Strategic partnering pays off for Ohio Mutual

Staying competitive and fostering growth are two universal pillars of business strategy, whether a company is a global powerhouse or a regional enterprise. In an environment of accelerating technological change and shifting consumer behavior, they’re equally challenging to sustain.

Ohio Mutual Insurance Group, a regional property and casualty organization, operating in seven states, recognized the need to respond to changes in the industry. Like many insurers, it identified the need to modernize its platforms and move to a more digital business model that would allow it to satisfy rapidly changing customer needs and desires.

“We are driven by what our customers are saying,” says Brad McCormack, assistant vice president of IT for the company. “If we want to continue to be relevant in the industry, we must respond to their needs and do business in the manner that they want to do business. We believe the digital approach is where everything is headed.”

Leveraging technology to support business needs

Today’s shift doesn’t surprise Ohio Mutual. In fact, what’s happening in the industry today validates the company’s long-held technology strategy. “We started this journey back in 2003. We made a strict decision to stick to a few fundamental principles on our system deployments,” says McCormack.

First, McCormack says, the company decided that business demands would drive technology changes. “We consider the business needs and the business demands, and that drives and focuses us on what technology we need to look at.”

Second, the company would strive to maintain simplicity. “We believe in a single integrated, administrative, complete policy-processing platform,” McCormack says. Today, the company processes all of its business on one administration system, including all commercial, personal and farm lines of insurance.

The company further decided that because of its size, it would align itself with industry-savvy technology partners.

“Our strategy is to align with an innovation leader — someone that can provide guidance, and help ensure that we have current, relevant and contemporary systems that meet business needs and customer demands,” says McCormack.

In its role as innovation leader and partner for its customer of 15 years, DXC Technology developed a phased transformational roadmap to prioritize Ohio Mutual’s needs and to help speed implementation — creating one platform to support Ohio Mutual’s independent agent distribution channel. DXC is helping the company upgrade to POINT IN, an easy-to-configure, Java-based policy administration software component with the industry’s most comprehensive insurance processing functions for all lines of business.

POINT IN supports millions of policies and is continually kept current by DXC. Built with a modern, flexible architecture, POINT IN easily integrates with Ohio Mutual’s existing systems. It also allows the company to add best-in-class components to create the optimal environment for keeping pace with the company’s business today and in the future.

DXC Enterprise Billing added account functionality and flexibility, while migration to DXC Insurance RISKMASTER^TM will improve the customer experience and enable Ohio Mutual to move off a customer/server-centric technology and embrace the API-driven interface movement. The claims department will soon be able to access the claims system from mobile devices and browsers whenever staff members need to see claims information. By using DXC’s open integration ideology, Ohio Mutual will be able to integrate with numerous claims vendors to make the claims adjudication process easier and quicker for its staff. Ohio Mutual will also be opening the claims process to give greater visibility to its agents, vendors, policyholders and stakeholders.

To streamline defense counsel payments, Ohio Mutual selected the DXC Legal Solutions Suite^TM, which will help the claims team digitize a paper-intensive process. All legal invoices will now come in electronically, allowing for quicker review and payment. DXC is also assisting in the legal bill review process, which takes a burden off the claims staff and allows them to focus on making claims decisions.

Reaping the benefits of a “lean IT” strategy

Companies that have not adhered to a rigorous IT regimen like Ohio Mutual are now paying the cost. The industry’s struggles with large, complex legacy IT estates, archaic policy administration systems and bloated application portfolios are well-documented.

Meanwhile, Ohio Mutual’s “lean IT” strategy is paying major dividends.

“We’re excited at Ohio Mutual because we have been diligent. We have stayed the course on our systems strategies,” says McCormack. “That has positioned us to say, ‘When these changes come about, DXC is bringing to bear solutions to meet those demands.’ We’re positioned to immediately take those solutions.”

As a small company, Ohio Mutual’s strategy has enabled it to effectively compete with much larger carriers, McCormack says. In particular, the company’s alignment with DXC has helped it remain relevant and able to meet current customer demands.

“DXC brings 17,000 insurance professionals to its insurance practice. That’s a few more people and a little more resources than we have,” says McCormack.

“Whether it’s claims, billing, policy admin, rating, rules, information ordering or document printing — all of those pieces that take the policy and our operations from end to end — we believe DXC is the only software solution provider that has that suite of products.”