JAMA CONNECT--CUSTOMER STORY--Farm Bureau Insurance Selects Jama Connect® to Reduce Time to Market

 

Learn why Jama Connect’s easy-to-use platform is the right choice for modern insurance firms.

 

ABOUT Farm Bureau Insurance

• Founded: 1949 by Michigan farmers who were part of the Michigan Farm Bureau and wanted an insurance company that worked as hard as they did, gave honest service, and cared about Michigan’s future.

• Mission: Protecting the people of Michigan from the risks of everyday life.

• Expertise: Farm Bureau Insurance focuses strictly on Michigan, with more than 800 associates and nearly 450 agents spread throughout the Great Lakes state. Their family of insurance products includes auto, home, health, life, farm, crop, and business

 

Farm Bureau Insurance Selects Jama Connect® to Reduce Time to Market, Manage Change, and Improve Quality

 

Farm Bureau Insurance has high standards when it comes to protecting Michigan families. Those values permeate every part of their business, and product development is no exception. Business Analysts saw the opportunity to improve their performance by moving from a documents-based approach to a modern requirements management solution. They work hard and smart and wanted a tool that would do the same.

 

FARM BUREAU CUSTOMER STORY OVERVIEW

 

OBJECTIVES

• Gain a central repository for requirements

• Improve the change management process

• Simplify the review and approval process

• Increase team communication and collaboration

 

WHY JAMA CONNECT WAS THE RIGHT CHOICE

• Useability

• Traceability

• Time savings

• Central repository for requirements

• Streamlined reviews and approvals

 

THE OUTCOME AND THE FUTURE

• Single source of truth

• Increase speed to market

• Improve quality of deliverables

 

OBJECTIVES

With documents in disparate locations, Business Analysts (BAs) at Farm Bureau Insurance faced multiple challenges every day. Difficulty locating and reusing requirements, cumbersome change management, versioning issues, and lack of consistency plagued their development process.

 

Farm Bureau Insurance BAs longed for a solution that would allow them to realize two main goals: increase speed to market and improve quality of deliverables.

 

They identified four main capabilities they wanted from a modern requirements management tool that would help them address their challenges and meet their goals.

 

• Gain a central repository for requirements 

• Improve the change management process 

• Simplify the review and approval process 

• Increase team communication and collaboration

 

1. Gain a central repository for requirements

Business analysts (BAs) at Farm Bureau Insurance previously used Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel to manage requirements. “One of our big challenges is that our requirements are housed in multiple spots,” says Heidi Blundy, Business and Technical Analyst at Farm Bureau Insurance. “It’s difficult and time consuming to locate and reuse requirements because we have to dig through page after page of different requirements documents housed in SharePoint or TEAMS channels.” Managing access restrictions to those documents and projects also slowed teams down.

 

BAs were searching for a solution that would provide them with a single spot for all requirements. Jama Connect stood out for Farm Bureau Insurance because it shows the life of a requirement through development and testing, including Living Requirements™, which update as changes are made and record decision history.

 

“A single source of truth also improves consistency,” says Blundy. “For example, having templates built into Jama Connect — with all templates located in a single spot — means we’re all using the same template. And we’re following the same processes when writing, sending, and closing requirements.”

 

Additional benefits of using Jama Connect as their central requirements repository — such as requirement relationships cutting down on duplication and the ability to prioritize and reuse requirements — all tie strongly to their goals of increasing speed to market and improving quality.

 

2. Improve the change management process.

 

Historically, BAs used a static requirements management tool where they tracked changes manually in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel documents. They faced difficulty with each change, as BAs needed to add all changes and their reasoning to their document control tab in Excel. It was also nearly impossible to determine the impact of a proposed change across documents and seamlessly gain the approvals needed to implement change.

 

The traceability functionality really drew Farm Bureau Insurance to Jama Connect because it is easy to identify within the workflow. “Traceability in Jama Connect makes it easier to assess the impact of a proposed change,” says Blundy. “It helps identify all areas we have to modify and then gives us the ability to route the change for review and approval with ease.”

 

3. Simplify the review and approval process.

 

Business analysts were spending a lot of time manually sending information for review and approval. They used TEAMS and email, and devoted a lot of energy to keeping track of due dates and following up with reviewers as deadlines approached.

 

“Jama Connect Review Center is really valuable for our stakeholders,” says Blundy. “They have a single location to see the reviews they are on, when they are due, and if they have been completed.” Versioning is also helpful because it allows users to easily compare versions.

 

Review Center and versioning save time that would have spent searching a variety of sources — TEAMS, chat histories, emails — for feedback or following up with stakeholders if messages were lost or unclear.

 

4. Increase team communication and collaboration.

 

Traditionally, Farm Bureau Insurance communicated via TEAMS, chat, or emails. As mentioned, mining feedback across these mediums was a challenge. Additionally, those one-to-one communications inhibited collaboration. To get buy-in and move forward, individuals had to rally other team members, either in large meetings or supplementary one-to-one conversations.

 

Upon implementing Jama Connect, the team is already experiencing an improvement in communication and collaboration. “The ability for everyone to see all the comments together is extremely helpful,” says Blundy. “Rather than feedback going back and forth through TEAMS, chat, or emails, with Jama Connect, users can reply directly to each other, and everything is in one spot. Communication is getting much better.”

 

WHY JAMA CONNECT WAS THE RIGHT CHOICE

 

Farm Bureau Insurance considered other competitors before deciding on Jama Connect. They created their own set of requirements for what they wanted in a modern RM tool. In addition to the potential of saved time, the team was looking for a platform that had:

 

• Useability

• Traceability

• Central repository for requirements

• Streamlined reviews and approvals

 

After a 30-day trial with Jama Connect Farm Bureau found that all of Jama Connect’s out-of-the-box features really matched up with what they were looking for in a tool.

 

In addition to checking off all their requirements, ultimately, it was Jama Connect’s ease of use that won out. With workflows laid out and customizable templates, they could see the learning curve would be short and teams would be up and running quickly.

 

Currently in a phased rollout, Farm Bureau Insurance is finding that Jama Connect is as easy to use as they thought, with straightforward navigation for all users. To get started, they had trainings with BA teams and stakeholders and used training resources on Jama’s website. As needed, they’ve also benefited from Jama Software’s top-notch support team. “When I had to open a ticket, to have some things reviewed or questions answered, the Jama Software team was amazing, it was a really quick response,” remarked Blundy.“ They were super helpful upon getting back to me and even set up a call when I needed to talk something through.”

 

“When I had to open a ticket, to have some things reviewed or questions answered, the Jama team was amazing, it was a really quick response... They were super helpful upon getting back to me and even set up a call when I needed to talk something through.”

Heidi Blundy

Business and Technical Analyst

Farm Bureau Insurance

 

THE OUTCOME AND THE FUTURE

 

While Farm Bureau Insurance is still new to Jama Connect, they found a solution that meets all their objectives: a single source of requirements truth, enhanced change management and traceability, streamlined reviews and approvals, and improved communication and collaboration. They already see how easy it is to use and are witnessing enhanced communication.

 

They trust that the benefits of an easy-to-use modern requirements management system will help them achieve their goals of increasing speed to market and improving quality of deliverables.

 

“Rather than feedback going back and forth through TEAMS, chat, or emails, with Jama Connect, users can reply directly to each other, and everything is in one spot. Communication is getting much better.”

Heidi Blundy

Business and Technical Analyst

Farm Bureau Insurance

 

ABOUT JAMA SOFTWARE

Jama Software is focused on maximizing innovation success. Numerous firsts for humanity in fields such as Jama Software® is focused on maximizing innovation success in multidisciplinary engineering organizations. Numerous firsts for humanity in fields such as fuel cells, electrification, space, software-defined vehicles, surgical robotics, and more all rely on Jama Connect® requirements management software to minimize the risk of defects, rework, cost overruns, and recalls. Using Jama Connect, engineering organizations can now intelligently manage the development process by leveraging Live Traceability™ across best-of-breed tools to measurably improve outcomes. Our rapidly growing customer base spans the automotive, medical device, life sciences, semiconductor, aerospace & defense, industrial manufacturing, consumer electronics, financial services, and insurance industries.