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Customer Q&A
Modernizing IT to speed innovation
and improve the customer experience
For the past several years, the Allianz insurance company has been
making incremental IT and cultural changes to meet its clients' evolving
needs and rising expectations. We sat down with Alexander Heinrich,
Director of Organization and Architecture Solutions at Allianz France,
to ask him some questions about the French unit's successful
digital transformation.
Did you see your transformation as an obligation?
It was necessary to meet the market's new requirements for flexibility
and skills. We got to a point where our model had limits. Insurance is
a sector that did not innovate as much in the past as it does today.
Successive layers were added over time, and our information system
was very fragmented. So it was vital to rethink it and modernize it.
How did you go about it?
We started in 2012. The transformation was as much about culture
as it was about technology.
At a technological level, we implemented two projects. One, the
Allianz Infrastructure Transformation program, initiated by the group
to modify the internal network and data centers, and to give all entities
an identical technological base. Two, the Global One project to renew
our management system.
When renovating a management system, either you improve on what
exists, which is easy but costly, or you try to imagine what the future
looks like and build it on a new basis. This implies sorting through what
you have accumulated over the past. It's a real challenge to break down
what has been done correctly. You have to find the right balance.
FLYER
KEY POINTS:
• When renovating a management
system, either you improve on
what exists, which is easy but
costly, or you try to imagine what
the future looks like and build it
on a new basis.
• The board of directors set a
framework and guidelines with
objectives. Then, it's up to the
teams to find the best way to
reach them.
• The customer relationship changed
and this new independence has
allowed agents to spend more time
handling business.
• Ecosystems will appear. It is not
easy to predict when this will
happen, but it will. Therefore, you
need to be ready to be an actor in
this transformation.
