As more insurers adopt Guidewire Cloud, the focus of implementation programs is rapidly changing. The pace of platform and ecosystem innovation is driving this change. Priority of implementation programs has shifted to staying aligned to the product roadmap and cloud standards to ensure the implementations are future-ready. Insurers are choosing to stay as close to out-of-the-box as possible to accelerate time to market and minimize technical debts.
It is of paramount importance for the project consultants to understand changing customer priorities and adjust the implementation process accordingly. This blog post describes how consultants can prepare to be at the forefront of those changes.
Functional Configuration
Business analysts and functional consultants need to stay up-to-date on new product features and leverage those features to efficiently solve business problems. They must establish a process to review the new features in every release with business stakeholders to prioritize and create an adoption schedule. Enabling the business users to take advantage of the new features is another key component of the adoption process.
With every release, Guidewire offers Early Access (EA) programs for selected new features. It is beneficial for implementation teams to stay up to date on product roadmaps and apply for EA programs that might benefit the carrier. Attention must be paid to the EA program prerequisites such as staying on latest release.
Integrations
Large numbers of solution partners and insurtech companies are releasing innovative solutions to the Guidewire Marketplace at an ever-increasing pace. These solutions leverage leading technology to solve targeted business problems and offer a quick adoption timeline, demonstrating a paradigm shift in the integration arena. In many cases, insurers are preferring to leverage a solution vendor who participates in the Guidewire ecosystem over others. Technical consultants must be well-versed with the applications in Guidewire Marketplace and be able to recommend a solution to meet third-party integration needs.
Insurers have long aspired to build data lakes to collect and curate data from multiple sources for analytics and data integrations. Guidewire Cloud Data Platform features such as Guidewire Cloud Data Access have made these architectures more scalable and reliable. The new architecture is also an effective alternative to point-to-point data integrations. It is critical for technical architects to give due consideration for these alternatives.
There are new microservice-based solutions being added to the Guidewire platform, such as submission intake and Guidewire HazardHub. Implementation teams will focus on leveraging the application programming interfaces(APIs) available to deliver business value rather than configuring the solution. Consultants must understand these solutions in depth and be able to guide the customer through the adoption process.
Digital Experience
Providing an intuitive and seamless digital experience for their customers, agents and other stakeholders continues to be a top priority imperative for carriers. New Guidewire Digital platform capabilities on Guidewire Cloud are accelerating the pace of innovation in this space. Consultants must shift to the digital-first approach where core systems are designed and built with a consideration for digital experiences and not the other way around.
Resources available
There are many resources available for consultants to stay up-to-date on the latest features, capabilities, and trends, including:
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Release Highlights videos
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Training courses for new features in the Guidewire Education portal
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Resources section on the Guidewire website
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Guidewire Smart Approach Blog