Preparing for the future How a global P & C insurer transformed its data center infrastructure to empower its growth vision DOWNLOAD

Abstract

An international insurance leader with a major presence in more than 25 countries had a strong vision to double its revenue in five years through both organic and inorganic growth. However, senior management was unsure whether the existing technology infrastructure setup was efficient enough to act as the building block for this massive growth.

To add to the issue, the organization had rapidly grown through acquisitions over recent years, which resulted in a fragmented technology infrastructure environment that limited its ability to scale and achieve its aspirational growth.

Additionally, the company was also looking to improve cost efficiency and to explore avenues that could lead to long-term savings.

The Challenge

Acquisitions can come with a set of complicated inheritances that are often overlooked under the assumption that they will be integrated in the future. But what happens when a company has more than 30 such stand-alone entities running autonomously as it prepares for potential expansion into new geographies, along with aggressively growing existing markets? In this case, the lack of standardization in the IT environment and an inadequate supply of talent to manage it were liabilities in the company’s race for growth.

There was a clear need for a unified strategy to consolidate the fragmented infrastructure footprint across the globe. But creating a unified strategy was easier said than done, as this required not just an abstract direction, but a clear action plan for implementation. The company needed someone with a breadth of capabilities and depth in experience, someone who had a demonstrated track record of materializing a strategic assessment and infrastructure transformation design into a largescale implementation across a vast, complex and global landscape.

How We Helped

Deloitte understood that the complexity of the current infrastructure footprint necessitated a clear articulation of the business case, beyond profit and loss (P&L) improvements. We put together a team that brought deep knowledge, extensive insight and demonstrated industry perspectives in the infrastructure transformation space to help the company realize these benefits.

Deloitte first worked with the client to conduct a strategic assessment that examined the insurer’s current infrastructure model. Upon completion of the strategic assessment, we worked with the client to design a future state construct and created a practical, executable strategy for a data center transformation so that the company could pursue its growth plans.

Once the program won senior client leadership buy-in and budget approvals, we helped the company implement a 30-month transformational IT roadmap. We also advised the client on other components of the strategy, including designing a common utility model, designing the organizational operating model, and leading the RFP to evaluate potential locations and outsourcing partners. To manage the large number of stakeholders involved in the process, Deloitte helped to establish an integrated Program Management team that kept the large transformation program on-track.

Deloitte helped address specific challenges faced by the company, including a lack of dedicated resources with in-depth data center migration experience and poor coordination of a geographically-dispersed team by leveraging our infrastructure transformation and project management experience.

Solution

Teaming with Deloitte from the drawing board to the “data-center floor” helped the client realize several objectives, including:

• Standardization of core infrastructure across regional data centers that can reduce complexities when expanding via organic and inorganic growth
• Selection of leading data center colocation vendors that can provide ongoing service excellence and can allow for future expansion
• Customization and streamlining of governance and organizational structure that adhered to project guidelines of minimal headcount reduction
• Tight integration and centralization of project management to monitor timeline and budget
• Retention of high quality talent and maintenance of a collaborative corporate culture

The biggest win for Deloitte was helping the client manage change from a talent and culture perspective. The program regularly engaged high-potential talent from within existing local country operations as well as from the overall infrastructure organization. This helped groom the company’s existing resources to assist in the transformation and assume greater leadership roles. There was also a constant focus on managing communications within the company, articulating the benefits of the change and how the organization planned to approach it.

Deloitte’s holistic approach to infrastructure transformation, incorporating corporate strategy, organizational change and talent management, helped the company to transform its global infrastructure and pursue its aggressive plans for growth.

For further information

infratransformation@deloitte.com
www.deloitte.com/us/infrastructuretransformation

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