2/8/2008
01:30 PM

Bob Reynolds, Dir., Life Product Management Minnesota Life Insurance Co. (St. Paul, Minn.)
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Successful Product Development Focuses on People, Process and Technology

Addressing product development challenges involves a three-pronged approach focused on people, process and technology.

Facing increased pressure from consumers and agents for tailored offerings, insurance companies have to be able to make product changes and accelerate the development of new products more quickly than ever before to remain competitive. But carriers' legacy systems often are cumbersome and require the involvement of IT resources for product development, making it difficult to create or modify products concurrently. The siloed nature of carriers' line-of-business systems and the lack of IT/business alignment found at many insurers further hinder product development. With the need for mass customization becoming more of a market requirement (especially in the life/annuities space), how can carriers effectively meet business requirements to make hundreds of product changes a month? And is it possible to accomplish concurrent development on multiple products?

Addressing these product development challenges involves a three-pronged approach focused on people, process and technology.

Bob Reynolds, Minnesota Life Insurance Co.

The people who work on product development should be assigned to that function, either through reporting relationships or on a project basis. For example, a subset of employees in a company's IT department might be assigned to work full-time on product development. Other support departments responsible for several functions -- such as operations, compliance and accounting -- could assign people to work full-time on product development but only for a specific time period. This temporary full-time arrangement is vastly preferable to asking people to spend a few hours a day on each of several functions, including product development.

The product development process should be a template so that it is repeatable and can be used simultaneously on more than one project.

Technology can enable the people and process to develop products more efficiently. Companies that continue to use legacy systems for product development can seek newer technology that offers more user-friendly, rules-based systems. But user-friendly doesn't mean you can ignore a disciplined approach to product development -- standards and templates should be adhered to so that the process can be repeated and the components reused. This discipline should be applied to the design, configuration and testing process. Used properly, technology can be a tremendous help in improving speed to market.

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Streamlining product development processes, building "product chassis" of common components, adopting agile enabling technologies, and modifying organizational structure to support product innovation all are ways to improve speed to market.

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Early Engagement With IT Necessary For Product Development
Michael Dippolito, Nationwide

Early discussions about product development with IT can help shape the possible solution and steer clear from complex, expensive efforts down the road.

Van Beach, Tillinghast/Towers Perrin

Speed To Market Is A Potentially Misguided Pursuit
Van Beach, Tillinghast/Towers Perrin

Achieving speed to market is one way companies are leveraging their improved product development processes for competitive advantage, but speed is only one dimension of that process.