. We want the operations teams to see their groups, plans and documents appearing in Sentro. We find that makes learning much more immediate and tangible for the ops teams.
We also understand that change applies to the internal IT teams that support applications. They need levels of comfort and trust around information security, business continuity, and application support.
Our philosophy with all of our customer implementations is transparency and honesty. Sometimes we'll get something wrong. If we so, we fess up to it. We give customers high visibility to what we are working on. We know that we are going to be working with our customers for many years. So we take the view that we are here to solve business problems together.
By the end of an implementation project, our customers always say that they feel like our Sentro team is an extension of their team. That's the ultimate complement for us. Seeing a customer using our platform to deliver more for their customers is a real buzz for us.
We always learn new things from our customers, just as they learn new things from us about using Sentro. This closeness with our customers shapes the way that we think about our platform - it is to all of our benefit!
So while implementation projects are hard work involving a lot of change, they are also very rewarding. We try to have some fun along the way. We can't wait to get started!