“It took four months to see the ROI on the first project. Employee satisfaction was on the rise and confidence had been regained. Celsior provided a structure that allowed us to bring people on and off as they needed. We saved 50% in development and training costs working with Celsior.”

–VP, IT Strategy & Solution Delivery, U.S. Life Insurance Organization

Challenges

A leading insurance provider, serving more than 700,000 policyholders through a network of 25,000 licensed agents, faced significant challenges in IT delivery.

For three years, the client had struggled to deliver strategic IT solutions and experienced repeated project failures. Confidence in the IT department eroded, both from business stakeholders and from employees who became demotivated. In addition, they lacked critical resources to implement the needed changes.

The client required an operating model that would resolve these issues, restore credibility, and enable the delivery of multiple new software platforms to support evolving business models.

Our solution

We introduced a blended onshore / offshore delivery model tailored to the client’s requirements. While they had no prior experience in implementing such a model, our transparency, collaborative approach, and structured roadmap provided clarity and direction.

A game plan was developed that addressed multiple questions:

• How to deliver successfully with a blended model?
• How many people should be offshore?
• How many people should be onsite?
• How to phase the approach?
• Bottlenecks and how to address them?

This framework equipped the client with the knowledge and confidence to execute efficiently, implement a modernized software roadmap, and successfully deliver key products.

Business outcomes

The client’s new agent portal became the first successful IT project in more than three years. By modernizing a legacy system, the portal enhanced usability and improved customer service capabilities. Agents could now access accounts, generate accurate quotes, and stay informed about products in real time.

The ROI of the portal was evident in just four months, with every agent utilizing the portal, having access to information at their fingertips, providing accurate quotes, and improving the customer experience.

The client adopted an Agile approach, and the deliverables were broken down to the point where results were visible to each manager. This brought back confidence in the IT department.

Within 12 months, they delivered six successful projects using the blended delivery model. The IT team expanded from 10 developers to a hybrid group of 25 developers and QA testers, operating seamlessly across onshore and offshore locations. The outcome was a revitalized IT function, a proven delivery model, and measurable cost savings of 50 percent in development and training.

Also Read – Major U.S. Life Insurance Organization Selects Celsior as a Development Partner