Aussie streamlines workplace, injects extra intelligence with Cloud

Since we set up shop 25 years ago Aussie’s always been prepared to shake a stick at the status quo when we think that there’s a better way.

That’s what has led to our success as an award-winning mortgage broker with more than 1,000 brokers scouring almost 3,000 different mortgages to find the right one for an individual customer.

But we have also shaken that stick at the way we operate – and created a modern workplace leveraging cloud infrastructure, and providing instant access to data and analytics that supports the business, brokers and customers in a more streamlined and efficient way.

We’ve moved to Office 365 backed by Enterprise Mobility + Security which has given us a far more efficient workplace without any sacrifice of proper governance or security.

Having access to such a broad range of applications in Office 365 means our people have the right tool for the job right there. Because we’ve also transitioned to OneDrive, all the information is there in the cloud to allow and encourage collaboration. There are no more debates about data.

That’s led to a really rapid change in the way we all work right across Aussie corporate which dovetails with our intent to be an agile, paper-light, collaborative and highly productive operation.

From a technology operations standpoint, replatforming  our applications onto the cloud has allowed us to re-engineer our teams into dynamic groups geared for agile prototyping and testing cycles.

Take performance reviews – they used to be paper based, complex to administer and people spent more time managing the paperwork than anything else. Now it’s all handled through OneDrive, it’s streamlined and people have more time to concentrate on conversations about how to lift employee performance in the future rather than grappling with the rear view mirror.

 We are also big users of Skype for Business which allows simple video calling from anywhere, connecting state offices and leaders working remotely; we’re using Planner; and are interested in how we can make more use of Teams in the future as well.

It’s made the workplace truly agile and collaborative while we have reduced our costs and completed the transformation in a short timeframe.

Here in Aussie corporate Office 365 is making a huge difference and that’s also the case for our brokers who have made the transition as well.

Right now around 30 per cent of our brokers have made the switch – and everyone’s reaping the benefit. Of course, our brokers aren’t our employees but the benefits of the switch are clear.

For one they get visibility and flexibility; they can access their documents when and where they want securely in the cloud; and brokers can securely collaborate on confidential documents and plans. And because all the data is stored in the cloud our brokers don’t have to worry about managing servers or doing backups – that’s all handled by Microsoft automatically.

The move to Windows 10 and Office 365 boosts the security of customer data, it also opens up any silos so that here at Aussie we also have proper visibility and can support our brokers more effectively based on the insights that visibility affords us.

The rich potential of Power BI dashboards backed by a live connection to Azure Analysis Services tabular cube means our sales teams instantly have access to reports that are up to date, easy to update, and user friendly giving them the insights they need to support brokers and, ultimately, customers.

Power BI delivers a series of dashboards, allowing them to drill down through the information from national, to state, to franchise, to a broker performing in that store.

The business intelligence that we get through Power BI means we can get to market quickly, iterate quickly, and get insights quickly. And in the future I can see how we could integrate artificial intelligence and bots to give even more support to our teams.

We’ve tried to do this in the past with other business intelligence projects and it’s cost a lot of money for not much value. With Power BI it’s been a case of not much money, a short amount of time and it’s been successful.

Just like Aussie, really.