ORG 726 Week 8 Technology Implementation Strategy Example

From Pilots to Practice: An Implementation Strategy for a Mutual Insurer's Next Technology Program

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

ORG/726: The Impact of Technology on Organizations

Week 8 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Prairie Shield Mutual, its plans, people and figures are composites written for a model paper.

Over seven weeks, this course has followed Prairie Shield Mutual, an invented Iowa property and casualty mutual, through the effects of its technology on structure, work, adoption, decisions, ethics and integration. The company now plans its largest program: integrating claims, pricing and policy systems and launching usage-based auto insurance. This final paper sets out an implementation strategy designed to turn that program into performance gains that last.

What the Term Found

The course's findings converge. Technology produced gains where organizational changes accompanied it: Des Moines's override rights and review group, the pricing tool's inspection input and workload dashboards used for balancing rather than ranking. It produced losses where they did not: Omaha's turnover under locked routing, resistance to a pricing tool that shifted authority without answering concerns, a fraud model unfair to rural members and integration plans that budgeted technology but not the changes needed to use it. The lesson is that implementation, not technology, determines results.

Implementation Research

Klein and Sorra (1996) defined success in implementation as how consistently and how skillfully the intended users actually use an innovation, and argued that it rests on two conditions. The first is a strong implementation climate, a shared sense among users that skilled use is what the organization wants and will back, created by training, help when problems arise, time to learn, rewards and the removal of obstacles. The second is a good fit between the innovation and users' values. In their account, a tool that people are pushed to use but that clashes with what they care about tends to get grudging, minimal use rather than real commitment. Klein et al. (2001) studied the implementation of manufacturing resource planning systems in 39 plants and found that management support for the technology and financial resource availability shaped implementation policies and practices, which in turn shaped climate and implementation effectiveness.

Weiner (2009) treated readiness as two shared states: commitment, a collective determination to make the change happen, and efficacy, confidence that the group can actually pull it off. In his account, people commit when they see the change as worth doing, and they feel capable when they judge that time, resources and know-how are available.

Assessing Readiness

A readiness survey of 420 employees and interviews with 30 managers and agents found:

Executives and IT: high commitment and efficacy.

Des Moines adjusters: moderate commitment, high efficacy, based on their experience with override rights.

Omaha adjusters: low commitment and low efficacy, after a year of locked routing and rankings.

Underwriters: improving commitment since the inspection input was added; moderate efficacy.

Service representatives: high commitment to the member profile, low efficacy, since they lack claims training.

Agents: low commitment to usage-based insurance, fearing loss of their relationship with members.

Readiness is not a company-wide number; it differs by group, and the weakest groups decide the pace.

Values Fit

Fit with values varies too. Adjusters value professional judgment, which locked routing violates and override rights respect. Agents value their relationship with members, which a direct app could threaten. The mutual's members value fairness and privacy, which the Week 6 commitments address. Where fit is poor, the strategy changes the design, not only the message.

The Strategy in Four Phases

Phase 1, months 1 to 6: foundations. Adopt the governance change from Week 4, separating transformation from digitization. Form the digital product team. Establish the model risk committee and fairness audits. In Omaha, replace rankings with workload balancing and introduce override rights and adjuster pods, rebuilding commitment before the integration starts there.

Phase 2, months 4 to 15: coverage views and claims integration. Connect claims and policy systems first, where benefits are clear. Rebalance adjuster workloads to use saved time. Adjusters from both offices sit on the design team.

Phase 3, months 12 to 24: pricing feedback and member profile. Monthly claims feedback to the pricing model, with actuarial review cycles changed in advance. Train service representatives in claims and expand their authority before the member profile goes live.

Phase 4, months 18 to 36: usage-based insurance pilot. Launch with volunteer members under opt-in consent. Let agents see how their own clients are driving and coach them toward safer habits, addressing values fit before launch.

Building the Implementation Climate

Climate will be built deliberately: training before each launch, with paid time; super-users in each office available during the first months; incentives that reward skilled use, such as override quality rather than speed alone; visible executive sponsorship; and quick responses to users' problems, with a two-week commitment.

Owners and Resources

The chief operating officer leads the program. Business leaders own each phase's organizational changes: the claims vice president for Phases 1 and 2, the chief actuary and service director for Phase 3 and the digital product lead and sales vice president for Phase 4. The budget is $29 million over three years: $24 million for technology and $5 million for the redesign of work, training and support for the people affected.

Measures

Implementation effectiveness: use rates by group, override rates and quality and training completion. Performance: settlement times, loss ratios, call transfers, member satisfaction and usage-based enrollment. People: turnover, engagement and internal fills of new roles. Ethics: fairness audit results and consent and complaint rates. Each phase must meet its implementation measures before the next phase's launch.

Communication

Each group will hear about the program from the leader it trusts most: adjusters from the claims vice president and their pod leads, underwriters from the chief actuary and senior underwriters on the model panel, service staff from their director, agents from the sales vice president in person at regional meetings. Messages will explain what will change for that group, why, what support they will receive and how their concerns will be handled. Communication will run both ways: each phase will have a channel for questions with a published response time, and the steering group will review the questions monthly for patterns.

Risks to the Strategy

Three risks stand out. Executives may push to compress phases to show results to the board, undercutting the readiness work; the board will be briefed on why phases are gated. Budget pressure may cut the $5 million for people and process first; it will be protected as a separate line. Key people, such as the Des Moines claims vice president whose practices anchor the design, may leave; each phase will have a deputy owner.

Sustaining Gains

Implementations often decay after launch when attention moves on. To prevent that, each system will have a business owner after launch, override and use data will be reviewed quarterly and super-users will remain in place for a year.

My Role

As the program's sponsor from the claims side, my own lesson from the term is that I accepted Omaha's locked routing because it met the project's targets. I will hold myself accountable for people outcomes as well as technical ones.

Conclusion

Prairie Shield's next technology program will succeed or fail on implementation. Research on implementation climate, values fit and readiness, joined with the course's findings, points to a phased strategy that builds readiness group by group, changes organization ahead of technology, funds complementary investment and measures use, performance, people and fairness together.

References

Klein, K. J., Conn, A. B., & Sorra, J. S. (2001). Implementing computerized technology: An organizational analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(5), 811-824. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.86.5.811

Klein, K. J., & Sorra, J. S. (1996). The challenge of innovation implementation. Academy of Management Review, 21(4), 1055-1080. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1996.9704071863

Weiner, B. J. (2009). A theory of organizational readiness for change. Implementation Science, 4, Article 67. https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-4-67