Focus on Quality in Product Development Aids Speed

When pushing to improve speed to market, it's important to remember that getting it right on the first try can save serious time.

See main article: Process First: Achieving Maximum Product Speed-to-Market

One way for carriers to maximize speed to market is to take a page from W. Edwards Deming's Total Quality Management principles, counsels Doug Roller, chairman of Bolivar, Mo.-based Duck Creek. One of Deming's recommendations to improve product delivery is to reduce the dependency on inspection.

The permutations of insurance products can be so numerous that testing them can drain the speed out of speed to market, even when everything else moves quickly, according to Roller. "The goal is to eliminate the need for testing, not to make it more efficient," he says. Corporatewide commitment to getting it right the first time is critical, he adds.

Some carriers have gone as far as tying compensation to quality by holding executives accountable for the market success of their products, reports Donald Light, a San Francisco-based analyst with Celent. While few carriers may resort to such extreme measures, more are taking formal steps to improve their product development quality through retroactive analysis, according to Light.

"The differentiation between companies that do well and those that don't is increasingly tied to the concept of continuous improvement," he says. "The principle of circling back to compare actual to projected performance is, I would argue, the fundamental measure of the quality of the product development process."

While comparison of the performance of the products themselves may be relatively straightforward, based on agent interest and sales, the continuous improvement of the product development process itself depends on the introduction of technology into that process. "Any analysis of speed to market will be highly subjective without some kind of automated tracking system,"comments Steve Coryell, assistant vice president for product management, CNA.

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio