BGL Group

1 min read

Using design thinking & rapid prototyping, we worked closely with their leadership team to design, implement & embed a new end-to-end digital strategy & culture. Here’s how…

This insurer recognized that they needed to improve their overall digital customer experience by offering the best in digital propositions. To do this, they needed to change the culture and understanding among the leadership and IT teams toward customer-centric design and digital strategy. This meant prioritizing digital initiatives, improving their technology agility, increasing the pace of technology change, and ultimately reducing their cost per insurance policy.

Why Elixirr?

We were engaged by this insurer because of the quality of our innovation network – our in-depth knowledge of the startup ecosystem in Silicon Valley, and our established relationships with the best of the best new solutions and technology inside it. They knew we could show them the art of possible, and we didn’t disappoint…

01 Overview

This insurer recognized that they needed to improve their overall digital customer experience by offering the best in digital propositions. We worked closely with their leadership team to design, implement and embed a new end-to-end digital strategy and culture, focused on rapid customer-centric design.

02 Outcome

Digital transformation, customer-centric design, technology enablement & culture change.

03 Method

Design thinking & rapid prototyping.

The challenge

This insurer needed to understand the disruptive business models that were emerging in the insurance sector. Alongside this, they needed to find the latest technologies to support their digital agenda. And we immersed them in new ways of working, so that they could experience the power of customer-led design, rapid prototyping and collaboration.

The approach

We started by hosting a visit to Silicon Valley, where the team met with relevant VCs, startups and corporates to provide new insights into disruptive technologies, business models and ways of working.

Importantly, this visit validated the ‘case for change’, aligned the leadership team and gave us the mandate to kick-off a new agenda upon our return to the UK.

This new agenda focussed on 5 key things:

Re-prioritizing a lengthy IT backlog, using metrics designed to maximize the benefit for customers and speed of implementation.
Forming a new, cross-functional, dedicated digital entity from the existing IT workforce, and organizing team members around specific customer problems and identified opportunities.
Upskilling the new team in design thinking, rapid prototyping and iterative customer testing to help them quickly create new front-end customer propositions.
Introducing new ways of measuring both digital initiatives and the digital culture in place.
Identifying where and how legacy back-end systems could be better enabled to support rapid proposition development.

The value

We worked with this insurer to identify and prioritize a new book of digital work, centered on the problems their customers really wanted addressing. To ensure the long-term success of the program, we created a digital roadmap that tackled the changes to the back-end architecture.

At the heart of this agenda was a creative, innovative way of solving complex problems. Using design thinking and rapid prototyping, together we were able to set up an ‘innovation factory’ or ‘digital fast lane’ that launched 5 minimum viable products (MVPs), with an average zero-to-live timeline of just 18 working days.

We upskilled 30 team members from both the business and IT, building momentum around the culture change across the whole organization. Very quickly, we saw the techniques we had introduced diffuse across to other areas of the business.

Elixirr’s way of thinking (during & post our Silicon Valley visit) has shifted my understanding of the business away from the more traditional consulting model into a far more entrepreneurial space.

Managing Director