Investing in delighting your customers is an especially critical opportunity in a time of economic turmoil and looming global recession. Surprisingly, this blindingly obvious point is most often lost on companies as they rush to a first-order solution of dramatically reducing headcount to get a short-term handle on costs. The recent 45,000+ retrenchments at leading tech companies like Twitter, Meta and Apple shows how they aim to ride out this stormy season by doing more, with less.
Amazon has codified the bright side of scarcity as a leadership principle: “Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense.”
But, how do companies actually realise resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and invention? Headcount reduction to drive resource efficiencies is a clear, and very public, starting point, but it’s also generally a temporary “fix” with teams scaling as soon as the sun peeks out from behind the clouds.
System or tool optimisation to drive operational efficiencies is another, less public, strategy many organisations opt to pursue in stormy seas. Unlike headcount reduction, it has permanent benefits because being smart about internal tools, systems and technology leads to lasting productivity gains with sub-linear cost expansion into the future.
No matter the circumstances, businesses should never compromise on customer experience. This is their differentiation and must be held sacred. For insurance, differentiation is crafted through both product design and the customer experience. In lean times, it is especially important to refocus expensive human resources on building out this differentiation, to boost loyalty and hold onto customers as they become more discerning and value conscious. For many, this may mean giving up the struggle of maintaining the undifferentiated utility of the policy administration system or, alternatively, simply finding a more flexible solution.
Outsourcing this utility layer to best-in-class providers is a key step towards optimisation and focus. The benefits will outlast the tough times. Scarce resources can be diverted from keeping the lights on to building out unique differentiators that will keep customers coming back. It is the well-managed and differentiated businesses that will find it easier to weather future storms.
Swapping out a core system, such as policy administration, can be daunting. Many fear the loss of control and flexibility. This means choosing carefully and ensuring that utility is outsourced to a partner focused on removing friction from the innovation process, allowing the builders of differentiation to develop with speed, control and flexibility. Getting stuck in vendor development queues should no longer be a foregone conclusion in the age of modern, low-code developer platforms.
In short, now is the time to focus your scarce resources on your differentiation so that you can continue to satisfy the ever changing needs of your customers and stay ahead of your competitors.
This means opting for a policy administration solution that will enhance your ability to stand out:
- Cloud-native for flexibility.
- Open API documentation for control.
- Access to an ecosystem of third party services.
- Seamless integration into developer processes and practices.
- Self-help tooling for control, flexibility and speed.
Reach out if you’d like to trial Root’s Low-Code API first insurance operating system, built for developers by developers. It may be a quick resolution to a very complex problem.
