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How to do a contract with a Software House

It’s a rare thing that we have to refer to a contract with a client. In 99% of cases we sign it, put it in a draw, get on with the business of delivering systems and writing policies. But it does happen, and it happened last week. So here are some learnings from that process for future clients:

In fairness, contracting with a new software company is not something brokers do every day so here are a few tips: 

1. Decide what is important to you and make sure that’s in the contract
2. If timescales are important to you put them in the contract
3. If certain functionality is important to you, make sure it is in scope

Sounds simple, but you’d be amazed how often expectation and reality are not aligned.

Going Global

Ignite is moving up in the world.  

Earlier this year we moved into larger offices in the Northern Quarter in Manchester, and in July 2018 we opened our first office in Mysore, India.  

The new offices in Manchester at 24 Lever St are a step up from the old HQ in King St.  Where King St had three flights of stairs, wonky ceilings and a break-out area called the dungeon, Lever St boasts a lift (shock), huge windows, exposed brickwork (in a good way), and enough room for the team to expand up to 50 staff.  With a board room, 100s of plants and a massive roof garden it’s well worth a visit.  

The new office in Mysore is a big adventure also.  The office will be headed up by Swetha (for those of you who know her) who has been with Ignite for over 5 years.  She hails from Mysore and her connections and knowledge have been invaluable.  The developers and testers in Mysore will provide an extra line of support and capacity for the Manchester office.  While no data can go to India, and access to live sites is totally restricted, there are lots of tweaky bug fixes, enhancement projects, and code improvement works they will contribute to.  

Everyone we’ve spoken to about having an off-shore office says that management and communications are key issues to address.  So it’s pleasing to report that we’ve had no issues on that front so far!  The Indian team are coming to Manchester this month for training and we wish them all the best.  

How to acquire an Ignite system

Here’s a handy step-by-step guide to how to acquire the Ignite Broker system.  

1. Give us a call.  We need to talk to you about your requirements to understand if we can help with what you need.  What we do is all on the Systems pages of the website but it is crucial for us to understand your requirements and aspirations. 

2. Have a demo.  If we’ve talked and got on and decided Ignite might be able to help then the next step is a web-demo.  We organise a screenshare for you and your colleagues/decision-makers because seeing is believing.  The demo usually takes about 1-2 hours depending on how well it goes and how many questions you ask. 

3. If you’re still interested then it’s NDA & Fact Find time.  This is a simple Non-Disclosure Agreement followed by a one-page Fact Find that tells us a bit more about your company (size, premium, insurers, quote volumes, users, etc).  The NDA is for your peace of mind, and the Fact Find allows us to send you a…

4. Proposal.  This document we send you summarises your requirements, the system features Ignite will deliver (bespoke and out-the-box) and sets out an indicative range of pricing for the Ignite system based on what we know so far.  If you like us and you like the Proposal, then we need to do a… 

5. Scope!  The most important phase.  Now the real work begins.  Ignite will send a friendly Business Analyst and Managing Director to your offices to detail all your requirements.  Depending on the complexity of the project this could involved a number of visits and gathering … well … everything: question sets, branding, documents, workflows, process flowcharts, integrations, bespoke work, schemes, and much more.  We charge for the scope (how much depends on the size of the project) which sorts the chancers from the dancers.  The scope is essential to aligning expectations and bottoming out requirements so don’t take it lightly! 

6.  Once the scope is completed then we can give a contract certain quote.  The scope forms an annex of the contract and is a key deliverable.  Make sure anything that is required is in the scope because if it isn’t then it won’t be delivered! 

7. Contract signed and the project is scheduled.  You’ll be assigned a Project Manager, a Business Analyst and a Test resource.  We’ll have a kick-off meeting and boom – we’re off and running.  

Breezy.

Insuring your insurance business

Q. What is a disaster recovery plan? 

1). A document put together to keep prospective clients happy

2). Something you test and review every month and hope you’ll never invoke

3). Don’t know.

It turns out insurance software companies don’t all choose option 2.

At Ignite we have a fully documented, regularly tested, and regularly reviewed disaster recovery plan.  This involves hosting in multiple locations, and even physical back-ups.  It always feels like overkill (after all we’ve never had a disaster in 5 years of trading).  But recent events at one of our esteemed competitor’s data facility has made it all seem very worthwhile.  They’ve been down for over a week, with probable loss of data, and untold damage to both their clients’ businesses and their client relationships.  

If you’re a user of that company that is having these problems, then our hearts go out to you.  You delegate this responsibility to your provider and you’ve been let down.  To be unable to write business or chase renewals, see diaries, access documents, must be awful.  Good business is built on trust and this will be hard to recover from.  

As the dust settles we sincerely hope the effect has not been too detrimental. 

If you fancy checking out a life-raft, just click: here

How much does our system cost?

You’re going to ask it eventually.  It is a fair question.  Some people are polite and leave it to the end of the first meeting.  Others are adamant about knowing the price before ‘proceeding any further’.   We try not to be evasive but it is honestly a difficult question to answer.  

Just for fun, let’s take a journey down a metaphor…

You go into an estate agents and say: “I’m stuck renting a shabby 90s property that never gets updated [that’s your old software system in this metaphor by the way]. I’d like something new and I want you to decorate it for me”.  

The sales guy (this is Richie, a nice guy, not too pushy [that’s us by the way]) says “Of course sir/madam, please, sit down, what are you after?”

You’ve seen this sort of smooth sales patter before so you refuse the chair and counter with: “I’d like to know the price before proceeding any further”

This stumps Richie a little, but he ploughs on: “Well, we’ve got a range of properties here…”

You judge Richie to be a bit of a politician so you cut him off: “stop avoiding the question, how much are we talking?”

“Well sir/madam”, says Richie, flustered now, “how much are you looking to spend?”

“Ha!” you cry, “if I tell you that, you’ll just sell me something based on my budget not my requirements!” 

“Not at all sir/madam” says Richie, trying his best, “if we know your budget we can talk sensibly about whether you want a bedsit or a mansion.  I don’t know anything about what you need so I can’t tell you the price.  How many bedrooms do you need?  Are you interested in what it looks like?  Etc…” 

You sigh and think: I just want what I’ve got, but better and modern and reliable and with a few bells and whistles that I expect but don’t really know what they are yet.  Do I have to go into all the detail?

You see where I’m going.

Back to the system.  Yes, we’re not an NGO, we’re trying to turn a profit.  But play fair.  If you want a price, tell us what you want to buy. 

You can have 66.6%

Our corporate lawyer likes to say that he offers three services: 

1. Good
2. Fast
3. Cheap

And here’s the catch: you can only have two. 

I’ve adopted his saying, but I’d like to give him credit for it. 

Every broker and MGA we’ve ever dealt with wants their system done and ready within 2 weeks.  They also want it to have no bugs and do all the clever little bits that make their lives easier.  

Then we come to price.  

Now you can choose any two of the three services we offer.  It’s up to you.  The happiest clients we have are the ones who know which they’ve chosen on that list.  The grumpiest clients are the ones who expect all three.  So feel free, take your pick, but please remember, for everyone’s sake: you can only choose two.  

You are being watched

Perhaps we ought to have some sort of disclaimer.  

We make the most of the data we can get.  So right now we know: where you are, what company you work for, what computer you are using, which browser you are using, how you came to our site, which Google ad you clicked on.  Hell, we even know if you’re reading these words and how long it has taken you to do so.  

Creepy?  Hopefully not.  

Of course, the idea is that we see who’s just lost on the internet and who is serious about knowing more about the cutting edge of insurance software.  

If you just read the blog and don’t look at the systems features, don’t worry, we won’t be bothering you.  If you do look through the nuts and bolts, we might just give you a call or an email.  

Which is all good, serious, useful stuff for us.  

But the funny part: well, this all means we know exactly how often our competitors visit our site…

Thanks guys – it’s nice to know we’re getting noticed so much! 

The barrier to telematics

Ignite has been used for a few telematics projects to date: Policywise, Girls Drive Better, Marmalade, eDrive, to name a few.  All exciting propositions and each with a very different market segment. 

Telematics should be taking the insurance industry by storm.  So why isn’t it?  There are roughly 350,000 live policies out there, depending on who you listen to.  That sounds like a lot, but with major insurers like Aviva, LV and Markerstudy, and major brokers like Admiral, Hastings, and More Than all having been playing in this space for 5 years or so (some less than that), why does telematics barely cover 1% of the market? 

Some people will tell you it is because of the big brother effect – people don’t like to be watched. This isn’t true: people are happy to have their driving monitored if it saves them money.  It’s not as though the black box is reading your private mail or looking through your keyhole at night. Insurance is highly price sensitive so if you’re the cheapest you’ll likely get bought: black box or not. 

So what is the barrier to telematics?  Answer: Big data.  There are very few people in the insurance industry who even know what big data is.  Do you?  

Proper analysis of the big data that comes from driving millions of miles assesses whether the drivers you insure are more or less likely to crash, with probabilities worked out statistically not anecdotally.  

Until some serious data scientists attack the data coming from telematics (most of which is stored in summary form and therefore near on useless) underwriters will continue to get burned and telematics will never really take off. 

By the way – Ignite works with data scientists so if anyone is interested in knowing what their driving data really means…

How to launch a new product

At Ignite we are often involved with launching new products and services.

If someone wants to launch a new product we give that client an implementation template to fill out.  The idea is to make sure that they’ve thought through the key parts of their business: product, distribution, regulation, automation, administration, and accounting. 

How many fill this in properly?  Hardly any.  They always miss out a section they’re either not interested in or don’t know about.

Our advice?  Fill in the template.  Without it, you can guarantee yourself delays and frustrations further down the line.  That moment when you say “but we expected it would do x…” is the moment we will refer you to the specification.  

More often than not we will charge new clients for a scoping document.  Be prepared to pay for us to do your specification if you haven’t done it yourself.  It’s a very important document, for you and us.  

One way or another, someone has to do the detail.  

How to be successful

As a software company for insurance brokers, we get approached by lots of brokers with plans to set up new schemes, products or even companies.  We’ve seen lots, and that gives us a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn’t.  

What is the thing that divides the successful ones and the unsuccessful ones? 

Speed to market

If you’re slow off the mark you’ll never catch up. 

Certain factors are out of your hands, namely the insurer.  And large = slow.  So use a small one or an MGA.  You can always get more capacity when you’re established.  Large insurers are frothing at the calculator for access to profitable brokers. 

When we hear the words: “We’re in negotiations with some of the UK’s largest insurers” all we think is “this one’ll never get off the ground”

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