Story:
Unleashing Corporate Agility through Bottom-up Experiments at If Insurance

A brainstorm session in January 2011 narrowed the experiment scope.  We decided to focus on the claims handling process, as this has a big impact on our ability to gain new and retain existing customer. Could we differentiate If’s claims handling by not only identifying a new service, but quickly assessing its market potential in a practical pilot test?”

 We also drew up three criteria to evaluate our ideas. The experiment had to be:

• Simple: doable in a five-week project execution phase;
• Relevant: focused on customer value;
• Practical: drawing on the competence, resources and logistics available to the experiment team.

 We also realized that while there is strong industry knowledge and business intelligence within If, we often faced the challenge of translating such knowledge into decisive action: to close what is sometimes called the knowing-doing gap. So as well as doing the experiment, members of our team also dug into the outcomes of recent If projects, to understand how quickly they had been put in place, and what their obstacles had been.

Prototyping a new service concept

Using our selection criteria for the experiment, we settled quickly on the idea of picking up customers and driving them to their rental vehicle. This was not a new idea by any stretch – indeed, it is one of the key marketing themes of Enterprise Rent-a-Car, the fast large US chain. But it was not currently being offered in the Scandinavian market, so it served our purposes nicely. We tailored the Enterprise model slightly, to come up with the concept of If partnering with a number of vehicle repair workshops.  The offer to the customer was to deliver the car (after repair) to their home or workplace, cleaned inside and out, in return for which the customer would fill in a questionnaire on their satisfaction with the service. 

By design, the experiment involved relatively little investment and only minor IT involvement. Importantly, we did not build a business case, nor did we seek broader endorsement for the idea within the company – we decided to “just do it”.  To be sure, we were very aware of the cost side of the equation, but by keeping the pilot small we were able to address the business case later.

Delivering pace and agility

How quickly could we design and run the test pilot? Well, we committed to getting it done within 8 weeks, and we met this timeline (through enormous amounts of hard work!).  There was no one key that unlocked this speed, but rather a number of contributory factors including, as follows:

• Senior level buy-in – We figured out that if you’re going to design an experiment that will ultimately benefit a specific business unit, you need to involve that business unit from word go and the starting point has to be at the very top. We went to the head of the Claims organisation and he confirmed that our experiment was, indeed, do-able. Furthermore, he was prepared to give us both business development and technical people to support the process and, crucially, provide us with the contact we would need with the car workshops who we initially thought we could partner with.”

• Define very early in the process all the key activities – A project plan is essential. We listed very early on in the process as many of the foreseeable activities as possible to ensure we could get what we wanted in the given timeframe. We also used this activity list as the basis for follow up and, if needed, for re-planning. We established a common team site on SharePoint and agreed weekly phone meetings, as well as a day-by-day status update between the Claims organisation that was in contact with the car workshop company and us, so that we could follow the experiment progress.

• Agree on defined roles – A strong person at the helm keeps everyone focused on the tasks in hand. We allocated clear project leaders for both the agility pilot and the benchmark study.  We used the core team as a working steering group and we all contributed to the common parts of the experiment, including the preparation and conclusion. The fact that all members of the team held senior positions in their ‘day jobs’ and were highly competent meant that we had the necessary contacts to help us garner support when we needed it.

• Involve people with specialist subject matter knowledge – The resources made available by the head of Claims were crucial to the ultimate shape of the experiment. They took responsibility for clarifying the project plan both in terms of the vehicle repair workshops involved and the customers. We had gone in with the idea of using several workshops, but the Claims people felt this would complicate the pilot. They advised us to choose just one workshop. Not only that, but they knew exactly which company to approach. Their industry knowledge was important for us because it facilitated the speed and agility we were seeking. It allowed us to quickly put in place all the arrangements we needed with the workshop company. It’s a key learning when it comes to running pilots – don’t try and do everything yourself; use the specialist knowledge available to you.

• Keep it simple – The objective of this experiment wasn’t to launch something huge, but to test the processes by which agility is enabled and speed-to-market assured.  So simplicity was a key design parameter: We decided to provide an extra service to 100 customers who were having their cars repaired and this comprised cleaning (inside and outside) and delivery of the car to their home or office. All the customers had to do was fill in a questionnaire about the service using a basic 1-5 scoring system and we developed a very simple form of status report, by re-using an existing IT system.  Throughout this process, we worked hard to avoid over-complicating things, and this ensured buy-in from all parties.

Pilot execution and Benchmarking

Once all the plans were in place, a four-week execution phase began, with cars both cleaned and delivered by the workshop partner in close cooperation with If’s Claims people. A further week was added to the execution phase during which just the car cleaning service was offered. This process went smoothly, largely as a result of the high level of project planning and good relations between the Claims team and workshop operator taking part in the pilot.

As noted earlier, a benchmarking study ran in tandem with the broader agility experiment, after an initial survey of the project group had suggested that the company rated rather low on innovation. The benchmarking study looked at seven previous If projects as well as the ongoing agility experiment. The benchmarking criteria included the type and complexity of the project, the number of IT hours spent, whether it was championed, whether project teams were taken out of their day-to-day jobs, what the timeframe was and whether a formal project management tool was used.