Outsurance, the new-generation short-term insurance company in the FirstRand Group, has implemented Peregrine AssetCenter from CCH Enterprise Solutions as part of a proactive initiative to bring its IT assets under control.
Outsurance is South Africa`s fastest growing insurer, selling direct and using IT to gain competitive advantage. Its market edge is based on its ability to provide a payback to all policyholders, as encapsulated in its marketing slogan, "You always get something out."
It has grown rapidly since launching in February 1998, and with the acquisition and absorption of First National Insurance earlier this year, its staff quotient has ballooned to 320 people, of whom 276 are employed in the call centre to fulfil direct client interactions. With this growth, its volume of capitalised assets now exceeds 2 500 items, including PCs, notebooks, servers, furniture and fittings and PDAs.
"Asset management is an endemic problem," says Howard Aron, executive director of Outsurance. "It`s best to bring it under control when it`s still new and manageable. When we were a relatively small company it was easy to manage our assets, and we did so on stock-standard spreadsheets. Now that we`re more than 300 people, with a growing number of assets to bring under management, we need the tightest possible control with the least consumption of resources. As early as 1998 we identified the need for comprehensive asset management to support our overall focus and dependency on IT."
Outsurance was first brought to market based on an identified market shortcoming, says Aron. "The gap we saw was for a direct insurer that could address the problems people tend to have with short-term insurance," says Aron, "typically that where they invest over a long period but get nothing back. We identified and reviewed the market`s shortcomings and created products to fulfil clients` needs."
Faced with the unique opportunity of creating a greenfield operation, Aron and his management team developed systems that gave them a significant competitive advantage over companies running classic legacy platforms. Among these were an HP 9000 server, also supplied by CCH, which provides very high levels of reliability.
As policy, Outsurance keeps its IT as lean as possible, with a support team of no more than three and development team of five for staff of more than 300.
"Providing a small team with control has meant a high level of automation, focus and control, which is where Peregrine came in," says Aron. "There were other choices on the market, but I had had extensive exposure to senior CCH people and was persuaded by their vision of infrastructure management. In addition, I had familiarised myself with the value proposition of Peregrine, which is the unquestioned Rolls Royce of this market."
Outsurance has implemented Peregrine AssetCenter with integrated Web interface and network discovery. "This provides a centralised solution with which we can begin managing all assets around the country," says Aron, "from acquisition to disposal. AssetCenter automatically determines what we have and reports centrally. If there`s any change, it is reported automatically, which will reduce the scope for pilferage.
"AssetCenter will be managed by an accountant rather than an IT person," adds Aron, "which will ensure we have an accurate asset register. This is vital, as few companies can provide a correlation between what`s on their asset register and what they actually possess. It will also ease ongoing maintenance of assets."
Aron notes that implementation of AssetCenter by the Peregrine team at CCH Enterprise Solutions has been professional, and he expects to go live on schedule before year-end.
"Being able to understand just what assets you have and then manage those assets through their lifecycle is becoming vital in an era of IT dependency," says Allen Lewis, Peregrine GM at CCH Enterprise Solutions.
"This has its greatest value when it is factored in up-front, as Outsurance has done, and they should enjoy rapid return on investment."
Share