Quantifying Digital Value and Measuring Project Success in Insurance

Digital initiatives are a growing priority among insurers to meet new digital customer expectations that non-industry organizations have set (and that, in some cases, InsureTechs have matched). Digital projects include building customer and agent portals, enabling online direct sales, as well as other market-facing initiatives. The challenge for carriers comes in developing metrics that determine project benefits and value and then appropriately attributing these figures back to the project.

The first step for insurers to measure digital initiative success metrics is to measure current state processes. It’s difficult to validate the impact of a new project without understanding the organization’s baseline. Businesses also need to decide which measurements they want the project to impact—and should determine this before the project begins. It’s easier for carriers to judge project success if they know and state their goals beforehand.

Project measurement involves a technical aspect, and it can be difficult to track or measure impact without building the instrumentation into the system in advance. Carriers should set up means of continuous measurement like data collection and reports once the project goes live. They should also conduct regular reviews of measurements and assess how well the project is performing against initial goals. Projects may succeed by one measure but not another.

Vendor involvement in digital projects can complicate the execution of these steps. Decision-making in advance improves the chances that all on the project will follow through with precise measurements of impact. Insurers need honest appraisals of project success and what it means beyond producing new technology. This perspective will allow them to adjust systems to achieve the best possible results, will help them validate goals, and will educate carriers on ways to improve in future initiatives.

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