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IQ + EQ + DQ for complete digital transformation

Find out the role for each and their interplay at IndiaFirst Life Insurance:

Anjana Rao

Anjana Rao as Chief Strategy Officer is at the helm of strategic initiatives at IndiaFirst Life Insurance Co and is tasked with driving a center of excellence within the company. Earlier, she led the change management vertical in the organization, helping the company to fulfil its objectives around digitization of its value chain, including metamorphosis of its end-to-end sales process and automation and rollout of new business and underwriting processes, among others.

In a career spanning close to 2 decades, she has spent the larger part of her corporate life serving the Indian insurance (life and general) sector. The domains she holds expertise in span across project management, change management and business transformation centered on leveraging IT and process. Prior to joining IndiaFirst Life Insurance Co, she has worked at Ernst and Young, Oracle India, Universal Sompo, SBI Life Insurance and ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, where she led a host of IT transformation projects, aside of driving CMMI implementation projects.

Anjana speaks on how she intends to drive digital transformation at IndiaFirst Life Insurance.

 

Mehul Dani: Has EQ & IQ become more or less important in driving digital transformation during covid?

Anjana Rao: IQ, EQ and Data Quotient (DQ) are equally important skills to be possessed not just by the leadership but even the team  members driving the digital agenda. While IQ is important, knowledge of technology and the ability to derive insights from data are must-haves for a team member to possess, but not without empathy for the end-user, not without the ability to manage the stakeholders.

EQ or emotional intelligence competency leads to the ability to influence the stakeholders, effectively handle conflict resolution and helps empathize with the end user, stakeholders, etc. Each of these elements is equally critical to delivering a successful transformation. Every transformation needs effective handling of change and without EQ it is not possible to lead and drive change, even if you have the best of the technologies to implement.

During the lockdown period where consumers shifted their buying behavior to online and found it more convenient, their expectations from financial institutions also are changing. They expect the ease of transacting extended by retailers to be extended by the insurance carriers as well. Not to mention the stress of WFH, social distancing, not able to meet their near and dear and the fear of life do add to the stress and has made them less tolerant for poor service quality or non-availability of services on the digital platform. That’s when, teams were quick to push back on the collection of physical documents and enabling processes with digital documents; quick rollout of the most common servicing options on WhatsApp and enabling claims notification and tracking on WhatsApp are few examples where EQ became critical.

 

Your organization has undergone several digital transformations during 2020. What is the big picture created by IQ & EQ about these projects?

Having the end-product aligned to the end-user expectation has been one of the key highlights of these projects. Being able to proactively gauge which aspects of the rollout the end-user is struggling with and how a course correction can be made, without any business disruptions is quite crucial here.

We have seen a larger play of EQ during the lockdown time when the entire organization was focused on making the remote operations possible for customer servicing and customer onboarding. We could see empathy with customers and empathy for field sales at display, to make tweaks to the process to make it relevant.

EQ has played a critical role in driving usage and adoption of initiatives. It has played a critical role in defining contactless journeys for customer acquisition, which helped the sales. One of the recent examples of a balanced IQ, EQ, and DQ being applied is also our nudge program, where we had to use technology to deliver nudges, data to derive intelligence and awareness about which inputs will help the BDM in improvising his productivity.

A dedicated team with cognitive abilities to experiment with the emerging technologies, the ability to map technology to a business situation and the ability of the team to derive insights from data and apply it to processes for faster decisions, strive for enabling personalized interactions with customers are must have abilities to deliver a successful digital transformation.

 

Has the company organized people with higher EQ and IQ for projects?

We have carved out a unit for business transformation and change management, with the sole purpose to accelerate and drive the organization towards digital maturity. This team ensures that:

  • The emerging technologies are being explored and relevant use cases are thought through by rigorous brainstorming sessions.
  • The impact of the use cases on the business objectives is plotted.
  • This is followed by a series of POCs with fintechs / insurtechs.
  • If the POCs meet the success criteria defined, then the team along with the user function plans to make the solution a part of the mainstream process/journey.
  • Solutions are deliberated with the IT team to assess the impact on the existing application portfolio
  • Team plans for rollout and adoption drive in advance and seeks consensus with stakeholders.
  • Post rollout, usage tracking is carried out by the team and issues faced by the users are monitored and actioned to ensure minimum disruption.
  • Feedback from business users is also taken to ensure the enabler is making a positive impact on their lives.
  • The team must balance the above-mentioned tasks related to innovation while executing the strategic projects/initiative which has been planned for the year.

To manage these initiatives, the team members must be deft at stakeholder management, conflict resolutions, empathizing and objection handling and they should also have competencies like the ability to navigate the project through the myriad challenges while collaborating in a cross-functional setup, and multitasking. These are critical for the successful execution of the initiatives. Besides this, having a curious mindset, being energetic, aware, and being aligned to organizational goals, seasoned at managing large programs/project management are a must. While an adequate level of IQ is a stated ask, EQ is a must for successful execution.

 

How is the organization planning to harness IQ & EQ more deeply to drive digital transformation in 2021?

For us, the digital transformation program is all about being an enabler for identifying new revenue generation opportunities through innovation and improving customer experience by keeping the processes relevant with the emerging expectations of customers and deriving insights from data to enhance the personalization. We understand that technology leads to enablement, but technology alone cannot create a long-lasting impact if not coupled with people and processes. We understand that IQ, EQ, Data Quotient all are integral ingredients for a successful rollout of the digital transformation journey not just at the leadership level but also at the manager level.

We have plans in place to upskill not just the project vertical, but all staff members who are involved in process designing or process monitoring, to master the art of empathy and to be able to conceptualize what data insights will help to make the process more efficient. We are working on plans to have these qualities ingrained amongst the staff members as base skills to create a profound effect on the customer experience levels.

As automation of processes seep in, we witness coexisting with bots becoming a reality and as a result, processes operated by staff members are now being operated by BOTS, and the process operators now have to get into the role where they manage the process outcome and are involved in further continuous PI to keep processes relevant for their staff members. Hence, reskilling is critical for staff members who used to operate processes.

At IndiaFirst Life, we firmly believe that a team with high DQ/ EQ/ IQ will outperform and deliver successful transformations, which means happy customers and a higher growth rate for the organization.

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