BUPA Australia and New Zealand brochure – February 2019 by Business Review Asia

Improving lives through digital transformation

Technology transformation at Bupa is improving lives in Australia and New Zealand WRIT TEN BY

OLIVIA MINNOCK PRODUCED BY

MIK E SADR

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Sami Yalavac, CIO at Bupa Australia and New Zealand, explains how technology can be used to improve health and lifestyle alongside operational efficiency

ore than just a health insurer, Bupa cares for its clients’ health and wellbeing across many aspects, from dental

and lifestyle to aged care, and most importantly providing funding at vital moments. The company maintains a strong commitment to connecting 04

customers with affordable and accessible care, not least across the ANZ region which makes up almost half of the company’s global business. This commitment rings true with Sami Yalavac, CIO at Bupa Australia & New Zealand, who drives the organisation’s technology transformation journey with a noble goal in mind. “It’s a great organisation with a great purpose – a day at work means you are helping people live longer, healthier and happier lives,” he enthuses, adding that the people involved in this mission make Bupa what it is. “There’s a really friendly, collaborative, supportive culture from the top down.” Indeed, of the 78,000 staff employed globally by Bupa, around 22,000 are based in ANZ. Despite making up approximately 45% of the company’s revenue, Bupa only entered the

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WHAT CLOUD-BASED IDENTITY MEANS FOR AUSTRALIAN HEALTHCARE

Australia: +61 283104484 www.okta.com

Healthcare in Australia has traditionally lagged behind most other industries in terms of technology adoption. Many hospitals, GP practices and other organisations still rely on paper records, handwritten notes, siloed data stores and IT systems, and even film-based radiology images. Information sharing across providers can be inefficient and data portability is rare. It’s not unusual to see patients in hospitals clutching paper cards with their personal treatment details, while communication, collaboration and coordination of care processes are all challenging. However, things are beginning to change for the better and digital transformation is increasingly at the centre of government efforts to cut costs and boost efficiencies while improving the delivery of key services. My Health Record, for example, is a crucial first step in centralising and digitising patient records, to ensure a better service across healthcare providers. Better use of technology in Australian healthcare would not only give patients more control over their health and well-being, but could also reduce the administrative burden for care professionals, as well as support the research and development of new medicines and treatments.

HEALTHCARE GOES DIGITAL In the rush to streamline processes and empower patients by migrating to cloud and app-based systems, identity and access management (IAM) has become vitally important. Gartner Research VP and industry expert, Barry Runyon, believes the growing infrastructure, system and support requirements of healthcare organisations (HCOs), alongside increasingly tight budgets and staffing challenges, are driving them towards greater cloud adoption. Cloud services are already being used in some cases to support content management, medical record systems, portals and clinical collaboration. Gartner’s Forecast Overview: Healthcare Provider Market, Worldwide, 2018 predicts this shift to the cloud, stating that “healthcare systems have been sceptical about the adoption of cloud, but cost pressures and the need to reduce capital expenditure have been changing that mindset. After enduring several high-profile breaches and realizing the maturity of various cloud providers (both in expertise and scalability), healthcare systems are finally less sceptical than they used to be about the cloud. Growth of as-a-service solutions will continue rapidly in several areas, such as hosting, storage, security, networking and disaster recovery.”*

patient data and IT systems. Data released this year by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) revealed that the healthcare sector was the most targeted by hackers, with nearly a sixth of all data breaches affecting a healthcare business. Identity as a Service (IDaaS) is the most reliable choice to ensure HCOs can leverage the transformative benefits of new digital platforms whilst staying safe, secure and compliant.

ENTER CLOUD-BASED IDENTITY Australia’s HCOs need a way to accelerate access to patient data while minimising password management problems. They need strong, multi-factor authentication (MFA) to negate the risk of phishing and password stealing/ cracking/guessing attacks. And they need to do all of this to stay compliant with current regulations. Doing so in a userfriendly way and with a dwindling budget is increasingly challenging. This is where single sign-on (SSO) can help, but organizations should be aware that legacy IAM tools are fast becoming obsolete. The truth is that on-premises IAM tools are a poor fit for the kind of modern, cloud and app-based systems HCOs are increasingly adopting. They’re costly, time consuming to integrate and are inflexible, requiring significant ongoing maintenance and upgrade work every time a new app is added. To manage an environment as complex as typical hospital, for example, you need to outsource IAM to the experts. IDaaS is the answer: securing access at the cloud app layer rather than the perimeter and providing granular visibility into all apps, users and devices from a single interface. It’s also highly scalable — new apps and users can be added and managed with ease — it’s reliable, easy to set-up, and there’s no unnecessary downtime. Cloud-based SSO enables approved doctors, nurses and others to access any cloud services with just one username, one password and one session. This helps improve productivity by reducing the time spent logging into each application; reduces costly helpdesk password reset requests; and improves account security as users are less inclined to use the same simple password for all apps. It becomes even more powerful when backed with MFA for extra account security, which means attackers can’t guess, steal or crack log-ins in any meaningful way. For HCOs currently exploring modernisation projects, IDaaS can provide a foundation for a secure transition.

However, HCOs are a major target for hackers, and even mistakes by employees can expose highly sensitive

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CLICK TO WATCH : ‘THE FUTURE OF HEALTHCARE’ 08 Australian market around 16 years

Dental, and eventually won some

ago having partnered with HBA, which

government tenders,” adds Yalavac.

Yalavac describes as “a really success-

Throughout this growth and

ful business with a successful leadership

development, technology has moved

team”. A healthy national economy and

to the fore as a key driver and is now

a relatively young population open to

central to the business, with Yalavac

new developments assisted Bupa’s

citing that 90% of funding and internal

entrance into the Australian market,

investment within the business goes

with the organisation having gone from

toward technology transformation

strength to strength over the last 12

programs. “It’s an additional enabler

years From health insurance, new

for business survival and business

business areas were explored

growth,” says Yalavac, as customers

including health coaching and

increasingly look to access services

telehealth. “We then entered the Aged

via digital platforms. In addition, the

Care market, moving on to Optical,

fragmented nature of healthcare in

Australia (with separate services across dental, optical, aged care and other areas) makes technology vital. “Technology is the glue that holds pieces together, making it easy to access information, get guidance and do transactions.”

DATA ACROSS SECTORS Across the many elements of Bupa’s business and healthcare in Australia and New Zealand more widely, Yalavac is keen to emphasise that data is key. From providing funding to introducing technology into people’s lives to monitor

“Technology is the glue that holds pieces together, making it easy to access information, get guidance and do transactions” — Sami Yalavac, CIO, Bupa ANZ

their health and lifestyle, capturing real-time data can be vital in providing the insights Bupa and its clients need. “Through their demographics and real-time abilities, we can provide health coaching and advice,” he explains. “As data collection increases, we can even detect some of the events happening in the body to proactively warn people to see a specialist or access a test. Data is your fuel,” he adds. “You might have a brilliant car with a great engine, but without fuel you can’t go anywhere.” As well as using data to improve the health and wellbeing of Bupa customers, Yalavac is also using data and insights to improve the colleague w w w.bupa . com . a u

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Digital transformation: Do you have the right strategy? For many organisations, digital innovation is focused on the customer experience. Most companies understand that to become future-ready, to gain competitive advantage, they need to build trust and loyalty through experiences that delight their customers. Omnichannel strategies, hyper-personalisation and innovative products and services are all part of this new customer experience. But that’s only part of the equation. At its core, digital transformation is business transformation, and that makes it a people and organisational issue. Transforming the employee experience is just as important as transforming the customer experience. A stellar employee experience attracts talent and boosts workforce engagement, productivity and retention — which directly improves a company’s financial performance. Such companies out perform the S&P 500 by 122% and are 21% more profitable than companies with poor employee engagement. It’s all about the human impact. Fortunately, companies don’t have to start from scratch with employee experience. They already have a valuable tool at their disposal: the playbook they’ve used to enhance customer experience. By applying purpose driven, human-centred and customer-centric principles to the employee experience and internal business processes, companies create sustainable business value through increased cost efficiency, productivity and growth.

Ultimately, employee experience drives customer experience. For example, Bupa, one of the world’s leading health companies, recognised that it needed a transformation to achieve dual business outcomes: be an effective champion for customers, and enable and inspire its people. Avanade Advisory supported Bupa’s transformation across multiple domains to accelerate its journey toward a more digital business. Avanade supported Bupa’s customer experience and personalisation program to deliver the right message to the right members at the right time through the right channel. Avanade also helped Bupa set future-ready enterprise architectures and define key digital building blocks including cloud foundations, integration fabric and modern engineering disciplines. In partnership with Avanade Advisory, Bupa also transformed its information services operating model and ways of working to better-equip its people to be effective champions for customers, embrace agile disciplines and collaborate seamlessly across the business through cross-functional teams. Digital transformation requires a careful balance of investment in customer- and employee-focused innovations. Avanade Advisory can help you develop practical strategies to make your digital transformation easier and accelerate business outcomes. LEARN MORE

AVA N A DE

Partnering for transformation

Avanade has been a key partner throughout Bupa’s technology transformation. Bupa’s goal to be an effective champion for its customers and provide outstanding experiences is strongly supported by Avanade. Bupa engaged the consulting and services company to help develop a strategy that would deliver personalised customer experiences, ensuring high-quality clinical outcomes and value for money. As Bupa continues to focus on customer experience, this is driven by providing employees with that same positive experience. As such, Avanade has enabled Bupa to transform its workplace, enabling and inspiring its staff to best serve end users. Yalavac’s strong vision to develop Bupa’s business model involves bringing disciplines like marketing, sales, service and production closer to customers – and a digital innovation partner like Avanade is instrumental in this transformation.

experience of the IT function. Over his three years as CIO the colleague NPS (Net Promoter Score) has improved from -16 to +30 in one year, reaching +20 in the second year and now standing at +30. As technology disrupts every industry and the lines between sectors become increasingly blurred, Yalavac has improved the customer experience with the clear understanding it’s not his

own sector he is competing with. “Customers are not comparing us

lessly and efficiently, most often driven by tech. “The customer looks for

with our competitors as they aren’t

whatever the best experience is in the

usually with another health fund or

market, regardless of industry, and

insurer at the same time,” he explains.

expects Bupa to do the same thing.”

“Instead, they compare us with banks and travel agencies and likes of

EFFICIENCY ACROSS A BROAD MARKET

Amazon and Airbnb.” Customers

Technology drives growth at Bupa

compare their experience with Bupa to

not only through customer satisfaction

their experience accessing any other

in creating a seamless user experience,

facility, and this must be done seam-

but also in improving operational w w w.c o mpa ny we bsite. com

The customer experience is always right. Make experience your business.

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efficiency within a business that spans a broad and somewhat disparate landscape. As CIO, Yalavac is responsible for an IT team of over 600 people across 7 locations, and he credits technology as essential to helping people work together while maintaining that it can also bring significant culture shifts that must be managed across teams. The secret? “Communicate the vision and purpose really well, so everyone understands what we need to achieve and why,” he explains. “You then keep communicat16

ing back the progress: where you are, what’s left to do, success stories and lessons learned.” Effective communication is vital to assuring IT professionals of their position within the organisation in relation to its overall mission and goals. “The role of CIO is of course being responsible for technology, but we should also see our job as a business leader and part of the executive team. The CIO is a trusted consultant and partner and if you don’t play that role you will miss opportunities because in the future, more and more business growth will rely on technology.” Yalavac has taken steps to ensure the IT professionals he manages are viewed,

E X E C U T I V E P R OF IL E

Sami Yalavac As Chief Information Officer, Sami Yalavac is responsible for delivering high-quality, reliable and performance-enhancing technology services across Bupa. Having joined Bupa more than 12 years ago, Yalavac has held a number of technical and senior leadership roles across various Information Services teams, where he has driven significant performance and service improvements for the business, our customers and our people. Since becoming CIO in February 2016, Yalavac has led the transformation of Information Services to become more customer-focused, agile, collaborative and efficient, which has improved the colleague and customer experience as ref lected by significant improvements in employee and colleague Net Promoter Scores. Yalavac was recently recognised externally for his track record as a transformational leader making a significant business impact, when he was placed in the Top 3CIOs in Australia, as judged by CIO50. In addition to more than 30 years of information technology experience at a variety of industries spanning multiple continents, Samiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s qualifications include a Bachelor of Computer Engineering, a Master of Business Administration and a Master of Quality Management.

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“The role of CIO is of course being responsible for technology, but we should also see our job as a business leader and part of the executive team” — Sami Yalavac, CIO, Bupa ANZ

the teams really close to the business and close to the customers – ‘What’s happening over there? What are the exact pain points?’ – and then we start thinking about how technology can solve those. Without that mindset, you never efficiently deliver results. You’ll have a huge data warehouse but no idea what to do with it.” Aside from focusing on customer needs and business growth, Yalavac also maintains that creating an environment people enjoy working in and can grow and develop in is paramount. “A positive environment attracts and retains talent, keeping everyone

and view themselves, as members of

connected to business outcomes,

the business’ overall teams – they are

customer expectations and strategic

not just referred to as the technology

partnerships” he says. Engaging his

team, but some members might be

people and developing a collaborative,

referred to as the ‘claims’ team, for

agile culture has been a huge focus for

example. “IT departments are part of

Yalavac since he became CIO. He has

the business – there shouldn’t be a

invested in building a high performing

separation of business and IT. We all

leadership group and giving his leaders

have the same responsibility to make

the skills to coach their teams through

sure this organisation delivers the best

change. In November 2017, he also

service for the customers. We’re here

launched the Tech-A-Gender program

to deliver the company’s purpose, not

to attract, inspire and develop female

deliver the technology.

talent into technology roles at Bupa

“In our IT department, we try and get

and the team have a vibrant program to w w w.bupa . com . a u

D ATA M AT IC S

A strategic partnership

An important partner in Bupa’s digital transformation, and an example of a relationship Bupa hopes to carry on, is Datamatics — a global provider of consulting, IT, data management and business process management. In what has grown to a 16-year partnership, Datamatics has been instrumental in setting up a delivery centre for Bupa. The relationship has been mutually beneficial with Datamatics leveraging Bupa’s knowledge about insurance business processes and Bupa enhancing operational effici– encies while significantly reducing cost of maintenance and support, with support offered 24/7 on core business operations.

celebrate and support cultural diversity. Indeed, this focus has yielded significant results: since Yalavac began transforming the department the employee NPS in the IT team has grown from +2 to +48, the highest in the organisation which averages at +16. Overall operational efficiency has seen exponential benefits from technology transformation done the right way and in turn serves to motivate staff toward the wider Bupa mission.

“We’re using RPA to make processes and transactions much quicker, cheaper and higher quality so we can utilise out people for more advanced, knowledge-based activities rather than just repeating boring tasks. We’re redefining our workplace strategy with technology as a key enabler.” For example, Bupa has implemented collaboration tools like Office 365, cloudbased solutions, video conferencing

“IT departments are part of the business – there shouldn’t be a separation of business and IT” — Sami Yalavac, CIO, Bupa ANZ

and webcasting. “It’s really a digital w w w.bupa . com . a u

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STRATEGIC PARTNERS Implementing so many new digital solutions cannot be done alone, and as such Bupa must work to maintain partnerships with key vendors as part of its transformation journey, with global names ranging from Microsoft, Fujitsu, Oracle and Infosys to ServiceNow. Yalavac is clear on how this must

“A positive environment attracts and retains talent, keeping everyone connected to business outcomes, customer expectations and strategic partnership” — Sami Yalavac, CIO, Bupa ANZ

take place: “Our approach is to try and create long-term strategic partnerships w w w.bupa . com . a u

In this Transformative Age, convergence is driving the reimagination of industries to create limitless opportunities. ey.com/analytics/networkrevolution #BetterQuestions

Does industry collision shatter or shape our future thinking?

rather than just buying services from these organisations. We keep sharing our changes, inviting them to meetings and when we organise innovation days we include our vendors so they can understand our problems and join in.” For example, customer experience technology giant Genesys has been involved in transforming Bupa’s contact centres through artificial intelligence. “We share the challenges we have with them and develop solutions for our contact centres, such as speech-to-

“Our approach is to try and create long-term strategic partnerships rather than just buying services from these organisations” — Sami Yalavac, CIO, Bupa ANZ

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“We have the responsibility to address and reduce the cost of health and improve access and quality of health provisions” — Sami Yalavac, CIO, Bupa ANZ

text, or using AI to try and understand a customer’s emotions and what they need.” Another such collaborative partner is software giant Adobe, whose marketing platforms and tools are utilised by Bupa. “The platform allows you to understand your customer and manage campaigns, but also has a decision hub based on the information you log,” Yalavac outlines. “These solutions all form an ecosystem supporting one another and the only way to achieve this is through long-term

£9.8bn Approximate revenue (2014)

2002

Year founded in ANZ

78,000

Approximate number of employees 27

relationships with organisations.

government budgeting or funding

Everyone can access these compa-

challenges. We’re seeing affordability

nies but now every organisation can

issues in the market: customers are

utilise them well.”

less and less able to buy insurance

These vendors will be part of Bupa’s

products, or simple dental check-

ecosystem as the company contin-

ups for example. We have a respon-

ues to grow, and Yalavac outlines that

sibility to address and reduce the

Bupa will also look to startups to

cost of health and improve access

find new solutions across a changing

and quality of health provisions.”

landscape. “We keep working with startups, technology organisations, government, hospitals, even competitors, to address customer problems, w w w.bupa . com . a u

BUPA Australia and New Zealand GPO Box 9809, Brisbane, QLD 4001 Australia T 1800 812 535 | www.bupa.com.au