Why do Guidewire-Based Applications need Insurance application testing experts?

Can you determine a potential risk? Guess not. With changing lifestyle and rapidly revolutionizing technology, the idea of ‘potential risk’ is also getting constantly redefined. This has become a serious challenge for the insurance sector. Technology platforms continue to serve as a strong pillar that can help and strengthen the Insurance sector by building applications that are user-friendly and robust. However, Insurance Application testing and Quality Assurance continue to remain a concern for the industry even today.

Guidewire has been known globally for offering core back-end software for property and casualty (P&C) insurance carriers. But Guidewire Application Testing and implementation is complex and industry analysis has established that it is a specialized task.

What is an Insurance Software?

Accordingly to a recent report by Technavio Market Research, ‘The global insurance software market will grow at a CAGR of more than 4% between 2016 and 2020.’ Insurance software enables insurers to demystify claims management, restructure policy administrations, and much more. It further facilitates many insurance administration activities such as compliance filing, policy drafting, requirements reporting across diverse product lines.

All in all, an Insurance software is required to launch new product lines and keep pace with changing requirements of the clients and make them more competitive in the marketplace. Besides, the software and application space is being constantly threatened with cyber-related issues and threats. So, insurance software providers have an additional role to play. They need to help build resistance and resilience for these applications and products that get rolled out.

Today, insurers are also focusing on providing location-based services, push notifications, responsive web/mobile apps, and user-friendly premium payment options. The idea is to leverage the digitally enabled space to extend better service to the users. Insurers are also leveraging Social Media to stay connected with the clients.

Eventually, Big Data and Analytics is going to play a major role in deciding the preferences and purchasing patterns of the consumers. It will help gain competitive edge and offer value to the customers. Most importantly, it will help predict risks and build products that are relevant to deal with such risks.

According to the Technavio report, even non-insurance companies such as Google and Amazon are planning to enter the insurance market with the right technology mix to offer insurance products to their customers. Now this is going to exciting!

Apart from Guidewire, the report lists some other prominent players, namely, EIS Group, Hyland Software, Insly, Insurity, and Lexmark International, amongst many others. This makes the sector quite competitive and full of opportunities. Nevertheless, the challenges to get these products and services rolling are immense.

It is important to build a team that is technically equipped with tools and standardized processes to build and test these applications. For now, let’s consider the kind of expertise that is required to test Guidewire-based applications. The reason being, Guidewire has been a prominent and acclaimed player in the insurance software sector.

Guidewire comes with a range of products, namely, ClaimCenter, PolicyCenter, BillingCenter specifically for Property and Casualty (P&C) workflows and administration. These products can be configured and customized to integrate with any P&C Insurer environment.

Insurance applications are complex and are prone to market risks, as they are loaded with sensitive information about the individual as well as corporate clients. Numerous incidents and claims get recorded and processed for effectively releasing funds and for accurate documentation, which is absolutely critical.

These software complexities have given way to adoption of diverse methodologies for software development and testing. Agile development and DevOps approach has been increasingly adopted to enable Continuous Testing and Continuous Development. It enables continuous delivery, which supports faster time-to-market and ensures quality.

At the same time, it is important for insurance players to integrate their legacy systems with the new technology platforms. So, it becomes critical to test that the integration is successful and seamless for functioning efficiently.

This establishes the need to on-board a team that is proficient with tools for Quality Assurance and Testing. Practically, you need specialists and insurance industry experts, who have know-how about both the software testing strategy and should also hold accurate understanding about the insurance sector and its challenges.

Specifically, what can a specialist bring on-board for Guidewire Application Testing?

• A specialist can provide Testing Center of Excellence (TCoE) for complete solutions

A specialist with a CoE brings a comprehensive approach towards testing applications and solutions. Moreover, the CoE will bring experience along with expertise, where there will be standardized testing practices, methodologies, and metrics.

This approach is required for testing Guidewire-based applications, as it will make it faster to the market and ensure quality.

• Understanding the nuances of the Insurance sector is critical

Industry knowledge, specifically related to the Insurance sector is absolutely important. This will help set-up workflows and build the application according to the requirements of the industry and the regulatory policies. The team needs to know various parameters related to the sector, for instance, market segmentation, risks, income-group segmentation, and much more.

Practically, the testers and developers have to become a part of the industry to work on such specialized software.

• A specialist team will come with thorough knowledge about Guidewire products suite

The most important thing is experience with Guidewire products and knowledge about its various features and offerings. Guidewire comes with the Guidewire InsuranceSuite^TM and it is important that the testing team has end-to-end understanding about the products.

With experience, the team will be able to bring proven accelerators to enable effective implementation of the product and seamless integration with the legacy systems.

An experienced team with required expertise will be able to bring all implementation needs under one roof. Moreover, a specialist will bring core expertise in Guidewire configuration, conversion, and migration.

• A specialist ensures that the delivery is done flawlessly

With suitably trained resources, experienced team leads, proven testing tools and frameworks, standardized best practices and methodologies, an experienced implementation team/partner can ensure flawless delivery.

Guidewire implementation needs skills that go beyond sheer technical expertise, so insurers look at on-boarding testing teams/partners that have experience in overall testing and implementation.

Cigniti experts have been working extensively in the Insurance sector to build applications that provide competitive edge. We have thorough experience of testing and implementing Guidewire-based applications.

Cigniti’s TCoE Framework (SCALE) is designed to provide an integrated and comprehensive approach towards testing applications/software. The proprietary framework consists of core elements addressing all aspects of an organization.

Connect with us to leverage our expertise and testing assets to successfully test and implement Guidewire-based applications for your business and derive value.