Leading digital Product innovation in large organizations

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Leading Digital Innovation in Large Organizations: A Perspective from Anthem Israel

Hi, I'm Jenny, a product innovation manager at Anthem Israel, a primary provider of health insurance in the United States. Today, I'm thrilled to share some insights on how our close-knit team in Israel manages digital innovation within a large organization like Anthem, the challenges we face, and the tools we deploy to drive change.

Scaling Digital Transformation for an Organization of Monumental Proportions

To kickstart our discussion, I would like to establish the scale of Anthem for context. Anthem is a significant part of the health insurance landscape in America, ranking as the foremost for-profit managed healthcare company within the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. The size of our organization is equivalent to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest structure. And if you compare our member base–a staggering 100 million members–we're talking about the moon's scale. But, in spite of these scale-related challenges, Anthem has made the strategic decision to undergo a digital transformation aiming to deliver superior digital care to all its members.

Sharing a snapshot of our journey, Anthem Israel was established in June 2019, leveraging Israel's reputation as a global startup hub to drive Anthem's digital innovation. Despite being a 25-member team in the vast Anthem universe, our work has significant implications.

Achieving a Balance between Business and Technology

Given the enormous scale and diversity, one of our key challenges is finding the right business partner and allocating correct funds while tackling technological barriers like software issues. We work with a massive amount of data and health plan variations, but these challenges fuel our motivation to catalyze change.

In the past two years, we have gleaned significant learnings about driving digital change and innovation at Anthem. Here's an example: Last year, our venture with an Israeli startup on remote patient monitoring resulted in substantial saving of time and money for both the insurance company and members. This use case is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we have learned and accomplished.

Leveraging the Product Mindset for Organizational Change: Key Elements

The pivotal aspect of change and innovation within our organization is the product mindset. Product people tap into market trends and value propositions, leading others towards shared goals. In our journey towards digital transformation, we have realized the importance of the following key elements:

  • MVP and Market Needs: We launch Minimal Viable Products (MVPs) only based on the organization's necessities. Using business data, we inform our decisions about what technologies to use and startups to partner with.
  • Data-Driven Decisions: We use metrics, direct communication with users, and predictive models to evaluate our actions. Operating on these data inputs, we make informed decisions.
  • Gaining Champions within the Organization: We network to create partnerships that help us bring solutions to the forefront. Having allies within the organization can assist us in urgent issues and foster deeper relationships across the company.

The Horizon Ahead

To navigate through large organization challenges and drive transformation, our learnings can be encapsulated in three areas: MVP and Market Needs, Data-Driven Decisions, and Gaining Champions in our organization. Most importantly, change must be personal. It requires self-reflection and comprehension of each person's role within the transformation. Creating well-structured systems and well-tailored transformation stories can align individuals with the goals of the transformation. With this approach, even in a large organization like Anthem, each of us can become agents of change.

Thank you for allowing me to share our story of digital innovation and the product mindset at Anthem Israel. Your questions are always welcome. Choose to embrace change, always bear in mind the market needs or organizational needs, and value your role as product managers. Thank you!


Video Transcription

So my name is Jenny, a product innovation manager at Anthem Israel. And I'm super excited to be here today.I will share how our small team at Israel leads digital innovation in this very large organization and how we work through large organization challenges and what tools we use in order to drive the change. And I would like to start the talk today with a short question. You can go to the poll and answer the question to your feeling. How much impact do you have on changes within your organization? So none at all. And the great deal. That's the scale. Yeah. Let, let me see. I will show expose the results. OK. All right. So it seems like most of you uh marked uh A or B. Uh And I would like, I would like to dedicate two minutes to talk about the based organization named the anthem. And um to your feeling, if you feel like you don't have any impact on your organization, then uh I will show you uh how anthem looks like. So M is a provider of health insurance in the United States. It is the largest for profit managed health care company in the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association in the United States. Anthem is ranked 23rd on the for and 33 years ago, they decided to go through a digital transformation and lead digital care delivery to its members.

What you see on the screen is the skyline of Tel Aviv. And of course the background behind me. And the reason is that as part of this transformation anthem, Israel was founded in uh June uh 2019 to work with Israeli start ups because Israel is considered the start up nation to deliver digital innovation within the organization. So I would like to start with the scale of one anthem associate versus the entire organization here in Israel in the Israeli office. We're 25. So let's uh receive a bit of a scale regarding uh the uh the size of this organization. So if we take one an employee and treat it as an ant like one centimeter, then the Anthem organization would be the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which is the largest tallest structure in the world. So imagine the enormous scale between an an and the Burj khalifa and it doesn't end with that. So if we talk about the members with an M 100 million members, we're talking about the moon. OK. So basically, there are many challenges to this large organization, finding the right business partner, the correct located funds and dealing with technological barriers such as software and and on the screen, for example, is a description of health plan out of hundreds of plan variations, the details and the amount of data is enormous and basically where does the end begin the journey to transform the moon?

And I'm very happy to share our insights about what we have learned in the past two years about driving digital change and innovation at Anthem. I would like to start with an example, a use case. Last year we started working with an Israeli start up and for different reasons, names and the device and the features is the basically a remote patient monitoring, a device you send to someone's home. And the features of the device include different exams that could function as a telehealth enhancer. Mean you you do a telehealth visit and basically this enhances your visit, providing the option to use it instead of going to the er so through the process of exploring data and partnering with us. Uh an insurance company, we have realized that the business model needs to change from sales based to visits, visits using the device with one visits uh priced at around $1200 if 11 person uses the device instead of going to the er they save time and money both to the insurance company and to themselves.

So we've created a win win situation using this model. We've expanded the pilot from one K devices that we send to enter the members to 35 K devices in one year, basically by Q one of 22. It is so popular that is it was and Investors Day uh of this year. So it's super impressive. And uh we believe that uh our experience taught us a lot and we have a lot of insights to share. So what did we learn from this pilot and other pilots? We have different projects we run here in Israel. It all comes down to having a product mindset as product, people know how to follow the market needs and trends and understand the value proposition of each product and lead other people towards a common goal. So to measure our work using KPIS, we talk to the users directly to gain and lead a start up to understand its true value value within the organization. As we are the ones who know the organization best, we know where to start and who to talk to in order to drive that change. And this is what makes us product people, the perfect candidates in order to drive change organization.

So there are three channels and main guidelines that I selected here. The first one is MVP and market needs. The second one is data driven decisions and the third one is gaining champions within the organization. Our first guideline is to use mvps and launch pilots only based on the internal organization needs if a great start up arrives. But there is no organizational need for it. For example, if that specific solution is not covered by insurance, it would be practically push it through and gain support. If you are creative enough and believe in this product, you can always find a way or a person that needs it within the organization. But we are always starting with the problem using business data. And in order to drive our decisions and what technologies and which start up to select to work and to run with the pilots, we have to function as the missing puzzle piece in order to fit the need within the organization. When testing the product, we usually use the minimal viable product method uh known as the MVP. Uh We decide what is the minimum that we need in order to start a pilot and be able to showcase that a solution is driving change.

This includes MVP across the board, meaning product operational integration, reduce everything to the minimum necessary in order to show a value. In addition, we also use the minimum number of members or devices to start a pilot at one line of business or population. So for example, I want to test one of the devices. I will select a specific population, for example, within the commercial full in anthem and decide on a smaller amount of devices to send, receive the feedback and then decide if to move forward with this start up and more devices. So basically, we li field measure, learn and creating these pilots and expand as we go, we want to learn every time what we want to test is if the solution brings value to the end user, it could be a provider, a member or an end and partner. But based on their needs, we work super fast, the minimum solution and to go to the market with this solution. Next up, uh we data driven decisions. As product managers, we constantly use data in order to make better decisions and evaluate our work. We use research data. We have at the end, we have the benefit of researching the claims data and having all the the the resources of the amazing data analysts. And so we can review the claims data in order to see which problem is the most painful.

For example, let's go for a heart failure. We study how many members we could impact how many members have this specific uh prognosis. What are their characteristics and could even target the members that would gain the most benefit and have the highest probability of using this solution.

So we use A I and predictive models in order to create better outcomes, for example, predicting an illness and using preventative intervention, right? We use user engagement data, user surveys, user interviews, usability evaluations and daily engagement data to assess our next actions and just a little tip.

If you feel you don't have enough data within your organization, be creative and create your own data. Resources using all product tools uh you can use. And the idea is that you drive your decisions based on the input and the data you receive from the members uh from your predictive models. From the engagement data, take all these inputs and uh drive a decision based on that. We are successfully uh networking across the organization with business and technical teams to create partnerships and friendships that will help us bring our solution to the forefront. And that's our third point gaining champions within the organization. We know that if we need something, someone at late at night, like a support or a case, uh when we have urgent requests because of our super ability to network within the organization, we know we will receive this support and assistance even late at night. For example, when we first started uh as the new kids here in the blog in the office, we reached out uh within anem asking, asking them to give us an education series. Basically, uh they explained to us about what they do within the organization and about their uh their little share of the work within e and ultimately, we gained a lot of relations across e using this channel of them explaining to us what they do within the organization. Yeah.

So I would like to summarize uh our insights. And um basically, I work with the product mindset in order to drive change using this and other wonderful product tools. So again, the first one is MVP and market needs data driven decisions and gaining champions within your organization.

It did for me make the change, personal energy for change emerges from re uh basically reflection of what's needed and why and on what changes mean for each person within the organization using uh intelligently uh structured systems and uh incentives align individuals with the goals of the transfer of the transformation.

A well tailored transformation story helps make individuals understand what must change and why. And it's super important to uh drive that change within the organization. So I would like to thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk to you today. And I'm very happy to participate at women tech uh uh convention. And um basically, you can see uh my, my details on my profile. If you have any questions, you can also type in uh in the chat. And thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to talk in the woman. Tch Let me know if you have any questions. So how to deal with organizational changes is a great, great question. Basically, um we, we want to have this product mindset and work in a lean way. Meaning when there is an an organizational change, we want to see how this change impacts our environment, our members ourselves and drive decisions using these changes. Basically, we, we know how the change impacts us and we know how to basically uh take our work as product and change according to the uh impact we have of the organizational change versus continuing implementing products. Yes. So we always need to follow the market. For example, COVID is a great example of a great and not only within the organization but within the world. So the market needs change.

People need to be at home more go to the er for example, so we produce more R PM devices or telehealth solutions in order for them to do the entire visit or use and consume care from home instead of going to a medical clinic uh since it's not safe. So basically, we always need to follow the market and drive changes based on the market needs or the organizational needs. That's the the the most important part of the product uh manager's work. Great, great questions. Thank you. Let me just have a look at the Q and A. Yeah, it's OK. Well, thank you very much for joining me. Uh I I invite you to contact me personally if you want and ask more questions about anem and the product management in general. And uh thank you very much.