Why this site, and why now? In part, because we’re continually looking for ways to improve – and improving our customer interaction is as important as anything else that we are doing.

 

Even more importantly, we’re finding that something like this now is vital because we’re doing what some people considered either impossible to do or something that we didn’t have the appetite for: We’re taking our Phoenix product set to the next level.

 

As many of you know, we’ve invested a great deal of time, effort, and money to build out a next-generation billing system with PremiumBill. This was a significant exercise for us to undertake, but it is paying dividends: We have a new, fresh product that meets the needs of the marketplace, and we have gained a wealth of experience as a result of building a new system from the ground up.

 

While not everything was smooth sailing, in my opinion (the market will bear this out), we did make some correct decisions in regards to PremiumBill. One key decision was to target the design of PremiumBill to conform to the Service-Oriented Architecture mold. We did this for multiple reasons, but two key drivers that influenced the design come to mind.

 

First, we wanted a stand-alone billing system that could connect to multiple policy administration systems. Many carriers have multiple billing systems in place; offering a single solution that can be quickly and easily implemented will provide greater efficiencies through consolidation – a compelling benefit.

 

Second, we understood that the technological landscape was changing – and the emerging standards of XML, Web Services, and the Internet in general would be key drivers when it came to product selection criteria. If we wanted to compete, we needed to design our products to participate in the use of this newer technology.

 

PremiumBill was a significant effort for us, but the experience that we’ve gained in the development of this product is proving invaluable as we move forward. We’re using what we’ve learned from PremiumBill to redefine our internal product development practices (the subject I’ll make of future blogs) and to take what is essentially a large, legacy system in Phoenix and introduce new, leading-edge capabilities without re-designing and re-building the entire product, somewhat analogous to tuning an aircraft engine while the plane is in flight.

 

I’ll provide more on this topic in future blogs, and I welcome your thoughts and insight.