a.s.r. is an insurer that provides every possible kind of insurance. With almost 3,900 employees and revenues of €3.8 billion in 2014, it is one of the largest insurers in the Netherlands. Until mid-2015, all a.s.r. IT systems were monitored 24/7 by operators in the Control Centre to ensure that customers received impeccable service and good accessibility. Devoteam was tasked with investigating the potential to cut the costs of the Control Centre. This led to a radical recommendation: to shut it down and computerise all the processes. Devoteam helped make this a reality.
The Snapshot
1
a.s.r., one of the largest insurers in the Netherlands, relied on a costly, 24/7 manually-operated IT control centre to guarantee system uptime and service accessibility for its customers.
2
The manual process of filing incident reports and identifying the correct on-call specialist was inefficient and challenging, particularly at night, leading to high fixed costs for an underutilised team.
3
Devoteam recommended and implemented a fully computerised solution that automated system monitoring and incident alerts, making the physical control centre redundant and enabling its closure.
A Path to Modernisation
The financial services firm a.s.r. required guaranteed 24/7 uptime. Their control centre monitored systems and filed all incident reports manually. At night, finding the right on-call specialist became a genuine challenge because the unclear nature of a disruption made it difficult to identify the correct expert to wake up. Compounding the issue, the team’s workload was shrinking due to outsourcing. This left the company paying high fixed costs for an underutilised team. An urgent, more flexible solution was clearly needed.
If something went wrong or threatened to go wrong, the operator filed an incident report manually in our HP Service Manager ITSM system (HPSM) to find a specialist who could solve the problem. At night in particular that was a real quest because the nature of the disruption was not always clear, so you didn’t always know which colleague to wake up with a phone call.
Frans Boejé
a.s.r. Monitoring Specialist
Advisory Report
The company then commissioned Devoteam to produce an advisory report. Devoteam delivered a thorough and well-argued document that recommended fully computerising the operators’ work and dismantling the physical Control Centre. After concluding the plan was feasible, a.s.r. launched a new project to implement the recommendation.
Substantial Savings
Devoteam’s primary contribution was building the crucial technical interface. Their new solution automatically logs system warnings from a central dashboard into the incident management system, which then uses an alerting tool to notify the correct specialist by phone, text, or email. This powerful automation made the physical Control Centre redundant, allowing for its closure and substantial financial savings. Operators now handle alerts remotely from home. A single specialist remains on standby for critical night-time batch processing, but all other incident reports now flow through the new solution.
A Great Job
Naturally, we knew about Devoteam’s monitoring expertise, because they’d already done a lot for us. But this was a really great job that delivered big savings in just six months.
Frans Boejé
a.s.r. Monitoring Specialist
By replacing a.s.r.’s costly Control Centre, Devoteam delivered a smarter, automated alternative. This strategic shift produced substantial savings within just six months. Critical issues now find the right specialist instantly, ensuring seamless 24/7 service. These transformative IT modernisations provided immediate and tangible value for the clients.
The client achieved substantial financial savings within just six months.
The client automated its incident reporting to ensure critical issues instantly reach the correct specialist.
The finished project enabled the complete closure of its physical 24/7 Control Centre.