A Guide for Implementing DevOps in the Insurance Industry
While thinking of the insurance sector from the technology perspective, what usually comes to our mind are quick claims, AI-driven chatbots, etc. DevOps wouldn’t naturally occur to anyone. But someone thought about it and realized how DevOps could transform the insurance sector. Experts believe DevOps will play a decisive role in the future of insurance. Let’s see how and also know how Insurance players can implement DevOps in their ecosystem.
How Can DevOps Transform Insurance?
DevOps, as you may know, is a set of practices, tools, and approaches that foster continuous improvement and value delivery in IT operations and the software development process. It involves collaboration and communication to eliminate silos and bring together the development and operations teams. The idea is to improve the software development lifecycle and enhance product quality.
Now speaking of the insurance sector, insurance companies must provide core and various ancillary services to maintain competence.
Core services like websites and mobile applications allow customers to manage their insurance and make premium payments. Hence, these two elements must operate seamlessly. In addition, they must be upgraded regularly to help them stay aligned with the evolving technology and insurance holders’ needs.
Implementing DevOps in Insurance – How Would a DevOps Workflow Look in Insurance?
Let’s consider the example of DevOps workflow in the case of an insurance product that runs on a particular infrastructure. How can DevOps help improve it?
- Audit Current Infrastructure and Workflows
DevOps professionals analyze the existing systems and workflows by asking the insurance company’s team the right questions. The professionals also speak to the IT team to identify current functional and structural bottlenecks.
- DevOps Design and Implementation
DevOps experts use various tools like Jenkins, Terraform, Docker, Ansible, Zabbix, etc., to redesign the existing IT infrastructure. It helps increase operational resilience, expedite pace, enhance data security and increase cost-effectiveness.
- Establishing CI/CD Pipelines
One of the most significant objectives of DevOps is to automate routine manual processes. DevOps can help test a pipeline of various automated actions and enable system administrators to perform a sophisticated operation with a single terminal command. It can also allow a developer to provision the fully-configured testing environment in a few clicks without seeking external help.
Similarly, all the other repetitive tasks across the software development lifecycle can be automated. The IT team can focus on enhancing customer service and the strategic aspect of the department rather than dealing with mundane tasks.
Aligning Teams and their Goals
DevOps collaborates with technology and people. Hence, aligning teams and their goals is another essential task while implementing DevOps in insurance.
It is common for insurance teams to have an independent development team, an individual IT team, and an independent security team.
But when these three different teams work with individual goals, they may cause interdepartmental friction. Hence, rather than assigning a particular department, say, asking the IT team to maintain maximum uptime, all the teams could be given a single commercial goal based on the company’s success.
But these goals must be trackable and quantifiable. DevOps can help reduce silos and ensure all the teams are working towards the same objective instead of running in different directions.
Consolidating the Technology Stack
Technology plays a vital role in every insurance company’s success. But when every department uses a different technology to achieve the company’s objectives, it could create a disconnect and defeat the whole purpose of using it.
Insurance companies face such challenges. Many insurance firms work on legacy systems and ancient codes, discarding what could be challenging.
DevOps can help here. It can help insurance companies bring their departments to a common consensus by consolidating the technology stack and uniformizing the use of technology across various verticals of the organization.
Of course, it takes time to consolidate the technology stack. But it helps save costs and avoid data silos, which could result in inefficiencies in using data and affect the decision-making process.
DevOps helps remove roadblocks that impede getting the working code into production. When everyone works in coordination and on the same set of technologies, insurance companies can move ahead and automate a process that has been long waiting to be uniformized.
Foster a Culture Shift
This is another challenge. Of course, shedding age-old processes and adopting something new suddenly isn’t easy. Insurance companies live with some ancient processes for a reason, which is to avoid risk. But then they have insurtech players, who’ve brought a paradigm shift in the insurance sector. They’d always keep conventional insurance providers on their toes and bring about changes.
Insurance companies need to trust their developers more and empower them to break down silos within IT. It can help developers execute the new code without letting the redundant or traditional thought process hamper the process.
Another essential part of DevOps implementation for the insurance sector is continuous tracking and measuring of the DevOps process. DevOps allows companies to do it. Besides, automating data generation and processing can help companies use it to drive educated decisions and enable the company to move toward its financial and strategic objectives.
Implement DevOps Successfully with Datafortune!
As an Insurance company, DevOps can benefit you in many ways. Of course, it will take time. But providers like Datafortune can at least make the journey to DevOps-driven transformation a seamless one.
Our domain expertise and that within the DevOps space can help you leverage DevOps to achieve excellence, success, and sustainability. Click here to connect with us and know our DevOps offerings for the insurance sector.