systems, improved regulatory compliance and bringing new managed healthcare products to market – the latter proving especially taxing in today’s troubled economy. “You need to have a cadre of business people who have been steeped in project management skills, education and methodologies,” she says.

Software systems certainly help. Every single project underway at Horizon BCBSNJ, whether for a new product or a new IT system, is managed and monitored though a project- and portfolio-management system from Business Engine Inc. of San Francisco, Calif., USA, which links to Microsoft Project. “It’s a single repository for everything: We have more than 200 projects in there right now,” Miller says. “Right at the very top of the organization, we’ll track the most important of those – the 35 or so that are most critical to our future.”

New products, intended for new markets – and offering new and different mixes of benefits, co-payments and optional extras – are prime candidates for that “most important” list. But management-through-software isn’t the complete answer: Horizon BCBSNJ also imposes some hard-noted gating rules, Miller says. “With large projects, we don’t give people the whole budget, but just a fraction of it, and say: ‘Go out and develop a fully-documented project plan and feasibility study.’ Then, when we have that, we give them some more.”

Rough Waters
Although its products aren’t physical ones that you can pick up at the grocery or hardware store, Horizon BCBSNJ neatly encapsulates many of the trials and tribulations of bringing a new product to market. Business that don’t innovate don’t survive. But innovation on its own isn’t the whole story. New products must be brought to market in a timely manner, meet a genuine marketplace need and a

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