Allianz is improving communication and collaboration with Salesforce

Being better means being more disciplined, faster and smarter. It means providing good value for customers and development for employees. Salesforce.com is helping Allianz Australia achieve all these things.

“We have a complicated business,” said Tasos Hatzimichailidis, General Manager Sales Operations & Transformation, Allianz Australia. “We have multiple insurance products, which we distribute through 12 different business units. We have a number of business units operating independently. Four years ago we set out to create major efficiencies through connecting those units and establishing a shared set of strategic processes.”

One of these was a consistent sales process. Each business unit was reporting in its own way. Account managers were spending a lot of time chasing reports and gathering information to understand their customers – predominately sales partners or brokers.

Tasos said, “In addition to setting up a consistent sales process, we wanted to make sure our people had all the information they needed through to point of sale. Say you’re hopping on a sales call, you need a complete view of the customer to have a meaningful conversation.”

Several business units were already using Sales Cloud but without sharing information or integrating with other systems. So, the company created a new instance of Sales Cloud which integrated completely with existing systems and spanned multiple business units.

There are now 1,500 Sales Cloud users across 14 business units regularly updating and accessing customer information for a single company-wide view of the data. More importantly, 600 account managers are equipped to make better decisions and be more effective.

Tasos said, “Our account managers come into work in the morning, log on and have a complete view of their sales activities. They can view information by customer or product. They can see what leads are coming through from a particular broker. Sales Cloud gives them the knowledge and power to manage opportunities and increase sales.”

Efficiency is through the roof. Account managers have reported timesavings of up to 30% as they no longer have to gather information from multiple sources. And the Salesforce Mobile App gives them a 360-degree view of customers from anywhere, generating further on the road efficiencies.

Allianz Australia’s underwriters are also reaping the benefits. Sales Cloud gives them a rich view of the customer relationship, which helps to inform pricing.  

All of this has helped Allianz Australia grow 50% faster than the market over the last four years - an amazing achievement in a very competitive market.

Sales Cloud has become more than a CRM tool for Allianz Australia. They use it to create targets and KPIs for their people and it’s driving phenomenal growth.

“Sales Cloud is now powering our performance excellence process. We can establish targets for products and accounts and filter these KPIs down to individuals.”

Tasos continued, “It’s giving our people and partners clarity around targets and boosting engagement and performance.”

Allianz Australia is now building on these benefits by giving people real-time information on how they’re tracking against their targets. They’re also helping people stay motivated through on the spot feedback, coaching and rewards.

Salesforce Chatter has become the business’ primary internal collaboration tool and is increasing effectiveness and efficiency – these days conversations and file sharing take place in Chatter’s social feed for faster response.

Tasos said, “Adoption took time but in the past year we saw a 600% increase in posts on relevant topics and accounts. It’s now providing visibility of opportunities across account teams and being leveraged in a way that’s driving more and more profitable business.”

Allianz Australia is also looking at Salesforce Communities to engage sales partners. Communities gives partners real-time access to customer and market insights. It makes collaboration on accounts and joint marketing campaigns easy.

“It’s early days but the benefits are clear,” explained Tasos. “Strong strategic alignment and sharing of information with partners fuels growth on both sides. It enables us to better understand our customers and deliver good value.”

He continued, “Salesforce.com has given us a platform to grow and run our business. We’re now looking at how we can extend our investment in the platform to become even better.”