IFRS 17

Sales Strategy

Sales Strategy
Plan
 Early Account Planning is crucial, as most customers have already initiated their IFRS 17 projects,
performed some pre-studies and are now in the process of defining an implementation strategy and
software vendor selection;
 For those customers where an account planning session has not yet been performed, Regional Presales
should initiate enablement sessions for Sales Managers and Account Executives ASAP. Sales and Presales
identify the target accounts together and agree on responsibilities with regard to setting up meetings.
 A draft for enablement presentation can be found here: Link

Outcomes of the planning phase:

 Target customer list, including the status per customer, next steps, customer contacts, partners/auditors;
 List of identified tasks and owners of these tasks, Account Executives are responsible for registering tasks
in Revegy.

Prepare
IFRS 17 is mandatory for all insurers that are listed on the capital markets. The question is not if these insurers
will implement IFRS 17, but when and how. The qualification and, therefore, the preparation phase very much
depends on the status of the customer and the partner/auditor situation. For details see the “Qualification
Criteria” asset which includes Qualification Questions.

Based on the outcome of the initial qualification, Presales prepare the presentation for the first meeting. The
purpose of this presentation should be to position SAS as:
 as a proven provider (lots of experience around the topic of GAAP compliance);
 with a solid customer base (IRM is used for several regulatory purposes at many insurers) where first big
insurers decided for the SAS IFRS 17 solution in Q4 2017);
 a strong, complimentary solution that covers gaps in the existing system landscape whilst enabling
customers to protect their investment in actuarial tools and finance systems;
 is quick to implement as demonstrated in several IRM projects and IFRS 17 pilots.

Several examples for a first customer presentation can be found here.

Provoke
Meet the client, qualify the current status / get confirmation on your pre-qualification:
 Identify their current IFRS 17 strategy with focus on:
– Pain(s);
– Client stakeholders and decision makers;
– Budget;
– Selection and buying process;
 Position SAS as a dominant market player for IFRS 17, using the prepared material.

After the meeting, qualify the opportunity and evaluate next steps between Presales and Sales.

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Prove

Worth knowing
Some competitors like FIS and Moody’s strongly focus on extending/enhancing the actuarial tools. This
approach is only feasible for customers with a small number of actuarial tools. Otherwise they would have to
implement the IFRS 17 valuation functions in several actuarial tools which is a high effort and cost for
implementation and maintenance.

Some competitors like SAP are strong on the finance side. The finance piece of IFRS 17 is only the very last
mile of the entire project. Actuarial functions play a very important role in the overall context.

SAS is one of the few players that bridges the existing gaps between actuarial and finance tools. It’s a
centralized solution that only requires a single central implementation and maintenance (compared to other
actuarial tools).

Finance people can configure the SAS solution to meet their needs (for posting) and identify issues even
before results are posted into the General Ledger (unlike some other finance tools).

By covering both worlds (actuarial and finance), SAS can provide a much better audit trail than other
solutions that focus only on one.

The Prove stage can take many forms and the format + collaterals used will heavily rely on the client’s needs
at this point in their buying process. In this step, the client is typically comparing vendors, so it is important to
know who the competition is (see the “Competitive Research” asset) and generally try to keep close with the
client contact(s) to ensure that their issues are understood and addressed.

SAS for IFRS 17 - Why insurance companies choose SAS is a recording where Marco Heidelberger share
valuable experience from multiple sales processes in NEMEA.

In general, Presales is responsible for performing the tasks in the Prove stage – using Sales as a sparring
partner to determine the best use of resources to achieve success.

Meet the client and prove how SAS can provide value for their IFRS 17 project:
 Some very relevant points are mentioned in the “Worth knowing” and in the “Prepare” section above.
 Typically, this meeting will cover a larger group of stakeholders and should go deeper into functionality
than the first meeting.
 It is very important to build the bridge between finance and actuaries. Both sides often have a very
different approach/experience/expectation. They must realize that SAS can support both sides.
 It is also important that the presentation is not generic, but includes individual customer topics, e.g. how
we integrate into their existing system landscape, how existing SAS know-how can be re-used, etc. It is the
same slide deck as proposed for the first meeting, enriched with more detailed information (appendices)
compared to the first meeting

Demonstration
At this stage (if this didn’t happen at the first meeting), SAS should perform a demonstration of its IFRS 17
solution and explain how the solution addresses the specific requirements of the key target audiences. The

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RQS35 RACE Image covers a full IFRS 17 demo with end-to-end process from a SAS perspective with many
samples. The demo script can be found here.

Request for Information (RFI)/Request for Proposal (RFP):

See the documents here, which have been used for several RFIs and RFPs:
 Executive Summary
 Full RFP Response

The team to respond to the RFI/RFP would typically represent at least:

 Account Executive – Exec summary and proposal;
 (Risk) Presales – Solution description and evaluation/validation in relation to client requirements;
 IT Architects – Solution architecture, sizing, installation;
 PSD – Implementation estimates, resources, project plan; This might include partners.

References
At the time of writing this document (Q2 2018) there are no public references yet. But there are several
comprehensive pilot projects delivered and even a few successful sales. If appropriate (check with the risk
team), communication of the insurers that have already performed a pilot/PoC or those that have decided for
the SAS IFRS 17 solution can provide strong re-assurance to prospects. Be sure to validate exactly what the
customer needs to get out of a reference call. Sometimes access to one or more IRM related references can be
the best alternative, even if used for Solvency II or even IFRS 9.

Proof of Concept/ Proof of Value

PoC/ PoVs should be avoided if at all possible. We should try to remain focussed on proving through detailed
demonstrations, and there will be an increasing number of demonstrable use cases that have already been
developed for other customers and added to the SAS demonstration.

If it cannot be avoided, the PoC/PoV should be very focused and streamlined: The SAS IFRS 17 solution has a
data model that can be “relatively easily” populated with input data. All subsequent steps, up to the results
layer, are highly automated, which allows us to present results to the customer in an efficient way. In a well-
structured PoC/PoV, SAS could prove that we are far more agile than some of our competitors (e.g. SAP).

As a PoC/PoV it is strongly recommended to offer a “customized demo” rather than a full PoC/PoV. The risk of
misunderstandings with the client, data quality issues, poor alignment of expectations and/or installation
challenges is high. Wüstenrot & Württembergische is (so far) a good example for a customized demo:
 Work out a (short!) list of use cases with the client – what should be proved and what are the specific
terms that identify a successful outcome of a given use case. Be sure to make the outcomes measurable
and concrete.;
 Test if you can get the client to pay for the PoC/PoV exercise
 Be sure to document very specifically what needs to be proved in this exercise, with clear success criteria
and get a formal agreement with the client that, if the PoC/PoV is successful, it should lead directly to
contract negotiations.

Propose
Primarily driven by Sales, but be sure to involve Presales who at this stage should have a strong feeling of the
client’s requirements and, not least, what is need-to-have vs nice-to-have.

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It is important to choose the right delivery team and approach (see the “Delivery Approach” and “Partner
Information” assets). This could be internal PSD or a partner, or a combination of both. The choice depends on
strengths of available PSD resources and partner.

Partners involved in advising the client in the early stage of the client program could speed up decision and
implementation, and increase acceptance of the solution within the organisation.

Typically, we see all the big4 auditors in various customer situations. All of them have already been in (deep)
conversations regarding the SAS IFRS 17 solution (see “Partner Information” asset). An overview of the current
engagement with partners can be obtained from your Risk team.

Provide
For an implementation performed by PSD, see the “Delivery Approach” and “Reference Architecture” assets
for more details on our approach.

To increase the probability of a successful project, it will make good sense to involve Presales in the start-up of
the project – kick off, scoping etc. – to ensure that the client’s identified needs are also reflected in the
scoping.

Protect
Once the implementation project is over, the SAS Engagement Management has a strong responsibility to
ensure that the customer is happy and is experiencing satisfactory progress. The Engagement Manager should
try to establish quarterly follow up meetings with the customer. It makes good sense to involve Presales in
these meeting – partly because Presales should know what expectations the customer had before they bought
the solution and can hence lead a qualified discussion around that, and partly because there may be derived
needs or other buying signals from the customer.

Use the “Selling Additional Value” asset to identify opportunities to leverage the SAS IRM platform to address
additional Value Propositions.

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