Scandinavia
takes heart PROJECT PARTNERS
RSA Scandina takes he
avia eart Written by John O’Hanlon Produced by George Tweed
An insurance company with its roots in the 18th century is looking to social media and online retail as a model for how it interacts with its 21st century customers, while acknowledging that getting the basics right first is essential
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hen RSA, the former Royal & Sun Alliance, restructured its global business in 2014 it had grown into something of a behemoth business with tentacles reaching all over the world. As the global financial crisis hit, the less profitable businesses became a brake on the more dynamic parts, so it was decided, under its new CEO Stephen Hester, to dispose of the businesses in emerging eastern European, Far East and Latin American countries and refocus the group on the profitable and dynamic UK, Scandinavia and Canada markets. It was an effective strategy, resulting in 473 percent growth in underwriting profit in 2015, and 221 percent growth in profits after tax. Results of this sort couldn’t be achieved by corporate restructuring alone: the business needed to be transformed from within. Each of
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the three regional businesses has tailored its transformation to the perceived needs of its customers. RSA Scandinavia embraces the Codan and Trygg Hansa brands that are among the top three insurers in Denmark and Norway, and Sweden respectively. The businesses in these countries have been under the leadership of Patrick Bergander since he was appointed CEO in June 2014, reporting direct to the group CEO Stephen Hester. Some six months later another key appointment, that of CIO, was filled by Pedro de Freitas, who has been with the RSA group for more than 20 years, and to whom fell a major part of the technology transformation of the business in Scandinavia that changed it from a traditional provider of insurance cover to a company that can fulfil the expectations of the generation that came of age at turn of the millennium.
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Accelerating Digital
Transformation RSA Scandinavia Speeding Digital Transformation with OutSystems Low-code Development Platform Speed. It’s at the heart of how organizations today must compete and delight their customers. From new mobile experiences to streamlined selfservice processes, the era of the “always connected customer” has fueled the necessity for accelerated and agile IT solutions that can innovate at the speed of business. One company that has taken a leadership role in this kind of customer-captivating digital transformation is RSA Scandinavia. Along with other progressive enterprises, RSA has tackled digital transformation head on with speed and agility by using a low-code platform. New business models are forcing companies to make disruptive changes in the way they interact with customers
by launching apps such as mobile claims processing or agent portals, for example. But radical changes on the front-end require changes to internal processes that can no longer be done simply in increments. Tweaking legacy systems works for a little while, but in the end, tools are needed that can enable true digital transformation. Lowcode platforms can be key to addressing this problem. The OutSystems lowcode platform offers visual development capabilities for creating enterprise-grade applications - applications that not only have exciting new UIs but also integrate existing systems. OutSystems Platform can be used both on the front-end and the back-
end, delivering an end-to-end digital transformation solution. Innovative companies, like RSA Scandinavia, are adopting OutSystems Platform because it gives them the freedom to build complex enterprise apps with a minimum of hand-coding and a lot less effort. They have integrated and extended existing systems and created engaging experiences that help them manage multiple business processes and support thousands of users. With OutSystems, you too can deliver engaging user experiences via mobile devices, portals and other channels—fast. You’ll also be rapidly modernizing processes and delighting customers in no time.
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Heart surgery The first weekend of July this year
was an epic one for the IT team, says de Freitas. It saw the switch off of the old CSC infrastructure platform and its replacement by Wipro under a seven-year deal with the Indian company to manage all of RSA’s data centres, cloud, and end-user services, plus a multi-lingual service desk for Scandinavia, based in Poland. “It’s like a heart transplant operation throughout which the blood flow has to be maintained,” he says. “We are now in hypercare mode, scrutinising every little issue in case it’s a sign of rejection. The weekend switch-over was a massive achievement, the culmination of six months preparation, but I’m glad to say it went really well.” This was the most fundamental step of many migrations and implementations that go to make up RSA Scandinavia’s transformation programme. The Wipro deal is part of a company-wide review of its legacy IT infrastructure accumulated through decades of mergers
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and acquisition, however the Scandinavian business has mapped its own modernisation route based on the needs of its customers. “We invested in a new datacentre and new supplier but we have to move all the furniture,” he explains. “This is a massive change programme, because so many things are still being done in the old way. We have to get it right – we want it to be future proof because we don’t want to have to do it again.” The Wipro partnership with RSA Scandinavia is critical, he adds. The entire RSA mainframe stack has been migrated, and midrange systems are being migrated, together with all end-user computing, by the end of September. The service desk will follow by end of 2016. There are several drivers for change, including the need to grasp the saving IT can offer in terms of greater efficiency, greater productivity and cost reduction. However Pedro de Freitas identifies the key driver as the customers themselves. “Why are we doing
With over three decades of experience TCS has enabled insurers globally to transform their competitive positions, increase customer satisfaction and enhance their distribution channels. TCS is the business transformation and innovation partner of choice for over a 100 insurers globally. We take great pride in our partnership with RSA Scandinavia and look forward to an exciting future together striving to achieve excellence.
RSA Scandinavia - TCS’ Partnership journey Over the last 8 years, TCS and RSA Scandinavia have collaborated on several successful initiatives, ranging from business transformation to assurance strategy definition. TCS has leveraged its vast assurance service experience to enable process standardisation, leading in quality assurance for major transformation projects and pioneering the establishment of RSA Scandinavia’s Quality Assurance CoE. Aligned with RSA’s Sunsetting initiative, TCS is driving the legacy application decommissioning strategy by enabling the mainframe exit acceleration and providing a platform to decommission unused applications along with an enterprise data archival solution. Knowledge and rich experience of RSA Scandinavia’s business processes and IT systems, is the cornerstone of TCS’ ability to deliver transformative value. A deep understanding is distilled from years of collaboration specifically on the legacy transformation programs where TCS delivered a “fit-for-future” modernized claims
platform (CLAN) that allows multi-channel, endto-end claims management for RSA’s Sweden business. We also transformed a Nordic level Front Office Sales application (NFOS) enabling effective inbound and outbound selling. In the ongoing journey towards excellence, RSA Scandinavia has partnered with TCS to create a future ready foundation for RSA Scandinavia’s CRM transformation journey. The reference framework created is expected to define the contours of RSA Scandinavia’s customer engagement for the future. Furthermore TCS have been chosen as their Integration Partner, playing a key role in integrating the claims service platform with the policy administration system and building APIs that enable future proof integration solutions for B2B transactions. Through these strategic initiatives, TCS continues to successfully merge its global expertise with the local experience, to ensure that RSA Scandinavia remains on the forefront of insurance service delivery in the Nordic region.
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COOLEST OF WAY DOING BUSINESS
At Deloitte Digital we do things a little different! We’re not just a bunch of consultants with jeans. We provide tailored made digital solutions to our clients in the most innovative way. We don’t deliver just great work, we create experiences and deliver the coolest way of doing business.
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this? Just look at how customer behaviour is changing. The millennials are starting to think in terms of the technologies that define their lives – today it is mobile, and the rapid growth of IoT but they know that in five years there will be another transformation through nanotechnology, biotechnology, the rise of wearable technolgy and the concept of blockchain. If we are to stand and watch it happening and don’t do anything we will be dead. My pitch to our regional board was that we need to be transforming the core essentials of our infrastructure or we’d be building a house without foundations.” People and attitudes A transplant is a change of heart in
more ways than one. IT is driving the change to a flexible workforce to match the flexibility we have noted in the market: the business is currently moving its calendar and e-mail systems to Microsoft Office 365, changing their working environment radically, and paving
the way for a great increase in bring-your-own-device (BYOD) approaches. “We’re fostering an any time, any place anyhow mindset that matches the expectations of the profile of the age groups we are seeing coming though our doors – whether they’re employees or customers.” Accordingly his team last year migrated from the old Lotus Notes platform to Outlook, boosting workplace engagement and productivity and facilitating the next step into Office 365. Microsoft is also RSA’s technical partner on its CRM and general ledger replacement programmes. Security is not compromised by cloud solutions, he assures. State of the art security is embedded in the chosen outsourced platforms, and in the margin based insurance business getting the right risk to reward balance is vital. In 2012 he brought on board Danish company TIA technology to replace its 30 year old core insurance platform, which was no longer either flexible nor cost effective, taking up
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Pedro de Freitas CIO
Pedro joined RSA Scandinavia Senior Executive Team in January 2015 following his appointment to CIO for RSA Scandinavia. Previously IT&Change Director for RSA Scandinavia, Pedro has been in Sweden since 2006 and in RSA Group since 1998. Since then Pedro has been responsible for a variety of leadership delivery roles within change and IT transformation in insurance. to 16 weeks to change a parameter due to lack of documentation and code in excess of a million lines. “Implemented across all Scandinavian business units it will allow us to get closer to our customer needs and create a good platform to grow our business. With TIA we have become much faster in the way we address and match market needs and expectations.” As an example, he says, creating a new rating factor for workers’ compensation now takes only hours as opposed to eight or nine weeks under the old system. Serving the Now Generation The last example show how much
can be gained by doing things faster.
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Acceleration is the second key concept after that of transformation, and an enterprise application building platform was needed to deliver exceptional flexibility and usability – not to mention faster and lower cost development. For this, RSA Scandinavia chose a low-code, rapid application development platform from OutSystems to accelerate its digital transformation. “It is our choice for the fastest and most comprehensive way to create, deploy and manage custom mobile and web applications,” says de Freitas. “All that is delivered seamlessly across all devices.” And when it comes to developing current applications, Capgemini
Apptio and RSA: Engaging IT and the Business in Delivering RSA Scandinavia’s Transformation Apptio has been partnering with RSA on IT transformation for the past 3 years at a Group level, covering Scandinavia, UK and Canada. For the Scandinavian business, Apptio supports Pedro de Freitas, regional CIO, and Patricia Pereira, Technology Business Management (TBM) Director, in driving IT efficiency, acceleration and innovation objectives across three countries.
Outlining how RSA operates a shared services IT model across its regions, de Freitas says that the decision to partner with Apptio was made as a result of:
With cost transparency, business insights, benchmarking and planning applications, Apptio provides Pedro and his team with the facts, transparency and assurance around IT cost data. Apptio is used in the areas of infrastructure, application and licensing to drive operational management and efficiency. Apptio enables the team to have open and value-based discussions with the business, and helps prioritise competing investment decisions – something key in an environment where speed and resource agility are key to success. As Patricia says: “Apptio is fantastic for managing the business of technology and essentially delivers transparency, efficiency and credibility by opening what was previously regarded as the black box of IT”. For Pedro though, the key benefit of RSA Scandinavia’s partnership with Apptio is “the ability to foster the right discussions with the business, particularly regarding prioritisation and the value that a priority will take. Apptio and TBM helps bring IT and the business together which must be the holy grail of any CIO”.
About Apptio Apptio is the CIO’s business management system. We build advanced data and analytics applications that help all IT leaders understand and make informed decisions about their technology investments, capitalise on the cloud transformation and drive innovation within their organisations. We call it Technology Business Management. Our applications help companies align technology spending to business outcomes and automate IT processes like cost transparency, benchmarking, chargeback and planning. Hundreds of customers, including more than 40 percent of the Fortune 100, choose Apptio as their business system of record for IT. For more information, please visit www.apptio.com
The user experience of the application - not only for IT but at a business and executive summary level – and the efficiency it drives The fact that Apptio uses a common taxonomy and naming convention. Having a standard model for measuring and communicating IT costs across the Group means that everyone – in any location, and in IT or on the business side – speaks the same language when discussing IT costs Apptio’s appreciation and support of a change mindset was important to an organisation undergoing major and rapid transformation Being able to participate in the growing TBM community – which covers multiple industries and countries – that is driving standards and best practices for managing the business of IT.
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Patricia Pereira Technology Business Management Director
Patricia has been with RSA Scandinavia since 2014 as head of IT Planning and Control, and now Technology Business Management Director.
is boosting the company’s capabilities in existing application development and maintenance, which includes business intelligence systems, integration, compliance, and payment systems. Having these systems in place enables the company to innovate, and to make the fullest use of the technology that is coming on to the market. A great example is the way drones can now be used to collect data on claims – they are a much quicker way to gather data on an incident or event such as a forest fire or flooded area and record it photographically, much more cost effective than sending out a helicopter.
Leveraging on her experience, complemented by Finance and Business Intelligence Masters, Patricia rolled out Apptio IT Financial Management across the Company and established a Technology Business Management practice. This has given the CIO and the IT leadership team more transparency of IT costs. Additionally, Patricia is responsible for driving operational efficiency across the IT Business, for which she has initiated the roll-out of ServiceNow to support Demand and Portfolio Management, and now extending to other areas, which will drive more collaborative ways of working. Turning to innovation, Deloitte
is the strategic implementation partner whose engagement with RSA Scandinavia has been pivotal to transform “business as usual” particularly in Denmark. “Deloitte is the partner for our core system transformation, a cornerstone programme in our strategy to deliver market-leading business
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capabilities, supported by a more efficient IT organisation. Accelerating our time to value is key in our vision and Deloitte has helped us drive the adoption of Agile ways of working and digital capabilities. Our new customer front end solution for small and medium sized businesses in Denmark draws upon its new agile delivery process and also Deloitte Digital’s capability offer,” de Freitas adds. Another key partner is Tata Consulting Services (TCS): its effectiveness in processing claims is one of ways an insurance company is judged in the market. The legacy claims management platform had been tailored to Swedish operations and didn’t work so well with the systems used in the other Scandinavian businesses neither was it capable of supporting growth: it would have needed massive modernisation to cater for today’s market demands and support RSA’s customer agenda. TCS was called in to provide a new claims application named CLAN
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“These tools help me as the CIO to run my technology departments as a business, tracking hardware, storage, cloud usage, applications, energy usage, cybersecurity, telecommunications, and reporting obligations”
that works with all the Swedish back end systems and manages the claims process from beginning to end, introducing automation to simplify the workflow involved. It works with all the region’s currencies and languages, can capture the large data flows from innovative sources, and is virtually paperless. “TCS’s offshore centre of excellence from has enabled us to automate most of our regression and performance testing as well as enhancing the quality of our IT deliveries. TCS is also our strategic partner for cross country CRM implementation,” says de Freitas. Keeping track of the business costs and benefits of the whole transformation process can’t be done by traditional accounting methods. To gain insight and transparency in the complex area of the costs and financial benefits across the process, RSA Scandinavia needed to invest in technology business management (TBM) tools, so it turned to the US-based company Apptio to
enable the assessment of IT service costs and communicate those costs to the management for planning, budgeting and forecasting purposes. “Apptio has been integral part of our journey,” he adds. “These tools help me as the CIO to run my technology departments as a business, tracking hardware, storage, cloud usage, applications, energy usage, cybersecurity, telecommunications, and reporting obligations.” Business led, IT enabled, and
cost-effective Here we come to the central point of how IT adds value to the business – knowing how to arrive at the cost of getting a customer on board. This, he says, creates a solid relationship between IT and the business. “The four elements I keep in my back pocket when having executive discussions are: Transform, Accelerate, Innovate and Value. Each of these is urgent, and they are all interlinked. For example, there’s no use talking about automation if you don’t have the infrastructure
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Johan Bjurup IS Delivery Director
Johan joined RSA in November 2010 as Manager for IT Development Denmark. In 2013 he was promoted to Nordic IS Delivery Director with the end2end accountability for IT Delivery. Johan and his technology team are responsible for all development and application management projects and activities at RSA Scandinavia Previously Johan held senior IT roles as a consultant working for large scale Swedish enterprises.
Our core insurance software gives insurers the flexibility and customer insight they need to stay relevant and succeed with their digital transformation journey – with 100% success rate. www.tiatechnology.com +45 7022 7620 tia@tia.dk
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Johan Sandberg Infrastructure Management Director
Johan Sandberg joined RSA in 2015 from SBAB bank. Over the past 12 months has been streamlining Scandinavia’s ailing infra whilst sponsoring CSC change to Wipro. Johan has 20+ years of global experience within the IT business including positions such as Development manager at a Swedish bank and Enterprise Strategy Service Manager at Microsoft.
that can handle that automation. If you are going to use a process robot that does the tedious task of converting one type of policies to another you have to back it with infrastructure that can load more digital documents, otherwise the innovation will lose its point.” Facebook and Amazon realise that stable infrastructure is vital: the former has changed its mantra from ‘Move Fast and Break Things’ to ‘Move Fast With Stable Infra!’ “It’s a promise to users to make new tools less buggy,” according to Mark Zuckerberg. That is a good way of describing what is happening at RSA Scandinavia. For employees
and customers alike, buggy tools are anathema – they expect their social and communications tools to work, so why not their business tools as well? Of course, Google and Amazon are only a decade old, he compares ruefully. It’s more of a challenge turning round a ship the size of a centuries old insurance company, but it has to be done, and the benchmark has to be looked for in the fastest moving and most successful businesses on the planet.
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Codan Gl. Kongevej 60, Copenhagen Denmark, 1790 +45 33 55 55 55 +46 70168 2174
pdr@codan.dk www.rsagroup.com