2022-07-20T12:55:47Z In the wake of the pandemic, new ways of working and an increasing focus on technology have meant that forward-looking companies can build back better in terms of their digital transformation journey.
Being digital-first has always been at the heart of travel insurance company DirectAsia's business strategy. Founded in Singapore in 2010, it has been selling products directly to consumers online from the word go, explains Narasimhan Partha, its group chief technology officer. "We have been one of the pioneers in the e-commerce industry in the financial space, as far as insurance is concerned," he said.
Being 'born digital' means DirectAsia is focused on constant optimization rather than requiring digital transformation, according to chief marketing and distribution officer Ronnie Brown. It is dedicated to improving customers' experiences with the brand, and in doing so, ensuring a more efficient and profitable business.
"We're making insurance available for people in any place, at any time and across any device. That channel-agnostic approach is what drives the business."
During the pandemic lockdowns, like most firms DirectAsia needed to swiftly enable all staff to work remotely, and of course cybersecurity was paramount, said Partha. "We have always enabled employees to work from wherever they are, without compromising anything in terms of security," he stated.
A secure focus
DirectAsia is particularly innovative when it comes to cybersecurity — an increasing concern for all businesses, but especially those that handle customers' data. It ranks very highly when it comes to its security score from ratings company BitSight, Partha said. "The security of the pipeline is monitored in real-time to identify and react to any new vulnerabilities, with adequate defenses being implemented to make it secure," he explained.
"Security is something that you don't have a second chance with. And when there is a breach, it hits the organization, in terms of resilience and brand. Potential hackers are waiting for companies to make one wrong move," Partha added.
The company found new ways to combine seamless remote access with security during the pandemic. It has started to implement SASE, which stands for Secure Access Service Edge: A converged and software-defined network and security framework, which couples network capabilities with cloud security to deliver secure and optimized access to all users and applications.
DirectAsia, with its online insurance business, is applying zero trust principles across its networks to implement SASE in its environment. Tata Communications is engaged with DirectAsia to move them from a data center-based network security model to one that is SASE-based.
Tata Communications works across enterprises to power their digital transformation journeys with bespoke SASE solutions. This allows customers to have a more objective view on the anticipated costs and complexities of managing the networking and security infrastructure: A huge advantage, especially as it comes with a lower cost of ownership tag.
"DirectAsia has moved from a world where cloud was not prominent to one that is increasingly becoming cloud-first, and that's an exciting shift.
"DirectAsia has moved from a world where cloud was not prominent to one that is increasingly becoming cloud-first, and that's an exciting shift.If one looks deeper into its network and security architecture and design principles, you'll see that the front-end architecture, applications, user access, network visibility, and policy management are all built keeping in mind the way customers will experience the brand DirectAsia," explained Amitabh Sarkar, vice president for Asia Pacific at Tata Communications.
In the wake of the pandemic and the world embracing all things hybrid, Sarkar says that along with focus on zero trust networks and managed security, Tata Communications' key areas of collaboration with their clients are threefold: Improving cost ratios, increasing revenue, and improving NPS by transforming customer experience. "Companies have a clear mandate to become digital first," Sarkar said.
Upgrading customer experience
In May, Tata Communications launched an in-network cloud communications platform, DIGO, which is built on the principles of being converged, contextual, and conversational.
It provides bespoke workflow designs and APIs, integrating components like omni-channel communications, vendor agnostic conversational AI, H2X connectors, and translation capabilities. It delivers customer-facing workflows for customer experience optimization in real-time.
"DIGO helps organizations to build APIs, which integrate into the contact center or the conversational AI platform, or the commerce application — it is device and platform agnostic," Sarkar said. "This gives a new layer of depth for companies like DirectAsia and other financial services businesses in terms of customer experience."
Having top-level security and seamless customer experience is a priority, said Brown. "As an insurance company, we're essentially selling a promise: If things go wrong, we'll help you put them right. Trust and credibility are even more important than when selling a physical product. What we invest in our brand and how we act are crucial in driving trust," he added.
This, of course, applies to claims, which is the main pain point for customers on their insurance journey, and one that DirectAsia makes as seamless as possible: Pre-pandemic it was settling around 95% of claims within 24 hours, and many of those were made over the phone, which customers prefer. DirectAsia also has a 4.7 out of 5 rating on reviews site Feefo. Its approach to digital progress is to test and learn, do things in an inexpensive way initially, and to think incrementally, Brown said.
Companies must continue to operate "business as usual" while managing their digital transformations, Partha added. "For an organization like ours, we need to fix the bus while it is in motion. That's the nature of the beast and that's why incremental changes go a long way," he said.
This post was created by Insider Studios with Tata Communications.
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