14 minute read
Sentry
SENTRY PROVIDES
EXPERT CONVERSATIONS
At Sentry, we’ve built our reputation on listening and providing assistance to all of our business customers. It’s in our DNA. And has been for more than 115 years.
DEDICATED SERVICE
Every company needs insurance protection for when things go wrong. But if you’re like us, you know there’s a bigger picture. We are here to help you find the right coverage, manage claims, and develop a proactive safety culture to minimise risks.
INNOVATIVE OPTIONS
Let’s face it. Insurance is not a one-size-fits-all solution. At least not here at Sentry. We get to know you and your business, offering innovative solutions that make sense for you.
Jim Frank
Jim Frank, Chief Information Officer (CIO), has been with Sentry since 2003, and transitioned from Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to the position of CIO last year.
He has had the privilege of witnessing the growth of Sentry throughout the past two decades, and highlights what has differentiated the company from its rivals in the industry.
“As a company overall, we take a more personal approach to how we do business,” Frank informs us.
“We truly value having conversations–so we do just that. We engage our customers in substantive conversations. We listen to their unique challenges and their goals. Then we work with them to identify solutions and plan for the future.”
Sentry also houses an innovative culture in its operation – the continuation to discover advanced solutions and provide its customers with better services sits as the company’s standard of practice. It is the aforementioned personal approach that helps in this regard, as the firm is able to build and grow alongside its customers. Of course, as a business that drives forward with IT services, innovation is critical to stay ahead of the curve. Yet Sentry still retains its human edge shown by the personal and professional care it provides its customers.
The firm has adopted cloud-based operations faster than that of the industry. This ensures it provides better availability and greater scalability with regards to services – Sentry can iterate and develop elements of its work a lot faster due to cloud-based technology.
“Most insurance companies spend 50 percent or more of their IT budgets to maintain legacy systems – technology that may have limitations in accessibility or scalability,” Frank explains.
“At Sentry, we are spending under seven percent on legacy technology because we’ve transitioned a majority
OneNeck
OneNeck IT Solutions LLC specializes in multi-cloud solutions, combined with managed services, professional IT consulting services, hardware and local connectivity via top-tier data centers in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon and Wisconsin.
OneNeck’s nearly 500 technology professionals deliver secure, modern platforms and applications for organizations embracing data-driven transformation and secure end-to-end solutions throughout the country.
OneNeck is a wholly owned subsidiary of Telephone and Data Systems [NYSE: TDS], a Fortune 1000® company, whose business units also include U.S. Cellular and TDS Telecom.
www.oneneck.com
of our systems to web- or cloud-based operations.
“A recent Accenture study estimates 10 percent of insurance computing is being done in the public cloud. At Sentry – we have 20 percent of our capacity in the cloud, and we’re working to increase that every month.”
INDUSTRY INNOVATION
Despite the obstacles posed by the past year, Sentry has been able to weather the storm of COVID-19’s effects on the industry thanks to an innovative approach to progressive digital services.
“We already emphasise having conversations, being accessible to our customers, having a way to get a hold of us – whenever they need us. Over the years, that has led to establishing more sophisticated capabilities on the web, like being able to buy directly through our customer-facing portals,” Frank continues.
www.oneneck.com
“Those types of capabilities to support our customers have always been there; it’s just that COVID-19 drew attention to our capabilities and our customers’ needs to a degree we wouldn’t have expected in a prepandemic world.
“Because we had experience with these functions and had planned an infrastructure to support heavier use, it all stood up to the challenge and performed well.”
This adaptation in the face of the coronavirus is no better exemplified than Sentry’s ability to make 95 percent of its workforce work in a remote digital capacity in a matter of days.
With elements of Sentry’s operations built on modern systems, the company’s focus remains fixed to innovation over the maintenance of older systems. The lack of need to support legacy technologies means that Sentry maximises time efficiency and its resources on the advancement of the business.
“And that means we can serve our customers better. We’re able to leverage our newer technologies to do things with greater accuracy and quite simply, with the right data, machines can figure that out faster than humans,” Frank elaborates.
“For example, we’re able to run artificial intelligence models around things like how to predict price, or even how to predict the complexity of a claim.
“We provide worker’s compensation insurance to many businesses in many industries. We can use analytics to predict what are going to become the more expensive and problematic claims, which allows us to get the right folks on it to service that claim faster. This results in a better experience for our customers and it helps us better
analyse claims to determine moreeffective pricing models.”
On top of this, Sentry is able to bring products to the market a lot faster than before. Previously, the process took the company 12 to 18 months, however, has subsequently reduced to a six-to-nine-month time frame – all due to the modern technologies utilised to handle larger quantities of data in shorter time.
“Our board decided we needed to make a commitment to adopting and investing in new technology to position Sentry for success in the future,” Frank tells us. “Now we’re moving to cloud-based operations. It’s been a continual evolution that positions us well in the marketplace because it allows us to stay focused on innovating in ways that improve the way we do business.”
THE FUTURE OF INSURANCE
For Sentry, company partnerships have never been more important. The transition of operations to the cloud means that Sentry’s supply chain relationships are critical to its overall success.
“In cloud-based capabilities, you blend Sentry innovation and products with supplier-provided infrastructure and services,” Frank elaborates.
“That means doing business with companies we trust to adhere to the same quality and reliability standards we set for ourselves. As we continue to partner with leaders in the technology and services space, we make decisions based on reputation, market strength, and trusted vendors in this sector.
“I can say with certainty that the list of companies we do business with are really the best in this space.”
With 2021 around the corner, Sentry aims to continue through the decade with a focus on the continued optimisation of its operations. It strives to move away from its use of data centres and focus on cloud-based technology.
“While we’re at 20 percent cloud operations now, we’ll continue to look to increase that in 2021 and beyond. Our focus on migration to the cloud will be a guiding principle for us for the foreseeable future,” Frank explains and ends on the existing determination displayed in Sentry’s aims and goals.
“As a business, like many others, we’re focused on growth and profitability. And we’ll use our technology to help do that in all the ways shared. It will mean introducing new products and continuing to innovate in an effort to better serve our customers.”
www.sentry.com
To round off each issue, we ask our contributing business leaders for their views on the same question
WHAT WILL BE THE BIGGEST TREND IMPACTING YOUR INDUSTRY IN 2021?
David Redfern
CEO, Lafarge Eastern Canada “The biggest near-term trend impacting the building and construction materials industry will be putting the power of procurement to work to create demand and spur innovation for sustainable solutions, which in turn will have repercussions on construction, development and design. "Critical to this will be the adoption of tools such as the CSA sponsored CarbonStar standard to bring transparency to the carbon footprint of products and services.”
David Lim
Managing Director, Exmar “The single biggest factor which normally affects the oil and gas industry is the market price and we think that consumption of oil and gas will only increase and see recovery from COVID lows starting sometime in the second half of 2021.
“The global demand for energy will continue to increase and there will be the need for continued oil and gas exploration and production. Simultaneously, the push for decarbonisation increases the efforts for emissions reduction in the oil and gas industry and power generation sector with the application of new and improved technologies and to reduce CO2.”
Mark Haubert
Vice President Business Development, Marketing & Technology, Ranger Energy Services
“There is set to be a continued drive to increase efficiency in drilling, completion and production operations. Since the 1980s, digital monitoring systems have been developed for oil and gas drilling rigs to capture data from downhole sensors using wireline logging and measurement while drilling tools.
“Today, these systems have evolved into advanced drilling, data acquisition, control, automation and monitoring systems. State-of-the-art automated rigs capture data and control the rotary system, pipe handling and makeup, top drive and hoisting system, fluids management and circulation systems, rotary steerable systems, well control systems, power systems and third-party systems.”
Jim Frank
CIO, Sentry “Everyone remains focused on the current developments surrounding COVID-19. With many businesses transforming the way they operate, it has meant it has changed where the exposures are and it has meant that adjusting accordingly is vital.
“Severe weather is also having an increasing impact on our industry. From wildfire season lasting longer and covering more ground to hurricanes becoming more frequent and intense – it’s something we’re all watching closely.”
Are you a CEO/Director with a company story to tell? Contact North America Outlook now!
EXMAR OFFSHORE COMPANY
INNOVATION IN RESPONSE TO A CRISIS
The Delta House offshore installation, operated by Murphy Oil Corporation, utilizes the Exmar OPTI-11000™ hull
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North America Outlook issue 01 OIL & GAS
The past year has seen the stagnation or decline of entire industries across the globe. The travel industry, for example, saw many airlines suffer from 90 percent reductions in passengers, while many others took to switching their services to freight transport to bring back some of what they lost during lockdown periods. The oil and gas industry has been no different. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Energy Transition The Age of global average of daily oil demand will As the oil and gas industry recovers from the effects of the be reduced to eight million barrels per day this year, a decline of roughly eight percent from last year. coronavirus pandemic, we speak Major oil consumers such as the to David Lim and Jay Cotaya aviation industry, that itself has been hit incredibly hard by the effects of about the innovative new route the pandemic, have reduced their oil consumption drastically. This has led to oil production companies suffering a drawn-out decline of financial for Exmar Offshore Company Writer: Marcus Kääpä EXMAR OFFSHORE COMPANY Project Manager: David Knott strength over the course of 2020. According to David Lim (Managing While the OPTI and its deployment Director) and Jay Cotaya (Chief is an in-house feature of Exmar, Lim and Cotaya acknowledge that “FLEXIBILITY COMBINED WITH A Operations Officer) of Exmar Offshore Company, the result of the pandemic has caused a huge drop for offshore the company would not be able to provision its whole service offering without the presence of a number of strategic partnerships with external companies. The professional STRONG WORK ETHIC THAT WAS CONSISTENT WHETHER AT HOME OR IN THE OFFICE HELPED US TO SUCCEED IN THESE DIFFICULT drilling and related services. relationships that the firm cultivates TIMES” – DAVID LIM and maintains are both mutual and “COVID-19 and the resulting global beneficial for both parties and the end demand reduction has been extremely customer. “The company works closely with hard on an already challenged industry subsurface and subsea companies. It that was coming off years of efforts to also works with topsides companies, typically selected by the operator,” reduce inefficiency and operate with Cotaya says. “For the execution of projects, we work closely with lower margins,” Lim tells us.shipyards relying on the network and Exmar is the US-based branch reputation of the Exmar Group which has extensive construction experience. of the Belgian Exmar NV Group, “For instance, we have had relationships with riser and operating under the wider company’s mooring companies that have Infrastructure sector (with Shipping been instrumental in developing an optimised performance solution.” representing the other main division). LOOKING TO THE FUTURE Exmar Offshore is an engineering Just as partnerships are held in the services and project development highest regard, the individual efforts of the Exmar workforce drive the design, company, proud experts in the production, and services the company provides its varied customer base. provision of a multitude of practices The firm prides itself on its backed up by its broad and historical workforce of employees from diverse backgrounds that collectively make industry knowledge. up the drive behind high-performance As opposed to the firm’s other service. “Exmar is full of examples of branches (Exmar LNG, Exmar LPG, technically innovative successes, whether it is FSRUs, FLNG, LPG fuelled and other services) that focus largely LPG carriers or OPTIs, and exciting on the shipping side of the wider projects attract creative people,” Cotaya says. “Keeping creative company, Exmar Offshore specialises people motivated means giving them challenges and real responsibilities. “It is not a large company among its peers, but it achieves great things, and North America Outlookeach person is able to point to where they contributed to that success.” issue 01 | 3 The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown many obstacles in the way all industries approach the workplace,
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North America Outlook issue 01
See page 30 36
OIL & GAS
The King’s Quay process facility and deck truss under construction at Hyundai Heavy Industries, South Korea
North America Outlook issue 01
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Innovation in response to a crisis, Exmar Offshore has told its story.
Now, why not tell yours? Our bi-monthly magazine North America Outlook is essential reading for business executives wanting to keep up with the latest in global news and trends affecting US and Canada businesses across all industries. Reaching ever increasing audiences across the continent and beyond, your company can take advantage of this global exposure with a FREE article and FREE digital brochure, as well as access to further digital and print-based marketing tools that could transform your business. To share in this unrivalled opportunity, contact one of our project managers today!
www.northamericaoutlookmag.com Issue 1
Outlook Creative Services
Complementing the production of North America Outlook, APAC Outlook, EME Outlook and Africa Outlook magazines, Outlook Publishing’s awardwinning in-house team is now utilising these same specialist production skills to offer a full and bespoke range of editorial, design and marketing services via its new Outlook Creative Services division.
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DESIGN: Stephen Giles +44 (0) 1603 959 656 steve.giles@outlookpublishing.com
Devon Collins +44 (0) 1603 959 661 devon.collins@outlookpublishing.com EDITORIAL: Sean Galea-Pace +44 (0) 1603 959 657 sean.galea-pace@outlookpublishing.com
Marcus Kääpä +44 (0) 1603 959 660 marcus.kaapa@outlookpublishing.com
