In the wake of the pandemic, new ways of working and an increasing focus on technology have enabled forward-looking companies to better rebuild their digital transformation journey.

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 since the beginning, says Narasimhan Partha, its group’s chief technology officer. “We were one of the pioneers of the e-commerce industry in the financial arena, as far as insurance is concerned,” he said.

Being “born digital” means DirectAsia is focused on constant optimization rather than digital transformation, according to Ronnie Brown, director of marketing and distribution. He is dedicated to improving customers’ experience with the brand and, in doing so, ensuring a more efficient and profitable business.

“We make insurance available to people anywhere, anytime and on any device. This channel-neutral approach is what drives the company,”

During pandemic shutdowns, like most businesses, DirectAsia needed to quickly enable all staff to work remotely, and of course cybersecurity was paramount, Partha said. “We have always allowed employees to work wherever they are, without compromising anything in terms of safety,” he said.

A secure focus

DirectAsia is particularly innovative when it comes to cybersecurity, a growing concern for all businesses, but especially those that handle customer data. It ranks highly when it comes to its security score from ratings firm BitSight, Partha said. “Pipeline security is monitored in real time to identify and react to any new vulnerabilities, with adequate defenses implemented to secure it,” he explained.

“Security is something you don’t get a second chance with. And when there is a breach, it hits the organization, in terms of resilience and brand. Potential hackers wait for companies to make a fake not,” Partha added.

The company found new ways to combine seamless remote access with security during the pandemic. He began implementing SASE, which stands for Secure Access Service Edge: a converged, software-defined network and security framework that combines network capabilities with cloud security to provide secure and optimized access to all users and applications.

DirectAsia, with its online insurance business, applies zero trust principles across its networks to implement SASE in its environment. Tata Communications has engaged with DirectAsia to move them from a data center based network security model to a SASE based model.

Tata Communications works across businesses to power their digital transformation journeys with bespoke SASE solutions. This allows customers to have a more objective view of the anticipated costs and complexities of managing network and security infrastructure: a huge benefit, especially as it comes with a cost of ownership inferior.

“DirectAsia has moved from a world where the cloud was not predominant to a world that is becoming increasingly cloud-centric, and that is an exciting change.

“DirectAsia has moved from a world where the cloud was not predominant to a world that is becoming increasingly cloud-centric, and that is an exciting change.

If we take a deeper look at its network and security architecture and design principles, you will see that the front-end architecture, applications, user access, network visibility and policy management are all designed keeping in mind how customers will experience the DirectAsia brand. “, 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 in addition to focusing on zero-trust networks and managed security, Tata Communications’ main areas of collaboration with their customers are three-fold: improving cost ratios, increase revenue and improve NPS by transforming the customer experience. “Companies have a clear mandate to go digital first,” Sarkar said.

Improved customer experience

In May, Tata Communications launched a networked cloud communication platform, DIGOwhich is based on the principles of convergence, context and conversation.

It provides bespoke workflow designs and APIs, integrating components such as omnichannel communications, vendor-neutral conversational AI, H2X connectors, and translation capabilities. It provides customer-oriented workflows for real-time customer experience optimization.

“DIGO helps organizations build APIs, which integrate into the contact center or conversational AI platform, or commerce application – it’s device and platform independent “Sarkar said. “It gives a new layer of depth for companies like DirectAsia and other financial services companies in terms of customer experience.”

Having top-notch security and a seamless customer experience is a priority, Brown said. “As an insurance company, we’re essentially selling a promise: if things go wrong, we’ll help you fix them. 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 to building trust,” he added.

This, of course, applies to claims, which is the main pain point for customers in their insurance journey, and which DirectAsia makes as transparent as possible: before the pandemic, it was settling around 95% of claims within 24 hours, and many of these were done over the phone, which is what customers prefer. DirectAsia also has a rating of 4.7 out of 5 on review site Feefo. Its approach to digital progress is to test and learn, to do things inexpensively upfront and to think incrementally, Brown said.

Companies must continue to operate “as usual” while managing their digital transformations, Partha added. “For an organization like ours, we have to fix the bus while it’s on the move. 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