Building an evaluation framework, grounded in real user needs, to select a claims system that could grow with the business.
Our existing claims system was approaching the end of its vendor contract, and the department had outgrown what the platform could support.
The real challenge wasn't picking a vendor off a feature list. It was making sure the decision reflected the actual, often role-specific needs of the people who'd use the system every day.
I built the framework from the ground up: use cases to score every vendor demo against, focus groups to surface what teams actually needed, and hands on sandbox sessions to test it in practice.
After each vendor's demo and sandbox sessions, I sent a feedback survey immediately, before moving on to the next vendor. Keeping that sequence tight meant impressions stayed uncontaminated by comparison.
Analyzed in Excel, the results surfaced patterns leadership hadn't fully anticipated.
I sat in on multi day onsite demos with each finalist vendor, coordinating focus sessions grouped by role during each visit.
Throughout, I served as the primary liaison between testers, vendor teams, and leadership, fielding questions in both directions and keeping the evaluation moving.
The department selected a new claims system based on this evaluation. Structured use cases, direct user feedback, and hands on testing meant the decision reflected what people actually needed day to day.
The process surfaced considerations leadership hadn't originally scoped, and shaped the final decision at every stage.