In the words of Bruce Hodges, Group Chief Information and Digital Office of Generali, “focusing on digital innovation is key for every player in the insurance market”.
His words are well founded – with more than 76,000 employees and 55 million clients, The Generali Group is one of the largest insurance providers in the world. To maintain their leading position in the insurance market, the group needed a technology infrastructure that could support the market’s changing demands.
The Generali Group and Microsoft recently announced a Business Digital Transformation partnership that will transform the Italian company’s way of doing business. The goal of the partnership is to enhance employee, agent, and partner efficiency, create new insurance products and establish a new business model that will keep the group competitive.
The first stage of the tie-up will focus on creating a digital workplace for Generali employees. The “Generali New Way of Working” initiative centres on an innovative, state-of-the-art platform that creates a consistent workplace experience for all employees, wherever they are based. Using the latest cloud collaboration tools, the platform will boost operational efficiency by making it easier for different back offices and sales operations to collaborate in real time.
As with all industries, social media is vital for customer engagement in the insurance sector. Backed by the analytical power of Microsoft technology, Generali aims to reach new customers directly on social media with personalised offers. The use of Office 365, Dynamics 365, Azure IoT Suite and Cortana Intelligence Suite will also help Generali to build new insurance products, including Blockchain Smart Contracts.
The future of the insurance industry will be connected. The partnership with Microsoft will help to establish a digital business ecosystem for Generali, where third-party operators can interact and collaborate with the insurance company on Connected Insurance offerings.
Valter Trevisani, Group Insurance Officer of Generali, emphasised the benefits for customers. “This partnership with Microsoft will strengthen our digital innovation capabilities, allowing us to better focus on customer centricity and to develop new business products,” he said.
Carlo Purassanta, Chief Executive of Microsoft Italy, said: “This is the first step in a broad strategic collaboration between Microsoft and Generali, that will allow Generali to reimagine and transform its customer engagement, employee experience, business model and operations.”
You can read more about Microsoft’s vision for a digitally transformed financial industry here.
