Use Vendor Customer Data to Prescreen Coretech Offerings
It’s hard to find the right coretech solution when every vendor sounds the same.
Coretech Vendor Product Messaging is Strikingly Similar
Coretech Insight reviewed the homepages of over two dozen vendors offering P&C core platforms in mid-May 2024. The majority had very similar messaging about their core solutions. Most could be summarized as follows:
We help insurers transform their operations, grow their business, and improve customer satisfaction.
Our modern, cloud-based core platform includes:
We recognize that vendors may legitimately make similar claims — after all, they are addressing common needs across the industry. However, the lack of clear distinctions is challenging for buyers who are trying to understand differences, sort through options, and find the best candidates for their needs.
A Vendor’s Customers Offer Key Insights
To help buyers differentiate among vendors, Coretech Insight established a solutions directory with a key element that varies from vendor to vendor, and is a good predictor of future success: the vendor’s publicly announced customers.
Most coretech vendors have team members with decades of industry experience. However, there are many different types of insurers, markets, and LOBs with diverse requirements. There is no substitute for working with customers and supporting them in production.
A vendor cannot credibly claim to fully support a certain type of insurer until they have completed several successful implementations. A vendor who is highly experienced in supporting a certain type of insurer will be more likely to repeat their success. A vendor who has limited or no experience with certain insurers will be learning and discovering as they go – increasing overall risk and likelihood of delays.
How to Use Customer Data in the Coretech Insight Solution Directory
The Coretech Insight Solutions Directory provides a list of vendors and core platforms in sortable tables. For each vendor/platform, the total number of publicly announced customers is listed, along with the three most recent example customers and (if available) the year each mention was published.
To use the directory as a “customer experience” filter, the buyer should ask three questions about any vendor they are considering:
Vendors with few publicly announced customers, customers very different than the buyer’s organization, or vendors that have not published new information on customers in recent years are less likely to be strong candidates.
Example
Imagine you represent a multi-line P&C insurer with about $600M DWP with a mix of personal and commercial LOBs. You’re beginning to investigate new core platforms and three vendors have caught your attention. They all have similar messaging that seems to match your organization’s needs. In reviewing their customer information in the Solutions Directory, you learn the following details shown in Table 1 below.
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Vendor A has a healthy number of customers and has recently published information on them. However, you see its customers are mutual insurers that are much smaller than your company. The vendor may have trouble scaling to support your needs – not a great fit.
Vendor B has a small number of customers that are government entities, such as state and county governments. It shows no experience supporting larger, multi-line insurers like your organization. The lack of recently published customers may be a sign its sales are faltering and it is not keeping up with its peers. It is also not a good fit.
Vendor C has experience with two dozen insurers that have been publicly announced. When you review its customers, you see they are multi-line insurers similar to your organization. Vendor C consistently publishes updates on new and existing customers, which suggests successful sales execution.
Of these three, Vendor C is the strongest candidate in terms of customer experience, and a potential match for your needs.
Applying this customer experience filter with Number, Type, and Date questions is only one of many measures for comparison, but it’s valuable for differentiating among core platform vendors – especially in early, exploratory stages.
View the solutions directory at this link: Coretech Insight Solutions Directory
Additional Resources
See “Early Indicators 2024 Q1 — Public Coretech Deals Set New Quarterly Low” for more information on vendor market activity and deal volumes, including publicly announced deal counts and DWP ranges of new customers for individual vendors.
For additional information on evaluation criteria for vendor selection, see “Five Eval Criteria to Jumpstart Your P&C Coretech Shortlist.”
This article first appeared on the Coretech Insight blog at: https://www.coretechinsight.com/blog/customerdatatoprescreen
Jeff Haner co-founded Coretech Insight, an independent advisory firm, in 2022.
Coretech Insight provides research, frameworks, and insights focused on matching P&C insurers with ideal coretech providers so that, together, they can be wildly successful.
Jeff has served in senior IT, advisory, and marketing roles with Deloitte, Oliver Wyman, NJM Insurance Group, Gartner, and BriteCore. While with Gartner he authored the Magic Quadrant for P&C Core Platforms. Jeff’s experience as a coretech customer, analyst, and vendor provides a unique perspective that cuts through the noise and finds ideal matches between insurers and coretech solution providers.
Contact Jeff at [email protected]
Data Science/AI Solution Provider for Insurance Industry
10 个月Great information!