Welcome, everyone. I'm Mike Connor, and, glad to have you here for another, in innovation trailblazer webinar. Today, we're gonna talk about, how to empower, basically producers digitally. And we've got a great lineup of folks, that have got some pretty deep experience in this, so you're gonna learn a lot. So, we encourage you to participate with us and ask questions, and we'd love to answer them. It helps us zero in on the things that are most important to you. So please do that. You can do that to the QA system on Zoom. This is part of our ongoing innovation trailblazer webinar series. You can find more about this at our website, SVI Accelerator, and just look for the events page. There are both, upcoming webinars as well as past webinars that you can tune into and, learn from on demand. So I encourage you to do that. Today, our job is to help provide you actionable insight that helps you basically move from talking about this, work to actually doing it within your organization. So, today, we're gonna talk about some of the trends out there. We're gonna talk about where some of the challenge points are in terms of optimizing the relationship between customer, producer, and carrier. We'll also dig into, you know, areas where we've identified how we can help basically augment, those producers and help make them more effective and the customer experience from them more, in tune with today's expectations. And then we'll dive into what it takes to actually implement this from a system standpoint. And then finally, get down to the mud and the blood and the beer of, basically, how do you basically get the you know, put together a road map and a business case that that moves this forward. So I'd like to take the time to thank our sponsors. Majesco has been with us for almost six years now. They've been a strong supporter of ours, so thank you guys for that. We've got, Exceedence, who's also a platinum sponsor with us today, and you'll hear more about each of these, organizations in a second. And then we've got our silver sponsor, Coveo, and our startup sponsor, Neutrinos. I strongly encourage you to get to each of these organizations' websites. There's a lot of great information and resources up there that you could learn from, so, please check them out. And then with that, what I'd like to do is, introduce you or have our speakers introduce themselves and their organizations to you, so that you have a clear picture of how these organizations can help you, achieve the goals, that we talk about today. So with that, I'd like you to meet our panelists. Let's start with Ryan. You're on mute mute, Ryan. Sorry. Here we go. Thank you. Hello. I'm Ryan Martin. I I work with Exceedence. I've been in the insurance industry for a little over twenty years. I've sat in a lot of the same seats as I'm sure you're all sitting in. I've been a a insurance agent assistant with accounting all the way through CSR, producer, department manager, consulted with a lot of agencies, in my time in the industry. And I'm over at Exceedence now, where we partner technology and insurance expertise to help facilitate and enhance the agent experience, to kinda help with digital solutions. Thank you, Ryan. And Bonnie. Hello, everyone. I'm Bonnie from Coveo. My background is is mostly in technology and knowledge management. But early in my career, I started out, working with an independent insurance agency and then moved on to fintech. And now at Coveo, I'm I'm doing product marketing, and we're really focused across industries. But just to give you an example of of what we do, we we use applied AI to deliver relevant experiences in all digital interactions, through intelligent search and personalized content recommendations. So it's really, you know, making sure that, you know, whether they're agents, brokerage carriers, clients, they have the the most relevant information in the moment of need. Thank you, Bonnie. And, Nishith? Thanks for having me, Mike. And, hello, everybody. My name is Nishith Shukla. I'm with Majesco. I'm the vice president of product management for our digital first suite of products. And, primary focus is, to help, enable digital transformation for brokers, agents, and carriers. And over the last about a couple decades that I've been with Majesco, I've built a number of products, and I've brought them in the market, with an intent to solve these problems and the pain points that, most of you in this audience who may have today. So absolutely excited and looking forward to today's discussion. A quick brief on Majesco. At Majesco, we, basically provide, cloud based, software solutions and products for both property and casualty as well as, life annuities and group businesses. Thanks, Mike. Thank you. Thank you very much. And, Peter. Hi, everybody. Sorry. And, Mike, thank you for your time, and and thank you for spending the time with us audience. So, I'm Peter Noper. I'm the group chief, or the chief customer success officer for Neutrinos. I look after global delivery as well as solutioning and presales. I previously come from a corporate background, within insurance, looking after technology offices. Nutrienos specifically, we're a digital, composable platform. What that means is that we typically engage with our partners and with our customers to create incredible possibilities within digital journeys, and also allowing for capabilities to orchestrate legacy components, modern, insurance platforms as well as any, you know, cloud platforms, you know, like a Salesforce, etcetera, into beautiful digital journeys, not only for distribution channels, but also to fulfill that digital flywheel for customers and from a self-service point of view as well as operational centers without insurance. Thank you, Mark. Great. Thank you. Well, I'm really excited to have each of you with us today. And, for those of you who are attending this webinar today, you know, our job, as I said, is to help you basically, get done the work that you're trying to accomplish in this area. I do encourage you again to check the q and a. If you've got questions, we'd love to answer them. We'll take them as we go. And with that, I'm gonna do a a brief intro just to kinda set the stage for our discussion, and then we're gonna drop into discussion mode. So thank you for joining us. Alright. So, as most of you are are well aware, there's a lot of changes taking place within insurance distribution today. Digital powered intermediaries have taken, kind of a huge step forward. Customer's digital expectations, courtesy of the pandemic, as well as, you know, giants out there from a user experience standpoint like Amazon, Apple, Google, etcetera, etcetera, have really dramatically reset, what customers expect, from those organizations that they're working with. And those customer organizations, whether it's an individual or a company, have also had to kind of accelerate their digital adoption. So they expect that of the people who are trying to support them. Personalization, has also started to take a major step forward within the industry. So we're seeing more and more companies really go beyond, hey. I know who you are, when you sign in to my my website to actually understanding how to basically provide you guidance in terms of best next steps based on who you are and what your needs are. The other thing that we found is it was a lot harder to scale, direct to consumer or direct to business experiences from a digital standpoint than, I think the industry had originally imagined. And so they're looking to basically now kind of figure out ways to support, the producer organizations more effectively. And then as we said, digital acceleration has kind of impacted, everybody. So much more, deep and wider adoption of digital capabilities. From study after study, what we've also learned is that customers really want it both way. They want that digital, connection twenty four by seven, but they also wanna be able to reach and work with an agent that can support them, when they need it. And, that's gonna continue with us for some time now. What they're looking for from those, from those agents and brokers is, more and more proactive support. How you know, you should know more about how to, you know, address my issues and, the challenges that I'm facing from a risk standpoint than I do. And, you should anticipate what my needs are gonna be, as my needs as an individual or business change. And not only that, I expect you to do that at speed, and with deep knowledge. And I think that we're seeing that basically reinforced again and again in, study after study. From a producer standpoint, you know, what they're looking for is how can you as a, carrier help me basically optimize the time I spend doing things that actually drive, revenue and profits for me? And how can you basically reduce, the time that I spend doing things that are basically just consuming my time that could be better served through, you know, some type of, digital capability or a service, that you could provide. So, you know, planning and scheduling seem seems to be a a key issue through multiple studies that we've done out there, focusing on, understanding who the high value customers are and being able to focus on them, prospecting, cross sell, upsell, and then basically driving for referrals. All those things are, you know, making money. Poor leads and unproductive accounts, you know, trying to deal with multiple platforms and, trying to, you know, credential themselves across those. Apparently, compensation is still an issue out there, you know, particularly as we get around more complex policies and relationships, etcetera, etcetera. I won't go through all of these, but, we'll dig into those a little bit later. But all those are areas where we know we can bring value through digital capabilities. We're also seeing more and more producers prioritizing the carriers that Barca them up digitally and moving away from the ones that they're struggling with because time is money. One of the major areas where the producers are feeling challenged is, digital integration both between themselves and their customers, within their own organization and also between themselves and carriers. And particularly as we move towards a more digital stance, that's just becoming an increasingly, difficult pain point for them to address, so areas where we can help. What we're seeing out there in terms of capabilities, they're actually starting to win business out there. And, again, I won't go through all these in-depth. You'll have these slides afterwards. But, you know, bring bringing, you know, insight, and capabilities to customer engagement, making sure that the product and customer information is up to date, automating and customizing process flows, getting, you know, current, just in time training out there so that when I sit down and talk to a customer, particularly about a new product or something I don't know, that I can get that information very quickly and easily, so they can provide that knowledge to the customer. The issue of, you know, this integration across platforms, we're seeing some movement out there in terms of personalized, platforms that are, you know, tuned just for that agent. They know who they are. They know what they sell. They know what they're good at. They know more about their customer base and the products. And, basically, providing them an integrated platform to work from, really saves that, producer a lot of time and energy. And then, you know, we know that claims is kind of an ongoing issue, etcetera, etcetera. So, those are just some of the domains where we think we can bring bring value to these organizations, help them, improve both their revenue growth and profits. And what we also know is that we have to really kind of think about that, you know, empowering the producers kind of across that value chain all the way from engagement to sales, qualification, issuance, policy management, renewal claims, billing and payments. There's there's opportunity for us to basically support them across all those areas, but it takes some in-depth capabilities, from a both an internal organization and, infrastructure standpoint as well as their relationship and, the systems that they work with carriers on. So we'll learn more about that in a second. When we talk about empowerment, you know, really what we want to be be able to do, is, you know, improve the speed, accuracy, the seamless interchange of information that make it easy for those involved and, make sure that we're operating at a compliant mode, make sure that it's personalized, and most importantly, as we kinda move into the future, make it prescriptive and proactive. I think those folks that just focus only on, you know, optimizing current processes are gonna start to fall quickly by the wayside as we basically see these more advanced capabilities come into play, in in these organizations. So with that as a setup, you know, now the question falls to our, marvelous panelists here. You know, how do we get there? You know, what kind of strategies do we know, do we need to take? How do we think about that from a a system standpoint? And most importantly, how do we go about that from an implementation standpoint? So with that, I'm gonna stop sharing my slides. And, what I'd like to do next is just drive into discussion. So, you know, basically, I've talked through a number of, of different things up here. Let's start with kind of the, you know, the trends and so on that you guys are seeing in the marketplace in particular, you know, where you're seeing, people doubling down on providing these kind of digital capabilities, to, to the producers. So, Peter, if we could start with you maybe. Well, thanks, Mike. Basically, what we're seeing is that, you know, from a consumer point of view is that there's this need for experience. And what we found practically what that means across the globe is that experience is a is a deep intersection between what used to be the insurance product, the channel that they kind of prefer as well as the experience within that channel. Now what is quite interesting is that when the pandemic hit and everybody's sick of talking about it, but everybody assumed that distribution channels will have a huge challenge. However, that human trust became something that, was so much more adopted and was so much more needed for consumers to actually adopt or seek out. So we find that, you know, where there's this very strong distribution channel strategy for various organizations or insurers that, you know, they become more profitable. They they do seem to excel compared to those that actually put down digital platforms. And that adoption has got some challenges. Now in that, what we also see across the regions is that, you know, these distribution channels and the financial advisers, the brokers, the MGAs, etcetera, all of them have a challenge to really sell remotely, because there were periods of this. So how do you still retain that that, touch? So to your point, the trends that we're seeing is that manufacturers, carriers, insurers that actually provide digital solutions to their, to their advisers, to their agencies, to their brokers, actually manage to sell more products because it allows that agent to fall back to that human connection and to that trust by having technology that enables them. I mean, we've we've seen use cases where insurers had fifty thousand foot soldiers actually, you know, selling their products. However, they had to use between eight to nine, applications, tablet applications in rural areas where they didn't have connectivity to actually have to navigate what the service is. And it becomes more friction within that customer experience. So the simplicity of that, the simplicity that is promised by the insurers is something that really needs to be embraced and delivered by those digital platforms. So it's something that becomes very important. And I think the the only other thing that I wanna mention is it's important to, have that real touch and feel, and and that rapid touch and feel. So as you embrace within the digital transformation for, your your distribution channels is that you can turn around solutions very quickly to allow the distribution channel producers to actually embrace that and actually, you know, be more productive. Great. Thank you. And then, I wanna go to, Bonnie, for a second here and just you know, you guys focus a lot on trying to get the right information to the right people at the right time. Can you talk a little bit about what we're we're we're seeing from that perspective? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And and, you know, Peter said a a a bunch of really great points that that I'd love to add on to. And and, you know, a couple of stats just to share. You know, eighty six percent of customers will pay for a better customer experience, and half of customers will leave, if they're not getting the experience that they expect. And so what this shows us is that experience is not not only necessary in keeping customers, but it's also necessary as you're thinking about, competition as a whole. Right? If you're competing for the the same customer base, how can you level up beyond the products? It's the experience that makes the difference. And so, you know, in in thinking about how you can improve that experience, I think, you know, this idea of being able to provide both that, digital and that human touch is very important. When we think about customer expectations and customer preference, it's making sure that we're meeting them where they want to be. And so from from my perspective, you know, when we think about content, we think about the knowledge that they need, whether it's they are early in their journey trying to figure out what type of policy is right for them through, you know, even even into the the the agent side and and making sure that they're able to supply the right information back to the clients, it's it's just really important to make sure that you're able to to deliver that. Now how does that happen? You know, obviously, we're already collecting a lot of data about our clients that that that that we're using. Right? So there's there's tracking about, you know, what are they what type of content are they looking at on your website? You know, what type of questions do they have? What are they searching for? These are all insights that can really help the the agent understand their customer even better and provide that better experience to them. Another thing, you know, when thinking about the digital and the human touch is, you know, where can you be more effective within the journey with each of these. Right? So if it's a simple question, you know, like, oh, I don't I I I don't know my password to log in to the portal. It's not going to be effective for that person to to call some to talk to somebody on the phone. That's going to cost time and money for for both of you. Right? Well, at least for you. And then, you know but when we talk about looking at policies and and, you know, how can we help them, you know, figure out, well, if you bundle this, you know, you'll get a better deal type of thing. You definitely want that to be more on on the the human side. So, you know, just just a lot of thoughts around that and and making sure, you know, you've got the up to date product information, that just in time training that that, that's important. Yeah. So I think I think that kinda covers the the points that I I wanted to to mention. But but also, you know, Peter mentioned friction, and needing to eliminate that, and and that's really that's part of that experience. Right? They they want that to be effortless. So if you are providing both, you have the digital, you have the human interaction, there has to be a connection between the two that makes that experience seamless. Great. Thank you. And then, Nishith, I know you guys have been kind of working, on the distribution issues for some time now, and I think you guys are also kind of developed kind of a maturity matrix for that. Can you speak a little bit about that? Yeah. Sure, Mike. And it it's a fascinating topic, right, when we talk about empowering agents and brokers. And to to Peter's point, I think, whilst we all wanna talk about how do we digitally transform them, I think I wanna provide a counter perspective as well here that what we are seeing in the market is that whilst we talk about these journeys, the customer experiences, the channels, the devices, and and the whole gamut of digital transformation, I think I'm still struggling with in many cases, where the carriers and the brokers and the agents still look at things as, let's say, a point solution or a portal for lack of a better better term. So, you know, they they still don't quite relate to the fact that it's no more, you know, the the the disruption that the world has undertaken on the back of, COVID and the whole digital age that we are in now. They are still worried about how can I secure my business with ease? I don't want to worry about fancy things, but just give me the bare minimum things, which allows me to do business with ease. So I come up with this three letter acronyms. Right? Because we live in the world age of acronyms. So I call it as SSP model. They'll tell the time we can crack this SSP code, we can truly empower and make those agents and brokers as digitally native. And what is that SSP? The sales services and portfolio management. Because all they care for is, am I able to do the business with ease? Do I have all the right set of information to bonus point? Do I have all that knowledge at ease? Can I look at my, you know, underwriting guidelines and the product information and so on? Am I able to offer smooth and personalized services to my customers so that I could either retain them or get more business? And then, of course, decentralized integrated portfolio view, which may be pretty, aspirational for many brokers and agents till date. So to achieve that SSP model, Mike, we have come up with this, what I call as a DOI model, which is basically our maturity matrix. Digitize, optimize, and innovate. Digitize is basically the first step wherein you're simply trying to create a digital layer on top of your core business so that you can offer your traditional products or through a digital channel. Whereas Optimize is making that more connection, and the customer collaboration a little bit more higher by leveraging, let's say, ecosystems and so on. And then Innovate is obviously offering a true, digital offering. And and you could begin anywhere in that journey. So it's not that it's a linear process. And of course, there are tools and and technologies available. We we have our product and so has so many others or who provide local, no code services and ready to use products. But I think the way in summary, the way I see is is if we can understand what their key pain points are and then offer, relevant solutions on the back of such, such transformation model, I think the the results could be, more tangible. Great. Thank you. And then, Ryan, you and I had some pretty in-depth discussions around, not just focusing on the front end. Right? But focusing on the back office and and their needs. And I I think one of the things you also talked to a little bit about was, you know, the the challenge that they have in basically capturing data, analyzing that data, and then, getting the reporting out on that data, to help both the individual agent as well as the, you know, the larger producer entity, be more effective in their work. Can you talk, us through some of that? Yeah. Absolutely. I think that, yeah, I I also wanted to kinda circle back to basically what everyone else has been saying about the the customer experience. You know, Bonnie Bonnie said eighty six percent of customers are looking for a better customer customer experience. So that means that the majority of of all of our customers are are looking for a better experience with the people that they're operating with. We've all seen with the pandemic that, you know, agencies had to to shut their doors, not necessarily to close down, but to send people home. You know, if you've got a wildfire or hurricanes or tornadoes that come through, you've got a surge in claims. And when someone calls you on the phone, they wanna talk to you. If someone's reaching out to you on a on your your website, they they're they're looking for that communication. And when you spend your time doing that back end work to follow-up with the claims or to to process a certificate, to to do the backhouse work that that needs to get done, you're taking away from other clients' experiences. And if anyone's ever had a claim, if everyone if anyone's ever been calling their agent trying to get the information that they need and they're not talking to you, that's really frustrating. That's when your client's gonna think, yeah, okay. If they don't care about me, should I go pick up the phone and talk to somebody else? So getting your staff the Barca end support that they need so that they can focus on your clients is really gonna help enhance that customer experience. If if I, you know, can can get off the phone and get my my documents processed, get my search processed, get, the information out to a a third party who can help me get that accomplished, It just means I have more time to focus on my clients, focus on those relationships, and make my clients feel like they're cared about and, you know, and part of the organization rather than just a dollar figure. So I think that getting back end support with your staff is really gonna, you know, help you out, maintain those client client relationships, build on those client relationships, develop more business, and obviously, that's gonna help the revenue of the agency grow. It's gonna help your clients feel like they're a bigger party organization rather than just a little piece of it and and, obviously, help us retain business. As far as reporting and getting data out, you know, we talk about the different platforms that that you might be using to manage your your information. Being able to not only enter that data, but then get it back out just in time when you need it, that's gonna also help you enhance your client relationships or client experiences. If I've got someone who's calling me up and I manage their general liability or I manage their property, you know, that's good. We're glad that we're doing that, but we're not acting as an advocate for our client. We're not acting as an advocate for the industry. If you've got tools in place that will help you identify, based on the information you've already put in there, what else is is out there to help this client, you're gonna be better positioned to be that trusted adviser rather than just someone's insurance person or or someone's carrier. So if I know that, you know, for example, cyber is a huge exposure that a lot of people are facing, especially as we've become more digital, we're storing a lot more information online. We're keeping more personal information. I don't wanna say then we should, but, you know, we are keeping a lot more personal information out here. If if I'm not advocating to my client or if I can't easily identify that that that's an exposure that my client has and then find a way to get in front of them and talk to them about it, I'm doing not only the client a disservice, but also my organization a disservice because I'm leaving myself exposed in that space as well. So when you're working with all these digital tools, it's important that that the tools that you're working with also are giving you the capability to report on that information, or you're working with a partner that can help you report and get that information back out. AI may come into it. Sometimes that's just built into the the platform that you're working with. But, really being able to analyze the data that you're capturing is gonna allow you to be more successful, more proactive when you're talking to your clients. And we talked about having the knowledge and and being proactive when, when we're exposed to to our clients, when we're talking to our clients. Your your system should be helping you do that. We're obviously all managing a lot of information in our own heads. Having a a the capability or having a platform that that will allow you to extract that data once it's been entered is just gonna make you that much more effective. Thank you. Yeah. So, I think that kind of brings my, thoughts to this whole question of interoperability. I mean, the truth is we still got people out there working on ad hoc spreadsheets on the customer side, on the producer side, and the carrier side. We've got multiple systems out there that, you know, particularly if you're, a producer and it's handling handling multiple types of, insurance across multiple carriers. You know, there's some issues out there. And, you know, ultimately, our objective is really how do for your, discussion, you know, how do we make that, easy, transparent, and at speed for the customer? And how do we make that a a a great experience for them? So, how how do you see and we'll we'll dig into the overall systems architecture in a little bit, but, you know, how are we solving some of these interoperability challenges, today? So, let's start maybe, Peter, if you could start with that question. Not a problem, Mike. So so the way that that we see it and and many product like products like ours actually, allow the capability to embrace. We live in this world where, even what's been deemed legacy has started actually exposing and and elevating themselves and and maybe I'm going into the architecture pieces now, but elevating themselves and and and, you know, providing APIs, open APIs and microservices. So, what what we're seeing is it becomes extremely important. Got a got a use case, you know, where a customer really wanted to provide for agents that had to provide an aggregator. They wanted to aggregate the portal for multiple products from multiple providers. The the holding company had many insurers. And what we needed to navigate there is definitely all of these different platforms and these different data sources. In addition to that, you've got this new world that you need to actually be able to orchestrate along with that, meaning that, you know, you've got your modern platform or cloud CRMs. I'm gonna mention one of their names, like Salesforce, for example. So where really the agents want kind of in the center of this journey of serving their customers, they want the customer in the middle of the insurance context where in the past, the insurance context was the main context. So a very key thing that we see that needs to be solved in this is having an orchestration of all of these various components to create something for the for the agents to effectively, serve their customers. But it's very specific to also the type of products that those agents would deliver and and serve service to their customers. It could be, and it talks to levels of maturity. It could be something where there's a very specific focus because of a very regulated environment that you need to do very in-depth financial needs analysis that might require a lot of data enrichment and, data pieces from an underwriting point of view and heavy underwriting teams within the various insurers. So it could be an environment where you really have very, very light products, very, you know, fixed term products you can actually, you know, offer that the agents do offer. And in those, you have different and their leads management would be something more of a priority for them. So it's around also understanding the specific market that those that the distribution channel wants to serve, the mode of that distribution channel, whether it's an affinity kind of channel, a brokerage channel, an agency channel. And then like I said, it also depends on that specific product and that will also determine the priority of which of these things you need to orchestrate together because you can't orchestrate all of them together at the same time. You need to prioritize at some point. Great. Thanks. And, Nishith, let me go to you for a second. And, I kinda wanna divide this world up a little bit between, you know, what should the carrier be looking for, or, you know, from the agency, and what should the agency be looking for the carrier, to help solve some of these problems? Like, when when, you know, if we sit down because, you know, we've got, you know, we've got this kinda wide ranging interoperability issue. What's the conversation that they need to have together to to start moving forward on this? That's a great question. And, the way I see it is, I think the question is, can we abstract the complexity of interoperability and make it a table stake? I think that's the conversation that they really need to have. And I'll I'll cite some examples of what we have seen. Interoperability is obviously a backbone, for the digital transformation. Now you certainly do not want to create a system which is more of a legacy system for future. So unless and until it is able to sit in and and land in that landscape, of IT and talk to different systems. Look, we are in the platform economy. We need to have ability for our systems to talk to not only just the peripheral systems, but as well as third party services and and and the whole concept of eco, system, of partners. So the agents are really concerned that these days, you know, to simply to to perform basic transactions such as getting a quote or, you know, reporting a claims, first notice of loss, They struggle. They don't have the systems that actually serve their needs. And at the same time, the carriers are struggling to have seamless experiences provided to agents, which can actually perform these kinds of things. They are like, okay. You wanna perform cyber Ryan quoted about cyber insurance, and I was just working with one of the large tier two carrier in, North America. And they are, I think, second largest wholesalers in in the US. And they have, like, forty seven different insurance products and equal number of policy admin systems. And they were trying to build up, a a front end digital experience for retail agents. And they said, okay. Where do we start with this? Okay. Start with cyber. Simplify the product, and then make sure that you have a chassis, which can help you roll out different products on top of it. So that's how we wanna see the interoperability, from the ease of maintenance, as well as something that can obviously increase the operational efficiency if it is there. Okay. And, Bonnie, I wanna go to you, and just talk about, you know, kind of the front end work. You know, how how are we starting you know, what what's the mechanism by which we gather that customer information, get it to the right people in the right form, and how do we draw inference from that that can basically help, the producer be more, proactive and supporting the customer? So how does that work? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I wanna, you know, pull in a couple of things that that were said. You know? So you mentioned, you know, all of the different systems and tools and spreadsheets that people have to go through to find the information. Initially, you called out the the breadth of the digital transformation. Right? And so I'm gonna focus in on on one of those areas. And, and, again, I'll leave with a stat here, and that's that, you know, it's from McKinsey, and they say that employees spend about one point eight hours each day searching for information. So that's twenty percent of a workday that's spent just on looking for information. And so I think, you know, that that's a key area where we can impact the the interoperability of of an organization. And so with that, you know, again, you know, when I'm thinking about, you know, how do we find the information we need when we need it, how can we connect those systems so that we get that information? And there's there's two key things there. Right? So, one is, you know, getting the data from those customer interactions. So what are what are they searching for? Right? So search terms give us a good indication of, you know, what what's on, whether it's the the employee's mind or the customer's mind. We had a customer who, you know, they they really needed to improve their, access to information internally. And so that's one of the areas that they focused on was improving that that aspect. And what what they were able to do was was really increase the amount of, of that increase the accuracy and that and improve the time that they were able to, you know, get give the customers the information that they need. And I can't remember who said this about about data, and analytics, but I I mean, we know that's a gold mine, and there's a lot that we can we can pull from that. So whether you are looking at the interactions that employees are are having with your digital, touch points or you're looking at the customer interactions, there's some really key things that that you can look at there. And in order to make that, you know, information seamless, I think, you know, like like Nishit said, it's tying those tying those systems together. And then I would add AI onto that to to add on to the personalization. Because, you know, if you're able to apply that layer, if you're able to connect those dots, apply that layer of AI that can help learn, learn what people are doing, help you kind of create that individual personalization that's needed, then that can really, help you get there faster. And and, Ryan, can can you weigh in on some of this? You're on mute. I'll get better at this. I promise. There are a couple points that everyone has said at this point that that I'd like to to touch on. You know? Peter pointed out that integration takes time. Nasheed pointed out that, getting platforms to to talk to each other is is important. And Bonnie points out that one point eight hours of, searching is done by employees, you know, a day for for information. Obviously, the holy grail would be having one system that could talk to everything else and pull all that information into one spot and, you know, Harry Potter would wet and wave his wand and boom, it would all be in one spot. It it it doesn't work like that yet. We're not there. But there are absolutely companies out there that can help you with that process, getting your data into a centralized location. You know, Salesforce is a tool that that everyone seems to work with. So I'll go ahead and use and use their name too. You know, you can work with organizations and oh, and this again, Mike, you talked about customization by agency. There are organizations out there that will build bridging platforms for you. They will they will say, what are you working with? What what are your products? And you say, well, we've got x, you know, x product, y product, z product, but really, we operate out of Salesforce. Well, let's bridge that information. Let's let's build a product for you. Let's build a piece of software that that we can customize to say we want this information out of this platform, this information out of that platform, and this information out of the final platform, and we wanna bring that all into one area. Why do we want it in this final platform? Because that's that's offering us the best reporting, or that's where our staff spends the most time in our system. So getting everything into that centralized space, I'm not saying your staff's gonna be spending zero minutes, you know, looking for information, but hopefully, we could cut that twenty percent of their day looking in for information to ten percent or five percent. And, you know, if we look at that on a daily basis, maybe that's not a lot of time each day. But over the course of the year, over the course of, you know, the lifetime of the agency or the lifetime of these products, that's gonna be a lot of time back. And the more people are able to work in one system, the better they're gonna be at that system. And while we might be able to increase efficiency immediately by ten percent, the staff's use of that platform over a course of time is only going to get better, and their efficiency is gonna go up. The amount of time that they'll spend looking for information is gonna go dramatically down. Great. Thank you. Okay. So I, appreciate that. I I wanna dig into kind of best practices now. So let's kinda start on the, agency side, from a you know, to to start with, on just the systems and the architecture you need to think about. How do you assess basically kind of where your organization is at today? And then how do you begin to prioritize what you need from a systems and architecture standpoint to really be able to say, yeah. I'm on a pathway, where, you know, when we hit twenty thirty, I'm able to, you know, compete effectively and be relevant, in this highly now, you know, highly digitized world. So, Rashid, if we could start with you, on that question, you know, and I wanna take that from the agency standpoint first, then we'll dig into the carrier side of things. So, you know, from the agency standpoint, how do you evaluate kinda where you're at and what your roadmap needs to be, from the systems and architecture standpoint? Right. I think I think very important. Right? Whilst the tactical maneuvers can be done, I think strategic viewpoint is really important. So let me start with the second part first. From agency perspective, setting aside the the business goals and the priorities, just looking at purely from the systems architecture perspective to your question. I think the number one goal from the agency perspective should be to have more of a microservices and API based architecture because they do not want to get themselves matter to a particular carrier no matter what size and scale and complexity that may be. So they wanna have an architecture that can literally literally achieve the plug and play components of any integrations so that they could talk to not only number of carriers, but number of vendor providers as well as number of third party services. And the only way to achieve that or rather one of the most proficient ways of achieving that in the digital space is through having API first basic integrate integrations. So the way I see the digital transformation is it's like it has two sides of the same coin. One side is the whole digital experience that that Peter, Bonnie, and every one of us have spoken about, the all the customer experience and so on. And the other end of the pipe is gonna be the API based integration. So what is API first? API first, meaning every single component is offered as a as a service. So it is something that abstracts the complexities of technology. You don't need to worry about, oh, whether the whether or not this is Java. And now if I go from State Farm to Allstate, will my services work? If I take on new agents, will it work or not? So on. So it is something that makes business components transparent to the technology in which the services are exposed. So my single most priority from agency perspective is gonna be lookout for systems and providers who have API first and microservices based technologies so that I don't end up having to buy the whole package solution or a suite of solutions, but I can offer and pick and select each component as a service. We all have I'll I'll wrap it up by saying, we have insurance as a service, software as a service, platform as a service. We are heading in the direction of function as a service. So I think that should be the priority in my mind. Thank you. Ryan, I wanted to ask you to kinda step into the the data realm for a second. Obviously, trying to reconcile all this, trying to make sure that it's attributed, that the metadata we associated with something is relevant to the business function that's trying to use it, etcetera, etcetera. So, you know, now so we'll solve this API microservices standpoint from the shit. Now let's step into the world of what do we need to do from a data standpoint to get ready for this. I think you need to be able to to find the the data that is relevant to to moving forward. You know? One of the things that I think that we we run into with the current platforms that we work with is either we're missing data, we have irrelevant data. You need to be able to identify what it is that is is important to you. You know, if if there's there's the old adage, garbage in, garbage out. So when you're trying to identify where do I wanna be in twenty thirty? Well, a, you've got to identify where that is. And then b, you need to know what do you need to to get to that to that point. And, again, working with with products that, like Nasheed said, you know, they they they talk to each other, they work together. That's that's all fine and dandy, but you need to have the appropriate data talking to each other to actually, you know, meet that goal. K. Thank you. And then, Peter, from your perspective, how do you begin to kinda prioritize this? You know, we've got the vision. We you know, this is kinda like we need to be able to, you know, change the tire while the car's car's moving. Right? How do you begin to prioritize this work? I'm assuming that it's probably different for every carrier and for every broker. But are there some kind of general themes that you have in terms of, you know, we've got Bonnie over here on the, you know, the customer engagement side of things. What you know, where how do you start to prioritize these efforts? So I think it's a great question. And, for me, it it it's coupled to, you know, much of you know, and Chit mentioned our function as a service. And are we elevating, from a technology stand standpoint, our accessibility to solve these things are becoming much more, easier? I mean, if I look at some of the big tech players, they like elevating as a service and giving access, easy access to some of these things that used to be extremely complex. In addition to that, the data the data flows and what that data in and out is becomes very important. But, for every organization, what that means is also how do you what strategically in the market that you're focusing on, is important for you? First of all, what does that market look like? So we found that, you know, from a from a technology standpoint, and this is where the channel, sorry, I failed to mention, the the channel becomes very important. And what channel and what experience in that channel is extremely important given the market and given the the the product line and the strategy of the organization. So we've seen that in certain markets, where it's really targeting a Barca with a product that is at a low socioeconomic class, if I can put it that way, where technologies and journeys within USSD, you know, is something that is more appropriate and more accessible to those those markets specifically compared to a more affluent market in a more developed region that would be a mobile application and a mobile journey. Now, while I mention those things, it's important to understand those here those user contexts first and also understand the executive objectives of a specific organization. Based on that, the one thing that I wanna say, and that's why I bring in the benefits case or the success criteria, is it's also important to understand that measuring these things in a very old fashion in terms of sales increases, operational efficiencies. Although those things are very important, they should only be seen as leading or lagging, you know, indicators depending on what they are. So depending on what those levers are that you intuitively know, because organizations do know. They do know there's this certain set of levers. And intuitively, we've seen in our experience, as you toggle these things, what happens to the organizations? That will really give you kind of an idea of whether you want to focus on future market business from a growth point of view or whether you need to first optimize and you first need to focus on future market operations and make sure that you create efficiencies for your distribution channels. So I think those things become important. So market, understanding whether you want to grow first as a priority, whether you want to optimize because you've got a lot of friction and pain points within the system. And then I think finally, that availability of what data is there, what third party providers are there and how easily you can orchestrate them into something that provides value. And again, getting to that point of trust and allowing humans to speak to humans and actually have discussions about it. I think those are some of the key things that that, I've seen. Great. Thank you. And then we're gonna turn our turn to our last question in a second here, which is, you know, how do you develop this, road map and business case? But, before we do, Bonnie, I kinda wanted to go to you and say, you know, when you look at an organization, who's trying to basically capture customer insight information, turn that into, information that the the producer can use that, can help them better support that customer, how do you how do you look at what their current structure is for doing that and then, help them evaluate what their next steps are? Because, you know, quite frankly, particularly as you get to the smaller, agencies and and brokers, you know, many of them have basic just very, very basic websites. Right? You know, and very basic internal employee portals. So how do you think about that prioritization process or evaluation? So I would I think, you know, it kind of ties in to what what everyone said, which is, you know, starting by looking at the organizational objectives and what what we're trying to achieve long term. Right? And then looking at the the data and the KPIs as levers to pull. And so it's really about mapping, you know, you know, the organizational objectives to which KPIs and data points can we use as levers to impact that overall objective. And then under each of those KPIs, what are the activities that influence that KPI? And so, for example, from a customer experience perspective, if we look at, you know, we want to if if a goal is increasing engagement with our clients, right, and we want to have that more digital interaction, if that's a goal, for example, then looking at okay. What's a KPI that we can look at for that? Is it are we looking at, you know, what how many searches people are performing? Are we looking at what's click rank you know, how click rank is performing? What are those data points that influence that customer experience? And then from there, you can say, well, where do we have gaps? Where where are our pain points? And then is it is it more painful in the in the, client, in the client carrier interaction? Is it more painful in the, in the employee experience? And then that's where you can really narrow in and focus where you'll make those improvements. The customer that I mentioned earlier, they found that they needed to improve their employee portal first, and that's where they started. But it can really you know? And and that employee experience influences the customer experience. Right? It it impacts that customer experience, but they found that starting there was more effective, for them. So it it is based on the organization, and I think one way that you can identify where to make those changes is looking at how people are using, your your digital touch points and then, you know, asking them, you know, surveying them, seeing what their preference is. And and just as another example, from the technology side, you know, chatbots have been the shiny object that a lot of organizations are like, oh, I need a chatbot. I need a chatbot. But do your customers actually want to interact in a chatbot? Because every chatbot I've interacted with has been a terrible experience. So that's just an example of, you know, don't look at the shiny things. Look at what your customers are asking for, what they're actually doing. You can think big, but start small. You know? If if making improvements to your website is one step that can take you to a better customer experience, then that might be your first step. So, so yeah. So there's there's a lot of different ways to look at it, but that's kind of the structure that that I recommend and that that I follow. Great. Thank you. Alright. So we're we're getting down to the end here. So, what I wanna do now is kinda do a quick round robin around, you know, what's the business argument. And let's let's, let's maybe do both the business argument for the carrier to do something as well as for the the broker agent to do something. So, Ryan, can we start with you? I'll unmute myself first this time. Yeah. Awesome. So I I think that that with with anything that we're doing, you know, we're we're trying to increase efficiencies. We're trying to increase revenue. We're trying to to maintain our relationships. So if you're a carrier and you're talking about why should I change something, I think you're you're you need to to change something to present your products in a manner that that is gonna be easy for the agent to absorb, easy for the agency to process, easy for the agency to maintain, and then also deliver to the clients. You know, from the from the agent side, when you're trying to grow a book of business, when you're you're trying to increase the efficiency in your your office, you need to be working with tools and you need to be working with processes that are gonna gonna make that easier. If if you you know, we talked about roadmaps and how do you get somewhere and and what's the point. Yeah, if if you implement something that doesn't talk to anything else, you haven't really increased your efficiency there. You're only creating a bigger problem for you. Another thing that I think is really important when you're trying to make changes, whether you're on the carrier side or whether you're on the agency side, is communication and a level of transparency. I've consulted with a lot of agencies where they wanna implement a new system, they wanna implement a new process, and, you know, for the most part, people don't like change. We get in our our specific mannerisms or we get in our our processes, and that's where we wanna stay. And what I found when I work with agencies, when I when I consult with carriers, it's you've gotta let the users, whether that's your own employees, whether that's the the, the the actual clients or the agency or whatever whatever seat you're sitting in, if you let them know why you're doing something or the end goal, they will see that efficiency. They will see that, better client experience, that better user experience. And while they understand that there will be a pain point, there will be some some growing pains there. They're gonna be a lot more excited about adopting that. Also, get help where you need help. It's not easy to, you know, change your processes, and they're not gonna change overnight. When you make a change to something, there are gonna be areas that they slow down. They they they don't get the the level of of attention that they need to. In those instances, if you can bring additional resources in, whether you're hiring more or outsourcing, whatever your your solution may be, by bringing in that that additional service, your ultimate client, whoever that may be, they're not gonna notice the slowdown, which is gonna help you maintain the relationship with them along the way. Great. Thanks. Okay. So we got a low a very short amount of time. Thank you. So, Peter, let's go to you. You know, three things that you'd ask them to kind of present if they're doing an elevator pitch to the board or whatever, in terms of making the business case? To answer your previous question. Right? So, for from a carrier point of view, I think, to add to to what Ryan said, or on top of that, digital business models, I think it's important that carriers and what I've seen is they're definitely embracing digital business models. We've got an example of an insurer in Singapore that actually instead of going into a tight agency model, actually use the technology to actually fund and assist this new startup to actually start it. And I think really I'm going to bring back for the agency point of view is again the friction. So how do you reduce the friction when you need technology that allows you to be able to operate offline but always have everything easily accessible so that you can, you know, focus on that human touch. And that's where I'm gonna stop. Great. Thanks. Bonnie? Cool. I'm just going to to simply I'm gonna take a take a a different approach and just say, if if you don't provide the experience your clients, your employees expect, they will find someone who can. Yep. Amen. That's what I'll say about that. Amen. Yes, sir. Back to the basics of the business models. Any industry, any business model that goes in front of the board has got only two things that they have to worry about, growth and profitability. So from a carrier perspective, am I doing this to increase the growth? Meaning, I have already secured my traditional business. Is is expanding to different territories, adding new lines of businesses, rolling out new products. Is that gonna bring me growth? And then, of course, profitability where most of the other things will come into play in terms of process automation and the experiences and the technological innovations and so on and so forth. So the simple question I'll end by saying, I'll borrow what my chief product, officer says. Every time you wanna present something to the board, you ask a simple question. So what? Right. I'll do this. I'll do that. So what? Does that relate to growth of profitability? If it if it does, chances of your case getting approved is higher. Awesome. Thank you. Alright. And, just to add a a quick two cents to this, I wanna zero in on something that, Bonnie said. I think in today's day and age, start simple, start small, start with a focus that aligns with, you know, kind of the the overall business, vision and strategy, but start small. That that would be my recommendation. Alright. So with that, thank you guys so much. Really appreciate the discussion, the insight, and, the experience that you bring to this. I got a lot out of this. I hope our audience did as well. Dear audience, this, video will be available within about twenty minutes after we're done here. We'll also send this and the slides out to you guys, so that you can share that internally. I'm gonna share my screen and do a quick wrap up here. Please do get to our website. This webinar will be up there as well as many others. So, please check that out. And then, again, thank you to our sponsors, to Majesco, to, Exceedence, and, to Caveo and Nutrinos. And then, you can contact any of us via LinkedIn. If you wanna follow-up and and ask questions, please, use LinkedIn as a vehicle to do that. And with that, thank you very much for attending. We really appreciate it, and, we look forward to having you on our next webinars. Thank you, guys, everyone. And that's a wrap. Thank you. Thank you.