FieldGlass never positioned on a low price basis.

We were probably never the lowest price provider.

We were probably always in the top half,

maybe sometimes even one of the more premium priced offering.

But again, that's where we didn't want to get caught up in a feature war.

We would want to sell on the basis of the overall company,

including the platform and the people and the community that you're buying into.

So really important of the FieldGlass value proposition over time became when

you become a fields ask customer, you're not just getting a VMS, you're

joining this ecosystem of all these other FieldGlass customers which are your peers,

they're your peers in the world.

You're joining a group of other Global 2000 companies and

you're going to learn much more from them, and you're going to learn a lot from

us as we kind of create these community vehicles to bring everyone together.

There were always a few situations where we got into a feature type of war.

But I think the nature of what we did, and

the nature of our platforms, the comprehensiveness of it,

the duration of the sale, the stickiness of our platform once it was implemented,

we generally avoided trying to get into feature wars.

So we would try not to sell specific features or

sell against someone else's lack of a feature.

We would really try to position ourselves on kind of an overall offering and

say that, overall, even if we're lacking in a specific feature,

overall, our functionality is going to be superior and, over time,

our commitment to getting there is going to serve you as the customer.

So, it was important but we try not to make it the primary part of our sale.

We try not to do just a product sale.

We try to make sure that product was very much a part of it.

Ultimately they were buying a product, but at the end of the day,

if we compete on features, it would've just been much, much more.

Because someone is always going to have some better feature and some bell or

whistle than us and we're always going to have a bunch of better bells and

whistles than someone else.

So that kind of war,

that kind of sale process is just like it's almost a flip of the coin.

It just depends on what our product happens to be and

what happens to be important to people.

So, I think for us being able to sell on an overall commitment and say that,

look, you're really buying into FieldGlass as a company with a platform,

with a ecosystem that we bring to the table, our knowledge.

That's really what you're buying and

our commitment to continue evolving this product.

>> You certainly don't want to be in the undifferentiated middle.

And so we've taken the view, in terms of competitive advantage,

that, yeah, we want to be efficient, but we'll never be more efficient than Geico.

We'll never be more efficient than Geico.

Their cost structure is something to be in awe of.

And in terms of product innovation,

we'll probably not be as innovative in product as some

of the newer companies that are coming online inside this space.

So we're in the service space, and we're also in the value add space.

So really, when it comes down to it,

Country has at its disposal about every product that a client will need for

financial security, all the way from taking care of their home and

auto, taking care of their life needs in terms of any life events,

all the way to helping them plan and execute a retirement.

And so when we come to insurance, it's a price play now, and Geico,

Progressive, State Farm, they've all done a great job of making it a price play.

We can save you 15% in 15 minutes.

We can save you more in a shorter period of time.

Really kind of a race to the bottom.

And so what we try to do is,

is ensure that we hit our target market with the value that they need.

And so our target market quite simply is our households that have incomes-

that are middle income households, that have assets to protect but

also have income that they need to secure for the future.

So in all that, our value add is advice.

>> We're definitely focused on more differentiation

across different dimensions.

One is across transparency and

clarity of product, one is across ease of use, real time in nature.

One is across service and customer orientation.

One's across regulatory environment and scheme.

So we're never going to be the cheapest alternative that someone can find, but

we're going to provide great value and we're going to be super transparent.

So if somebody's never not happy with our service,

they can go and find that other service.

But we're going to try to provide so much value to the relationship and build so

much brand value with the customer, and hopefully that's our differentiation.

I think the challenge on the cost side always has to do with the fact that

not being a bank.

Banks just have a substantial cost advantage

due to the fact that their cost of capital is virtually zero in today's environment.

And so, if banks really wanted to play, they could probably win,

just on a pure cost perspective at least for some subset of customers.

>> We've probably been guilty of trying to be many things.

We're in commercial, we're in agricultural insurance, we do all kinds of products and

we've come to the conclusion that some things we shouldn't do for ourselves, so.

So some things we actually broker.

We sell products,

our financial representatives sell products we don't manufacture,

but how do you keep from weaving around because there is a call for price, right?

We're in a price-driven society for maybe entry into some products,

and there's a call out there.

Can we be efficient enough to be competitive?

But we never say we'll be the lowest cost.

We'll be close.

We expect our financial representatives and

their advice to be able to take us the rest of the way.

There's a challenge though of trying to be low cost, innovative and

have great service.

And to me, you'll end up in the undifferentiated middle.

If people can't say why they choose you, then they won't know why they're staying.

So, we go all the way to, can we have the highest levels of satisfaction?

And we do.

In terms of claims like JD Powers.

We're always up there in the very top with JD Powers,

on claims, auto, home, etc., we're always up there very high,

because of the fact is personalized service and a commitment.

But there is a tendency to want to wander away from that,

and to try do do more than that.

And I think you can do one thing world class, we try to do two things,

to do all three together you probably have to be Apple to do all three.

>> So overall value proposition of FieldGlass broke

down into very specific pockets of compliance,

quality, cost savings, and cycle time.

And so, different industries responded to different aspects of that messaging

depending on, really, what was most important to them.

So if you looked at before 2008, if you looked at the financial services firms,

and they were making huge margins, they didn't really care about cost savings.

They cared mostly about cycle time because for them being first to market or

being able to get something done faster was the most important thing to them.

So, they didn't care about savings.

>> And they were willing to pay a premium for that?

>> Absolutely.

They were willing to pay a premium both in the resources and

also the platform that could best, in their mind, deliver the resources.

If you looked at, let's say, natural gas, or

if you looked at gas, oil and gas industry or if you looked at the mining industry,

they cared entirely about safety and compliance.

So again, they were not really rate sensitive, and

they weren't really even cycle time sensitive.

They just wanted to make sure that compliance

was done because safety was the most important thing to them because lives were

at risk if things weren't done correctly.

And so every industry kind of had its own nuance.

Executive Expertise: Strategic Positioning

Business Strategy

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