Reimagine Portico: Your Future, Your Way
What if benefits weren't just protection—but a path to purpose?
For decades, Portico has served with unwavering trust, genuine care, and deep faith. We've been there for our members in moments of uncertainty, providing stability and peace of mind. But the world around us is shifting—fast. The expectations of those we serve are evolving. The landscape of benefits is being rewritten by new players, new technologies, and fundamentally new ways of thinking about well-being, work, and community.
Together, we have an extraordinary opportunity to explore how Portico can evolve from being "just benefits" to becoming something far more meaningful: a partner in values-centered belonging, meaningful choice, and authentic purpose. This journey isn't about abandoning who we are—it's about honoring our mission while embracing the courage to grow.
Top 10 Impactful Quotes
“Right now, we rely on people to execute processes… we need systematic processes with recyclability.”
“Portico was built to serve one known, rigid, unchanging customer: the church organization.”
“We used what we had and served them—now we have to break that down and rebuild it.”
“We have people with great ideas, but no empowerment to take them to the next step.”
“People say, ‘Make it better,’ but we don’t give them the 5 extra cycles to actually do it.”
“If we doubled membership today, I don’t think our operations could scale to meet it.”
“There’s a difference between a continuous improvement mindset and the operational conditions to support it.”
“We don’t actually know our error rate. Is it at benchmark? Should it be?”
“We need a model that lets us be opportunistic and scalable—so we don’t win one customer and flame out.”
“Our go-to-market strategy needs to move—otherwise we’ll default back to our current state.”
New Capability Architecture: Portico as a Product Organization
Operating Model Shift:
“To define the capability architecture, you've got to define what kind of organization you are… and we determined we are and want to be a product organization.”
Key Principles of This Architecture
Verticalized Teams with Dedicated KPIs
“Each team should have its own dedicated KPIs that align with its goals (retention vs. innovation).”
Traditional focuses on NPS, retention.
Flex balances scale and care.
New/New prioritizes margin, logo growth, and velocity.
Horizontal Services Power All Verticals
OSS (Shared Ops), Technology, Quality & Enablement, and Finance serve all three.
Example: “We talked about having an automation group that goes across these groups to make them more fluid.”
Clear Separation of Capabilities
Different go-to-market motions per vertical.
Different investment models and tech needs (e.g., “Selling Portico as SaaS vs. servicing pastors” requires distinct tooling and people).
Ecosystem Readiness
“We need a model that lets us be opportunistic and scalable… so we don’t win one and flame out.”
This model supports Portico’s future state: from legacy to flex to new ventures and products.
Portico Labs – Capability Architecture & Org Model Evolution
1
From Legacy to Product-Led Organization
Portico is evolving into a product-led organization. Teams are beginning to orient themselves around distinct product lines — Traditional, Flex, and New/New/New — each with specific KPIs and operational needs. These verticals are supported by horizontal services (e.g., OSS, automation, compliance) that cut across the enterprise.
2
Clarifying Friction & Accountability
A key insight from the session: “All org design is deciding where to put the friction.” Portico’s current structure places friction between delivery teams and their internal customers. This has resulted in predictable issues: scope delivered without user testing, overloaded resources, and defensive decision-making. New models aim to reduce this friction with vertical-aligned product teams and empowered product ownership roles.
3
Operational Maturity Gaps
The organization excels at delivery—sometimes at the cost of outcomes. Teams hit deadlines but without user validation or post-launch refinement. There’s limited systematized feedback, and capacity issues prevent continuous improvement. A mindset shift is underway: deliver less, test more, align more.
4
Empowerment & Structure
Emerging model includes clearly defined roles like Product Owner and Business Analyst. BAs drive system requirements, POs ensure value alignment and delivery. Some areas (e.g., OSS, automation) are ripe for vertical integration or cross-functional redeployment.