Wizards, Believers, and Friends: Examining Configuration and Development in Vendor Core Systems

Agility is the goal of most modern insurers. So how does one deliver speed of change most effectively? As with all things, there is no one right answer, but there are a few different styles of approaches to configuration and development.

In the report Wizards, Believers, and Friends: Examining Configuration and Development in Vendor Core Systems, Celent examines the insurance software vendor offerings and seeks to categorise the approaches into three different types. Celent then goes on to offer advice on finding the best match of change approach to an insurer’s needs.

There has long been an assumption that speed of change is a continuum with slow at one end and fast at the other. In truth there are many paths to executing change efficiently within IT systems — even within insurance core systems. Celent picks out three primary archetypes and provides a view for distinguishing vendors based on their approach.

For the insurer whose core system is supported by a partner, this report may offer some perspective on how change is achieved and where the insurer could push its supplier to improve. For software vendors and integrators, the perspectives on change approach and how each change might be best deployed will provoke a useful discussion.

“While most systems are hybrids of the three archetypes described in this report, understanding these archetypes will aid anyone trying to balance the right amount of control, risk, and speed to the problem at hand,” says Craig Beattie, a senior analyst with Celent’s Insurance practice and author of the report. “If you are challenged with delivering greater speed and/or throughput of change in your insurance core systems, then understanding the underlying approach will set you in the right direction.”

The report is more than 20 pages and contains four figures.