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Speaking with co-host Alex Whitlock, Back reframed innovation as “doing something better than before”, urging brokers to think like designers of their businesses rather than operators inside them.
“I think for me, innovation, in a nutshell, would probably be thinking more like a designer rather than just a doer,” Back said.
“This is about switching your business owner mindset on.”
Back and Whitlock’s discussion centred on how the industry has shifted over the past decade, from paper-based processes and face-to-face meetings to digital verification of identity, e-signatures and remote appointments.
While those advances have delivered efficiencies, Back suggested the real opportunity lies in reimagining the structure of a broking business at a granular level.
Five key innovation zones
Back outlined five areas where brokers should focus their innovation efforts: customer experience, process and productivity, marketing, people and technology.
Back cautioned against equating innovation purely with tech.
“I think innovation isn’t just about apps and AI. What it’s really about in my mind is doing something better than before,” he said.
“When we think about innovation, I think we need fresh thinking. We still need to be solving real problems, so we don’t get caught up with a lot of ‘shiny bubble syndrome’.
“We’ve got to be careful that we don’t just think tech’s going to solve everything.”
Instead, Back encouraged brokers to look at their current systems and habits and see whether they genuinely improve client and team experiences, or just digitise old habits.
He said: “Because productivity is obviously volume and speed, but efficiency is how well you do the things you’ve got to do to get where you want to go.
“I think about the brokers that I work with, and the ones that are doing this the best are the ones that are actually in their business looking for the weak points, looking for the stress points, looking for the areas in their business where the customer service can be affected in a negative way.
"And they’re looking to pull those parts of the business apart, rebuild them back together, using processes and systems that work for both the customer and the brokerage.”
Back also talked about using tech to move from “multi-channel” to “omnichannel”
“Omnichannel means that all of your channels are working in a synchronous way,” Back said.
“What do your social portals look like? What do your DMs, your SMS, your emails, your video or your physical presence look like? And how do we make sure they’re all synced so the customer is getting a similar experience?”
Barriers to innovation
Whitlock and Back both agreed that a big barrier to innovation in the broking industry was fear of failure, as well as legacy processes and the belief that only “big ideas” matter.
“What probably stops innovation in our industry is a fear of failure,” Back said.
“None of us want to fail. But there’s the old saying of ‘fail and fail fast’. It’s not about wasting time, it’s about learning. And the more we learn, the more calluses we can build up, the more resilient we’ll be as we go through this journey as business owners.”
Innovations, Back said, didn’t have to be massive changes.
“Sometimes we think as business owners that there’s a belief that only the big ideas matter and they don’t.
“Sometimes it’s just small things; how we answer the phone or sign off on an email to embedding an instructional video when you’re telling the client what to expect as they read that document. Those little one percenters can make such a big difference.”
Whitlock added that while it was good for businesses to experiment and sometimes fail, it was also crucial that businesses made decisions that were conscious of their desired outcomes.
“I do agree that if you’re going to fail, fail fast. But I think if one of the problems is that businesses have a crack at doing stuff without properly considering what outcomes they’re looking for,” he said.
“Social media is an obvious one. There are many other things being distracted by the latest fads and trends, having a go and having a half-finished product or a project – you do not want to take a deductive leap into an area where there is a big fail. There is a huge psychological cost to the business.
“This is all within the framework of innovation. So I think it’s really important to have a measured consideration about where to change and adapt.”
[Related: Brokers urged to rethink SME strategy]