Question

(1)If you are a Senior VP at a Health Insurance company what is the most significant distinctive organizational capability for the company?

(2) What are the specific challenges of developing and delivering it on a regular basis in the marketplace?

Remember that to be considered a distinctive capability, it must have three (3) characteristics (How does it contribute to superior custome value ? Can it be used in a variety of ways? What makes it difficule for competitors to imitate what is offered?).

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Be sure to include specific examples to support their answers. Your post should be approximately 4-5 concise, well-written paragraphs. Be sure to address all the items listed above, provide concrete examples

Answer 1

Distinct organizational capability:

For an organization which is in Insurance business the most critical and distinct organizational capability should be unique and must be coming from the activities which the company can do well and that will become difficult for the competitors to imitate. Organizational capability must be able to differentiate it in market from other competitors.

For an insurance industry organization, the most formidable organizational capability is as follows:

a.       Large number of subscriber /customer base

b.      High claim settlement ratio

c.       High level of compliance with regulatory authorities

Challenges in delivering these organizational capabilities:

The above stated capability is not so easy to achieve, the prime requirement of large subscriber base can be gained only after many years of consistent performance in terms of claim settlement ratio, which is declared in public and helps in creating an image in market for the organization. A high claim settlement ratio is the best differentiating factor for insurance organizations. Many of the time it become difficult to maintain the compliance or regulation requirement and it often put pressure on the resource utilization. Hence, we can say that it is very difficult to attain such capability, but once attained it will create huge differentiation in market with respect to the competitors.

How these capabilities are delivering the superior value.

These capability enables the organization to sustain the performance like, high level of customer satisfaction by easy and smooth claim settlement which further builds the trust of the customers on the organization, and in insurance industry trust is something which can give better value to the customers even if the policies are priced at premium than competition. Hence, it also provides the cushion for premium pricing.

How does this difficult for competitors to imitate?

If an insurance organization attain such a mass and trust of customers by consistent delivery of the greater value to the customers, it will be very difficult for the competitors to imitate such organizational capability.