Articulating the WHY

Shay Assaraf

I joined Sapiens a year ago.

I was amazed by the vast breadth of the Sapiens portfolio, addressing both Property & Casualty (P&C) and Life, offering insurers around the globe award-winning solutions to meet their core needs, as well as addressing complementary needs from reinsurance to financial and compliance, in addition to offering innovative data & analytics, digital and decision management solutions.

Nevertheless, our message and vision were blurry. We could say WHAT we offered our customers, and mainly talked about our products and referred to their specific features and functions. And while we delivered our customers significant value and benefits, we did not emphasize it well enough. We overlooked the bigger and more strategic value and benefits we deliver as a company, and as professionals, across our entire portfolio.

So I embarked on a quest. I met with dozens of employees, customers, and analysts with one single question: WHY Sapiens. OK, that’s not really a single question. In a series of round tables, one-on-ones and multi-participant brainstorm sessions we managed to put into words and crystalize the reasons WHY the company is successful – growing year over year and having a solid, engaged and satisfied customer base.

We concluded that our essence is to power our customers to change. We all know that the insurance industry is changing. Significantly. It’s not just an ordinary evolution but rather a giant leap – causing insurers to enter a new dimension.

This giant leap is fueled by the following key drivers:

  • Regulation is driving change
  • As a result of the digital era, customers have become more demanding and are seeking different ways to engage with their insurers
  • Non-traditional competitors (Lemonade, Next Insurance, etc.) are shaking the market and influencing the urgent need for change
  • New technologies and trends (cloud and low code/no code), and new architecture requirements

The evolution started before COVID but accelerated even more in the last two years.

This change is diverse and complex. It has many faces, and the fear of change can sometimes result in no change at all. However, change presents great opportunities to those who are ready to embrace it, and these unprecedented times give rise to multiple new opportunities and possibilities. We all know and see how insurers can thrive in this new era, and should not settle for survival mode.

So when we went and evaluated the central value we give our customers and the industry as a whole, we learned that we power insurers to successfully change and adapt, in order to thrive through the transformations of our time.

However, you may ask yourself – if change is a constant (that’s a cliché, I know – but, like most clichés, it’s true) and it’s a given within our industry – WHY Sapiens? Why do you believe Sapiens can help better than others to power insurers to change and to thrive?

And the answer was simple.

We believe we are better positioned than others because of three factors:

  • We cover the end-to-end needs of insurers: it’s not about the breadth of products and modular offering (which we have, and believe me it’s among the widest, if not the widest in the industry). It’s about the variety of business needs we can address. Our array of products is ideally suited for any stage in an insurer’s journey.
  • We solve business challenges: our deep knowledge, across regions and segments – gathered by working with over 600 customers – allow us to provide our customers and prospects solutions for specific needs, rather than off-the-shelf products. Our delivery capabilities and practices, as well as our user groups and active communities, bring ongoing proven field insights into our product roadmap to keep enhancing our ability to address specific and practical needs.
  • We provide technology innovation: yes, I know we’re not the only ones saying that, but over the last 40 years we have been pioneers in various domains, from decision management to low-code/no-code, bringing to market multiple functional innovative products, delivered globally. And we keep investing in our products and roadmap, partnering with insurtech startups, supporting accelerator programs and investing in the cloud journey.

When we finally understood all that, and were able to put it into words, we saw that we had to bring a new – more fine-tuned and specific – voice to the market. We wanted our communication channels and touch points with customers, prospects, partners, industry leaders and employees to convey this value. And we wanted our look and feel to also represent the message that we would like to share.

We just launched a new website. Come by and take a look, read the industry pulse and stay in touch. We have many more exciting things to share, and they are coming very soon.

The journey we went through, and the outcome now being presented in our new website, social media channels and published content, are the result of much collaboration. It started with our intention to refine what we highlight to the market and continued with updating how we share the news we publish as well as our look and feel. As a company that cherishes people’s voices and allows everyone to express their thoughts, it was a joint effort, and many contributed. However, I would like to specifically thank my marketing team that worked tirelessly, kept their eye on the ball to ensure a smooth execution, and made this a reality.

It’s been a great journey, but in fact, it hasn’t ended, but has just begun. Stay tuned…

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Shay Assaraf

Shay Assaraf Shay Assaraf leads the marketing in Sapiens. Shay brings more than 15 years of B2B and B2C experience from technology and product companies. He has a wealth of expertise in leading end-to-end and fully integrated marketing teams and programs, with a focus on marketing strategy and go-to-market, content and marcom, analyst and public relations, product marketing and lead generation. Originally from Israel, Shay currently lives in London with his wife and three children.