Westfield specialty insurance recognized an opportunity to streamline their operations with a custom internal software tool, but they had a problem. They had never developed custom software before, opting instead to spend millions on 3rd party solutions.

Besides the high cost of setting up and running them, these tools led to other problems. Their data was disjointed, it was hard for employees to find what they needed, and they needed a solution that could address the unique needs of the specialty insurance business.

Though they recognized the value that a custom software hub could create, they knew they needed to bring in an expert to guide them through the complex design and development process. At the same time, they didn’t want to spend tons of time training someone to bring them up to speed with the intricacies of specialty insurance.

They needed someone who could learn fast. They needed someone who could prove that they deliver results. They needed a partner for innovation.

That’s why they chose to work with Ole + Lena.

We began our engagement with a free working session, where we laid out all the requirements for the project, discovered the problems and opportunities at hand, and demonstrated how we could bring value to their organization. They came away from this initial workshop with a Solution Definition document.

Even though we didn’t have much prior insurance experience, we hit the ground running and got right to work on a prototype that showed the potential of our collaboration. These examples helped our contact to bring us into their team and demonstrated to the management team that we could create the solution that they were after.

From there, we approached their custom insurance hub one piece at a time. From the landing page to account management to the forms library to the submissions page and all the interconnections between them, we started building out the minimum viable product (MVP) concept from a design perspective. Once we had that in a strong position, we took it to the business and walked real users through the prototype to get feedback.

Since their organization had never developed custom software before, their users were skeptical at first. However, once they realized that they could influence the direction of the software and make sure it met their needs and fit into their workflows, they were on board.

They loved the fact that they got to determine what the system would become. This created a lot more excitement for our custom solution than they had felt for the 3rd party tools that users had no choice but to adopt.

We then took their input, made adjustments, and continued our iterative approach to agile development until Westfield was ready to put our digital product into production. All along the way, we put ourselves in their users’ shoes so that we could make complexity simple for them.

This was especially true for our work on their data ecosystem. We took it from fragmented, siloed, and difficult to navigate to a simple user interface that held everything in one easy to access place. We also made sure to integrate the hub with existing 3rd party systems like Guidewire, a tool they use for policy management.

Another part of our work was implementing comprehensive data governance to ensure that administrators could manage all the data that’s brought into the hub with access controls and more. This expedites regulatory compliance while protecting the integrity of their data.

Today, the Westfield Specialty insurance hub is actively being used by the business, and they’re seeing real results. In addition to making their employees more productive and removing sources of error and stress, our custom internal tool is already providing a major top-line ROI.

Since they began leveraging our custom solution, Westfield Specialty exceeded their revenue goals and are looking to expand their custom solutions within the organization.

Over a year later, we’re continuing our work with Westfield to further expand the capabilities of their insurance hub tool. This includes designing and developing features like advanced search, which further boosts employee productivity by helping them to find what they need when they need it. Our digital product is also catching the attention of other parts of the organization.

At the end of the day, Ole + Lena understands digital products. We have the right teams, we move forward with confidence, and we make sure that everything that we do brings value to our partners. We know how to iterate based on user feedback, we’re used to thinking outside the box, and we simplify complexity to deliver real results.

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