Implementation, Strategic Controls and Contingency Plans

Implementation, Strategic Controls and Contingency Plans

As the largest publically held insurer in the United States, the Allstate Corporation has been profoundly focused on growth since it cut its ties with Sears, Roebuck and Company in 1993. Furthermore, the company’s focus has been slowly shifting from pushing primarily auto insurance to helping customers understand the benefits of having a superb auto, home and now life packaged security plan to protect against the hazards of life.

Implementation Plan

Allstate’s overall objective to protect the things in life that matter most to people has been proudly emphasized through its long-reigning tagline.

The Allstate slogan "You're in good hands" was created half a century ago by Allstate Insurance Company's sales executive, Davis W. Ellis, to demonstrate Allstate's ongoing commitment to customers. The phrase came to him as the result of a reassuring remark made to his wife during the Spring of 1950 about their ailing child. She told him, "The hospital said not to worry. We're in good hands with the doctor." (Ad Slogans, 2014)

To live into its slogan, Allstate has positioned its strategic vision to focus on delivering “substantially more value than the competition by reinventing protection and retirement to improve customers’ lives” (Allstate, 2014, Our Strategic Vision). However, achieving long-term objectives requires that the company focus on short-term goals that narrow down resources and tasks required to obtain success. Thus, Allstate must continue its focus on pairing products and services that complement its auto, home and life products. Currently, the company has placed a great deal of emphasis on innovative home solutions via its “Life Can Surprise You” campaign. Allstate agents are now being placed in trusted advisor roles, an innovative concept for the insurance industry, which allows them to confidently offer customers helpful solution to dealing with new life stressors. “Now an Allstate Agent can help with 'firsts' -- and throughout life -- in ways people never expected, offering solutions centered around that first home, first car, and growing family" (Market Watch, 2014, para. 2).

To continue this innovative concept, Allstate must identify other complimentary products and services to attract other market segments. Thus, leadership in the Research and Development, Product Operations, Marketing Alliances and Innovation, Integrated Marketing Communications and Customer Experience departments must come together to petition Strategic Operations toalign with expanding this vision to include other demographics and complimentary products and services in the auto, home and life divisions. Expansion will necessitate financial and human resources to form cross-functional teams specifically focused on this strategy. Although each area will be responsible for completing its share of work to attain the overall strategic goal to bring more value to Allstate’s products, teams will need to collaborate on a regular basis to ensure the vision of Customer Experience and Integrated Marketing Communication aligns with market studies conducted by Research and Development. Vision will be further supported by Product Operations who will design products and services to address the needs of the target segment, and Marketing Alliances and Innovation who will build partnerships with reputable companies offering financial service guidance, new driver education classes, and retirement saving programs to compliment auto and life products for target demographic groups. Because this effort will span multiple departments working simultaneously, milestones and deadlines will be aggressive, as human and financial resources cannot be depleted due to missed target dates resulting from inaccurate research or product development. The following milestones and deadlines will be monitored to appropriately execute this strategy expansion:

• Petition for and secure funding from Strategic Operations for areas of responsibility involved in researching, designing, developing and marketing this strategy. This must be completed before any work can begin. Additionally, leadership will need to develop a project roadmap to keep project managers on task in each area.

• Gather information on and hold initial meetings with key cross-functional team members and subject matter experts that need to be engaged to help develop the strategy.

• Engage Research and Development in conducting market studies to identify products and services that growing families and upcoming retirees would find complementary to their auto, home and life policies via the discovery phase.

• Post discovery, investigate the feasibility of possible product and service design options with the input of Research and Development, Product Operations, Marketing Alliances and Innovation and Customer Experience via the early design phase. Marketing Alliances and Innovation will need to work on strategic partnerships with Prudential, a college tuition financial consulting firm, and local driving schools as part of the offerings that will be made to customers.

• In the detailed design phase, teams will need to come together to agree upon the most favorable design concepts based on research and early prototypes. At this time, products and services that best represent the growth of the “Life Can Surprise You” strategy will be refined and finalized based on feedback gathered from tests and prototypes.

• During the development stage, Product Operations, Marketing Alliances and Innovation, and Research and Development will build out the agreed upon products and negotiate and sign agreements with aligning organizations.

• Integrated Marketing Communication and Customer Experience will develop marketing materials such as press releases, commercials, print ads, and supporting education materials for agencies and Allstate regional offices.

• Finally, the refined “Life Can Surprise You” campaign will launch in mid-October 2015. This target implementation date was selected to coincide with consumers’ year end obligations, which include reenrolling into health care benefits.

Organizational Change Management Strategies

Internal organizational change begins with the senior leadership team committed to evolving the “Life Can Surprise You” strategy. The first action that senior leaders must take is to have a dedicated team of professionals committed to providing “behind-the-scenes support in the form of communications, change-readiness analysis, training, andstakeholder engagement strategythe executive sponsors may not have time for while running their businesses” (Jacoby, 2014, para. 3). Additionally, leaders directly aligned with the strategy can hold informational/ educational sessions with various parts of the organization to provide more insight into the growth of the strategy and what it means for Allstate’s future; this will help build strategy ambassadors internally. “Rather than issuing edicts, successful change management leaders demonstrate to subordinates the positive ways in which change can improve the performance of the company and, ultimately, their role within it” (McQuerrey, 2014, Educating Subordinates). However, change management efforts take time to evolve in an organizational setting. “Managers can help this process by establishing clear timelines, giving advance notice of how new goals and objectives should be established and by maintaining an open channel of ongoing communication with employees” (McQuerrey, 2014, Setting Clear Expectations). Finally, employees must be given ample time to transition into new roles and adapt to new ideas. “Successful leaders of change management are proactive in addressing potential issues and objections, providing clear direction on new expectations, offering training and education on new responsibilities and business concepts, and allowing for a learning curve during transitional periods” (McQuerrey, 2014, Acknowledging Human Elements).Finally, post implementation milestones of the refined campaign should be embedded into key stakeholder groups’ individual goals. Thus, the campaign’s relevance will continue to live on through meaningful communication, education and adoption efforts of those individuals at home office and in the field who are responsible for engaging agents to support this campaign. These stakeholders can engage agencies through quick reference cards, infographics and complimentary product and service explanatory videos that will help agencies understand the complimentary products and services being offered.

Key Success Factors, Budget and Forecasted Financial

The first factor that will indicate success for Allstate’s strategy is reach, which “can be measured in terms of: page views, unique visitors, geographical physical location, gender, age, [and] referral source” (Rand, 2014, Reach – Key Performance Indicator). Because this revised strategy will be targeted to established families with growing children and upcoming retirees, it will be beneficial to measure if the campaign is getting its message to the intended target audience and expanding brand awareness. Additionally, reach will help keep track of the company’s and campaign’s awareness via nontraditional channels such as social media, unique click throughs on Allstate’s webpage, and consumer blogs. Next, Allstate will need to ensure its marketing campaign and offerings are providing the company with a positive return on investments via insurance binds and use of complimentary services and products. Finally, customer growth in selected consumer segments, customer satisfaction and customer retention will help to confirm the strategy’s success.

BUDGET AND FORECASTED FINANCIALS, INCLUDING BREAK-EVEN ANALYSIS (MISSING)

Risk Management Plan

The below bullet points identify possible risks and contingency plans associated with successfully implementing Allstate’s strategic plan:

• Project teams’ potential to miss significant milestones/target dates presents itself with a higher risk. To mitigate this risk, project leaders will need to meet on a regular/weekly basis to ensure timely delivery of deliverables. If a risk is identified, project managers will need to find viable work-around plans to restore timelines.

• Project teams can potentially exceed their allocated budgets. To mitigate this risk, teams should have a mastery budget owner track expenditures ongoing. If a risk is identified, cost cutting measures will need to be implemented to bring the budget out of red status. Another potential contingency is to have an allocated contingency fund to mitigate financial constraints.

• Another potential risk is not completing enough research to better understand what customer segments to target, and the products and services that will meet the needs of those consumer groups. Thus, mitigating this risk will include completing extended market research of multiple consumer groups in various geographic areas to narrow down a target market segment. Detailed market research will also decrease the need for additional research in the event that a new target segment needs to be chose based on initial market test results.

• Not recognizing or identifying relevant insurance industry trends may effect Allstate’s bottom line. To mitigate this risk, leaders will need to be continuously informed of new products and services being offered by competitors. Efficient competitor scans will help also maintain its competitive flair in the industry.

• Ineffective tracking of initial market tests presents itself with a risk because essential product and service improvements expressed by consumers become ignored. To mitigate this risk, a tracing system will need to be developed to help identify which strategy components work best and which need to be adjusted.

• Finally, the overall condition of the national and global economy present a risk. By monitoring economic changes effecting the insurance industry, Allstate can better tailor its products and services to counter downturns in the economy and increase market growth.