How Seguros SURA transformed its collaborative environment across nine countries

Seguros SURA, one of the largest Latin American companies in the insurance industry: Gestora de Trends y Riesgos, faced a great challenge: The communication and collaboration tools between subsidiaries were so different that, instead of facilitating cooperation, they were hindering the company’s efficiency. And this was before COVID made remote work and social distancing a necessity. To increase productivity, they needed to center themselves around a single set of tools, which required unifying the culture of a geographically dispersed team. They made the decision to focus the organizational culture and, through a series of training sessions throughout the subsidiaries of Suramericana S.A., achieved a truly successful adoption that brought enormous benefits.

In this interview, we speak with executives from Suramericana S.A. who were involved in this digital transformation and Microsoft.

FA: What was the challenge facing Suramericana S.A. regarding collaboration between subsidiaries, and what strategies and implementation processes helped them overcome it?

MSFT: The company’s IT team faced a great challenge: Each of its subsidiaries in the region used different communication tools, developed by different technology providers. The IT team quickly understood that this challenge was highly complex, as it implied that SURA would have to transform, not only in terms of collaboration, but in terms of culture.

The situation warranted all subsidiaries to supplement their existing platforms with a single platform. To that end, SURA began a migration process to the cloud to transform its internal collaboration, consolidating a central platform for its collaboration and communication system throughout the region.

Elkin Emilio Piedrahita, Connectivity and Collaboration Analyst at SURA Colombia: To carry out the project, SURA adapted each implementation, divided into modules, to the particular needs of each country, starting with a migration supported by our partner and their FastTrack program. Throughout the process, the IT team supported each country during the design of a technology adoption journey, leveraged by training sessions for workers, where technical and organizational issues were addressed.

What examples can you give us of transformation efforts in specific subsidiaries?

MSFT: In El Salvador, we helped transform the group’s medical consultations with Teams Bookings; in Colombia and El Salvador, Suramericana S.A. leveraged the platform’s features to revolutionize its telephony system and move it to the cloud, and in Argentina, SURA managed to democratize data management with Power BI.

Let’s start with the SURA subsidiary in El Salvador. How did SURA’s medical consultation service benefit?

MSFT: With the arrival of the pandemic, the community of doctors and clients of ASESUISA, a SURA company born in El Salvador that offers protection solutions for its clients, faced difficulties adapting their healthcare consultations to the social distancing guidelines imposed in the country. In response to the challenge, ASESUISA turned to Teams Bookings, where it hosted a telemedicine service specifically dedicated to its community of clients and doctors.

Alex Sorto, Operations and Technology Manager at ASESUISA: Today, with Teams Bookings, patients can schedule and even attend medical consultations, all from the comfort of their home. In addition, the platform offers shared scheduling and calendar features for patients to book an appointment with their specialist, synchronizing both parties’ agendas.

In the Colombian and El Salvador subsidiaries, why was a change in the established communication systems necessary, and what impact did it have?

MSFT: Colombia and El Salvador had the same challenge: Their telephone systems were obsolete, and they had high supplier and hardware costs. In response, both subsidiaries decided to adopt Microsoft Phone System. They replaced their PBX (Private Branch Exchange) system with a set of communication features integrated with Microsoft 365 and their cloud experience. The benefits were extraordinary: Both Colombia and El Salvador were able to forego their physical telephone devices and integrate the Microsoft Teams online communication experience with that of external calls. Today, between 18,000 and 23,000 people connect daily in Microsoft Teams, and 436 users use the platform’s telephony.

And in the Argentine subsidiary, how did you democratize data management?

MSFT: After evaluating the needs of the different business areas, including IT, and seeing what the tool allowed them to do, SURA Argentina evaluated Power BI as the best and only reporting tool for the company. The autonomy and agility provided by the tool allows each user to generate their own dashboard and have key information about requests, collections, claims and KPI results.

Daniel Cano, BI Leader in SURA Argentina: Once the decision was made, we migrated all the reports that we had available, as well as what we had published in our previous reporting system, to Power BI. The differential was that the solution was adapted to the needs of the user who works with the data, and not only those of the consumer.

Since this transition has taken place, how has the organizational culture of Suramericana S.A. changed?

Luis Ramos Espinoza, Vice President TI Suramericana S.A .: Generally, companies have an organizational culture that defines them. In our case, Microsoft 365 has come to enhance that culture, and this is reflected in the way that all Suramericana employees connect, work as a team and lead a seamless daily routine, even in the context of a pandemic.

Juana Francisca Llano Cadavid, President of Suramericana S.A.: Regardless of the pandemic, we have found the balance between the physical and the digital. SURA’s priority is to continue mixing these two worlds in a concept that we call “Phygital”, to give the user total freedom when choosing when to work in a physical office and when to do it virtually. Although some activities are still face-to-face, our greatest lesson was to complement the teams with digital connections that optimize these activities.

When it comes to understanding the stages involved in digital transformation, the pandemic was a great learning experience and going back is not an option for this Colombian giant.

To learn more about the case of Suramericana S.A., click here.