AXA Assicurazioni e Investimenti boosts performance of e-business infrastructure, support operations with CA`s Unicenter

Computer Associates International, Inc (CA) today announced that AXA Assicurazioni e Investimenti, an Italian subsidiary of AXA, one of the world`s largest insurance and financial services providers, has deployed CA`s acclaimed Unicenter solutions to automate IT maintenance and support operations - thereby maximising its operating efficiency while boosting customer service levels.

A leading Italian insurance provider serving 1.7 million customers, AXA Assicurazioni e Investimenti manages an extended network of claims management centres throughout Italy and supports more than 800 exclusive agents.

To reduce the complexity and cost of supporting its geographically distributed workforce and its IT resources, AXA Assicurazioni e Investimenti carefully evaluated infrastructure management offerings and determined that only Unicenter provided the rich functionality and ease of use necessary to efficiently maintain, troubleshoot, and support the nearly 4 000 network-connected PCs in its nationwide offices and agencies.

By deploying CA`s Web-enabled Unicenter ServicePlus Service Desk, AXA Assicurazioni e Investimenti has effectively simplified its support operations and is now able to provide a more consistent level of service to its distributed agencies throughout the country. Service inquiries are now automatically managed, assigned priorities, and monitored by Unicenter ServicePlus Service Desk, enabling AXA Assicurazioni e Investimenti technicians to concentrate on other tasks and ensuring their agents enjoy faster resolution of their support issues.

"By supplying our support functions with a powerful system, Unicenter ServicePlus Service Desk has improved our response capability," said Massimo Buffa, head of procurement, telecom, system and security department, AXA Assicurazioni e Investimenti. "Based on the success we have experienced with Unicenter ServicePlus Service Desk, we are planning to extend its deployment to facilitate other business-critical support requirements."

"Our agents will be able to contact motorcar business support people through both a web mailing service and an Interactive Voice Responder," said Maurizio Rain`o, head of claims and portfolio motorcar office in Milan department, AXA Assicurazioni e Investimenti. "Both mail and IVR will automatically activate a ticket on Unicenter ServicePlus Service Desk to the right people, who will answer immediately by selecting the priority code."

AXA Assicurazioni e Investimenti technicians also utilise Unicenter Remote Control to troubleshoot PC devices without leaving their desks - significantly reducing the confusion, time and resource costs associated with resolving issues on machines in nearly one thousand different physical locations.

AXA Assicurazioni e Investimenti is also deploying Unicenter Asset Management to automatically create and maintain an accurate inventory of AXA Assicurazioni e Investimenti enterprise-wide IT assets and software configurations. This makes it easy for the company to avoid wasteful resource duplications as well as potentially costly violations of software licenses.

"In addition to being impressed with the powerful functionality of the Unicenter modules, we have also been very pleased with their seamless integration and ease of deployment. As a result, we have seen a very quick return on our investment," said Buffa. "We are equally pleased with the tremendous support we have received from CA Services, which ensured that AXA Assicurazioni e Investimenti - as well as our demanding broker agencies - has fully experienced all the benefits of the Unicenter modules in as little time as possible."

"Companies build competitive advantage by doing things faster, more consistently, and more efficiently," said Marco Lusardi, regional manager, CA Services. "AXA Assicurazioni e Investimenti`s experience with Unicenter demonstrates that CA`s award-winning e-business management solution can rapidly deliver such competitive advantages to today`s technology-dependent companies."