A New Paradigm in Retirement Solution Platforms: Leveraging Data Governance to Build AI-Ready Data Products

Abstract

Over the last three decades, multiple generation-defining retirement crises have led to increased scrutiny of the retirement solutions available to American workers. Unlike the defined benefits provided by the previous generation’s employer–employee relationship, today’s employer–employee relationship typically provides more flexible employer-provided defined contribution plans. However, a lack of employee/retiree engagement, combined with a fragmented and inefficient in-plan asset accumulation and out-of-plan decumulation ecosystem, raises significant risks for employers and employees alike. The pace of adaptive change has accelerated. The need for innovation has been magnified, fueled by the timely confluence of a broadening landscape, expanding digital technologies, and increased regulatory oversight. The resulting need to innovate has led many platform strategists to focus on the identification, curation, and delivery of transformative ecosystem services enabled by the wise use of authoritative data craftsmanship.

In this paper, we expand on this work, integrating our software development lifecycle practice with a data product lifecycle perspective in highlighting the synergies that can be gained by recognizing the seamless interdependencies between services and data enablers. Our work offers a data ecosystem services value proposition framework—one that recognizes the operational servitization transition as well as the symbiotic and catalytic roles that data-driven services and services-driven data play in shaping the digital ecosystem strategies of individual platform participants. In crafting this framework, we weave together two strands of literature: one that has focused on the service and platform marketization of traditional product-firm relationships and one that has focused on the datafication of product-service relationships, enabling smart digitally augmented products and related product families.