Southern Pioneer, a regional insurer, worked with ITS to enable their IT department to become self-reliant with efficient IT governance standards and streamlined system development and maintenance processes. Their vendor system has been in production since 2010 and built up a significant amount of technical debt that was impeding their business growth. Southern Pioneer leveraged ITS’s insurance technology expertise to streamline the implementation of new products and enhancements to existing products.

Client Profile

Formed in 1981, Southern Pioneer Property & Casualty Insurance Company offers products in commercial, personal, and financial lines in Arkansas, Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee, and Mississippi.

Challenge

Southern Pioneer’s lack of growth with their homeowners product in the state of Tennessee had been hindered by key usability issues and needed improvements to the product within their system. The original system (SurePower Innovation) was developed by ISCS and was later acquired by Guidewire in 2017 and renamed InsuranceNow. Southern Pioneer’s instance of the system lagged by several releases, hampering their ability to take advantage of new features available in the latest Guidewire Cloud Platform. In addition, Southern Pioneer had a desire to become self-led on maintaining and developing their products to reduce IT expenses and respond quickly to company needs but struggled with how to be an effective team with minimal resources.

Solution

ITS delivered a turnkey solution to stabilize Southern Pioneer’s system and standardize their IT governance and development processes using proprietary methodologies and toolsets packaged with ITS’s project management, business analysis, development, and testing services. In addition, ITS provided an enablement program, training Southern Pioneer’s IT staff to execute a repeatable process for implementing product enhancements to the system while allowing other key initiatives to continue in parallel.

1. Maximizing Efficiency and Achieving Goals

ITS provided a team of three resources experienced in InsuranceNow to fulfil the roles of project manager, business/QA analyst, and developer using a shift-left testing methodology. This approach fostered collaboration and allowed for quicker decision-making, crucial for adapting to changing situations.

2. Right-Sized Tools and Templates

ITS’s used proprietary tools and artifacts to facilitate the planning and execution of all IT related projects without the need for expensive, hard-to-implement software. The solution was comprised of three main toolsets for project/program management gathering requirements, and testing. ITS was able to quickly adapt the tools for Southern Pioneer’s specific needs.

3. Journey Towards Self-Reliance

ITS’s client enablement program provides a clear path to move clients from dependency on a vendor to empowering their own staff members to implement and maintain their system internally. With a combination of formal training classes and on-the-job mentoring, ITS helped train client staff one-on-one to perform real-world tasks with a gradual transition from ITS-led to client-led efforts.

 “ITS put us in a very good position to take advantage of a self-led project model and realize the corresponding cost savings. Planning, analysis, development, and operations have all improved and our release process has been streamlined.”
— Hunter Hyneman, Vice President
Southern Pioneer Property & Casualty Insurance Company

Outcomes

ITS’s engagement to stabilize their production system and catch up on critical enhancements included:

• 120+ optimization requests completed across 7 lines of business for 2 states in less than a year
• 6 product rate changes in 5 months
• Implementation and rollout of new commercial property product to new state, Mississippi

New IT governance standards include:

• New project management standards and release management workflows
• Establishment of new roles: project manager, business analyst, and quality assurance tester

Southern Pioneer’s IT team has since completed several major projects on their own including:

• Migration to Guidewire Cloud platform
• Adoption of new payment processor, One Inc.
• Adoption of Guidewire’s reporting tool Looker
• Development of ISO/Perr&Knight Statistical Reporting
• Implementation of Guidewire Consumer Service Portal v4
• Adoption of 4 Guidewire upgrades (2022.1 – 2023.2)
• Implementation of rate changes for 10 products/states
• Assist in the implementation of a CRM software implementation for marketing department
• Migration of forms from JetForm to DocOrigin, in flight