Industry
Insurance
Headquarters
Switzerland
Revenues
$7 billion
The Challenge
Helvetia has a long tradition. In over 150 years, it has grown from a number of Swiss and foreign insurance brands into a successful insurance group that does business in six European countries.
Today, around 7,000 employees serve more than 4.7 million customers. At the beginning of 2014, Helvetia joined forces with the former Nationale Suisse insurance company. Besides new growth they wanted to realize economies of scale amounting to over €100 million per year.
After the merger, IT had to balance multiple priorities: First, they needed to ensure business continued its operations as usual. Second, they had to combine the IT departments of the former Nationale Suisse and the “New Helvetia.” Finally, they needed to provide IT support for the integration of all business processes, such as transferring thousands of insurance policies and claims dossiers while keeping the overall target architecture in mind.
“The agile, lightweight and fast to implement approach of LeanIX fits the needs of the IT organization with distributed responsibilities while following a central governance. It allows my team to establish an increased IT transparency across country borders.“
Silvio Hefti,
Group CIO Helvetia
The Solution
A best-in-class IT management ecosystem
To execute a successful IT merger, an overarching transparency is essential.
The IT management needed answers to questions such as:
To meet this challenge, Helvetia relies on an ecosystem of best in class IT management tools. LeanIX is the backbone of Helvetia’s strategic application intelligence management. In combination with other IT management tools, it provides a 360-degree view on technology data in a business context.
A sound basis for decisions
The Confluence Wiki integration allows IT to link documentation directly to applications, as well as to publish LeanIX reports to Confluence projects. As a next step, IT also planned to show development tickets and architecture decisions from Jira as LeanIX heatmaps.
In the context of the IT merger, LeanIX best practice reports served as a basis for many decisions. The matrix visualization of the complex relationships between applications, user groups and business capability domains helped to make the right decision on the target landscape of the new Helvetia. For technical planning, the LeanIX visualizer provided necessary information on existing data flows, interfaces and technology.
LeanIX visualizer provided necessary information on existing data flows, interfaces and technology
Enterprise Architecture services for the group
Balancing the requirements of IT integration in a merger requires a solid communication basis between technology leaders and business management. The Enterprise Architecture (EA) team around Group CIO, Silvio Hefti, therefore follows an Enterprise Architecture approach with central governance, but shared responsibilities.
The EA team provides up-to-date knowledge about the IT landscape to the group. Whenever they can provide value for a team, they share their knowledge and experience in short workshops that have already delivered initial results. After these workshops, the EA team provides further support and involves the teams in short data sprints to improve the knowledge on the Helvetia IT landscape on an ongoing basis.
The Success
In the first half of 2015, Helvetia was able to reduce redundancies and realize substantial savings.
In their half-year report they reported IT as a major contributor to these savings. Establishment of transparency was a crucial first step towards doing so.
Today, the established LeanIX inventory serves as the single source of truth that strategic IT management decisions are based on.
“We get insight faster and better than before. The information contained in LeanIX enables projects to start faster and decreases ramp-up costs.”
Silvio Hefti, Group CIO Helvetia
Don't take our word for it - read about what our customers experienced and how LeanIX helped them to implement a successful EA practice.
Success Story
How Helvetia Successfully Consolidated Two IT Landscapes in the Nationale..
Balancing priorities and integrating business processes to create a single source of truth for IT management.
Success Story
How Otis Reached Enterprise Architecture Maturity in 30 Days
Otis Worldwide Corporation (Otis) is the world’s leading company for elevator and escalator manufacturing, installation, and service. Their solutions transport 2 billion passengers, across 2 million..
Success Story
How Rödl & Partner Drives its Digital Agenda with LeanIX
“For CIOs like me, LeanIX offers real-time dashboards with the most relevant data and analytics on IT landscapes needed for managing operations."
Success Story
How Pinellas County Digitizes Government Services for Its Citizens
From disarray to harmony: a victory with Enterprise Architecture and Application Portfolio Management.
Success Story
How HAWORTH Accelerates Global Growth With a Joint Information Platform..
Operating in 126 countries, learn how Haworth accelerated high-quality data collection and inventorying using LeanIX.
Success Story
How EBSCO Information Services Implemented a Data-Driven Enterprise..
How EBSCO established a single source of truth with LeanIX.
Success Story
How DTU Uses LeanIX to Optimize IT Resources
A research institute like the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), one of the country's and Europe's most renowned engineering schools, is a perfect place to observe the impact of dynamic..
Success Story
How Gruner + Jahr Perform Multi-Cloud Governance With LeanIX Cloud..
A look at Gruner + Jahr's achievements in multi-cloud governance using LeanIX Cloud Intelligence.
Success Story
How Donner & Reuschel AG Reduce IT Complexity with LeanIX
"LeanIX has helped even those in my company who are not enterprise architects. Thanks to this tool, more disciplines can interact together.”
Success Story
Growing an Enterprise Architecture Program with Nürnberger Versicherung
“Before the LeanIX EA Management tool, it was impossible for us to see the bigger picture of our digital transformation strategy.”
Success Story
A Greenfield Approach to IT Modernization with C&A and LeanIX
“By providing on-demand, accurate, and configurable overviews of our changing IT landscapes, C&A’s EA team has used LeanIX to work closer with our executive teams and accelerate its digital retail..
Success Story
How Innogy SE Uses LeanIX and Apptio to Enable Cost Transparency
Providing cost transparency in a complex IT landscape
Success Story
How NORMA Group Uncovered Significant Rationalization Potential in Its..
NORMA Group acquired 13 companies without having an IT integration strategy. What happened once they finally decided to harmonize it all?
Success Story
How Nottingham University has Redefined Student Support Processes
Check out how Nottingham University redefined their student support processes by defining a single source of truth and reduced manual effort with LeanIX.
Success Story
How AMAG Prepares Their SAP Landscape for the Digital Age
How the Swiss automotive giant operates its massive SAP-based landscape using collaborative and efficient EA practices.
Success Story
How RUAG Harmonized Their Post-Merger IT Landscape with a Virtual EA Team
Why it needs a transparent IT inventory to properly run its business.
Success Story
How Compass Group Australia built an EA practice from scratch
How a small EA team was able to collaborate with an agile enterprise architecture tool to manage Shadow/Ghost IT.