Beazley ditches thin client terminals to offer modern mobile working
- Summary:
- Digital transformation in action at Beazley to ensure a tech-based future.
The insurance sector isn’t the first that springs to mind when it comes to embracing the digital era and modern ways of working.
As Dale Steggles, head of End User Technology at insurance firm Beazley, acknowledges, many of the organisation’s core workflows and processes still rely on on-premise applications and Excel spreadsheets. The office environment was the traditional set-up: rows of desks, with the firm’s 1,800 staff working from the same desk every day, logging into the same thin client device and not moving from there.
But this all began to change 18 months ago, when Beazley embarked on an activity-based working programme, precipitated by its employees no longer being happier with the old way of working. There weren’t enough collaborative zones, quiet spaces or focus areas, an employee survey highlighted, and so Beazley wanted to create different surroundings to break up its 29 offices dotted around the globe into zones, and provide a more flexible space with focus booths, lounge areas and cafés replacing the previous rows of desks.
Beazley turned to Citrix and its Workspace technology to underpin this new working programme, a firm it had already been working with for 10-plus years to support the rollout of new apps, office locations and M&A activity.
Despite Citrix’s thin client heritage, Beazley’s latest project will see the firm throw out those terminals, which Steggles points out don’t support the mobility staff are looking for, in favour of mobile devices. The business currently runs 1,300 thin clients, which will all be replaced with Microsoft Surface Books – chosen due to their integration with Office 365, the support for the complete Microsoft stack, and the insurance industry’s slant towards Excel for so many workflows and processes.
Citrix’s close partnership with Microsoft is a key attraction for Beazley, according to Steggles:
Previously there might have been a concern about how are Citrix going to remain relevant with all of the workloads moving to the cloud. It’s a question that I’ve been asked by my CIO. How is Citrix going to maintain itself when I’m getting told I can put everything in 365? To see the deep integration with Microsoft, that aggregation with the 365 apps through the Workspace app, that’s a great place to be.
The firm will also support staff working on any device they own and happen to want to use for work, like iPhones and Android smartphones. Steggles adds:
We’ve changed our corporate policy for mobiles to ‘we’re not going to issue you a mobile, we’ll stipend your service and then you can consume the apps and techs needed via ZenMobile to do the work you need to do wherever you are’.
While staff have been keen to get a more flexible workspace, the user experience on the devices and need to log into multiple apps has been less favourable. Beazley employees use a myriad of apps on any given day, from Concur to ServiceNow and various Office 365 apps, and the firm wanted a way to offer staff access to them easily and without the need to keep inputting different passwords.
Fortunately for Beazley, Citrix has just released a product that could answer this very issue, the Workspace App, which unifies and integrates all of an organisation’s applications into a single workspace that can be accessed with just a click of a button and no need to enter different credentials. Steggles says:
We’ve built that Workspace and it’s not been easy, it’s been a challenge. Lots of products from lots of different vendors, and trying to build that into a unified space had some challenges. Think of a Windows-based device, we have got Citrix Receiver installed, ShareFile installed, I might have some other product like a SaaS app shortcut.
It’s a little bit clunky to share files. To see that amalgamated in that unified workspace will dramatically improve the user experience. We have the capability now to integrate, and to augment and provide that single space, whether that’s as a native app or hit a Workspace URL.
Beazley plans to start piloting the Workspace App as soon as possible, and will be able to use the technology at no extra cost, as it is already a Citrix Cloud customer.
Paper culture
Another hurdle for the project is around the continued heavy reliance on paper; the company is investigating how touch-screen devices and e-signing software can help it offer a paperless experience. Steggles says:
Some of the workflows that happen in insurance and some of the products and technologies are a little antiquated, in that paper is still used quite a lot. As part of the programme we’re trying to become paper independent so we don’ t have to print off paper to go and get a signature.
We’re taking ShareFile and RightSignature capabilities to the forefront of the user experience. That’s a challenge, that’s a fundamental shift to how the user has worked for the last 10 or 20 years in some cases. The training to just adjust the mind set, it’s been an interesting journey to get involved with.
While Beazley is updating its workplace model to reflect the modern era, the firm is taking a slower journey to the cloud. Many of its core systems are hosted on-premise, with less critical functions like development workloads sat in the cloud. This is due to the many legacy apps used across the insurance sector, Steggles says:
The communications requirements and latency don’t necessarily blend themselves that nicely to some of the legacy insurance applications that are around. The legacy landscape can prohibit moving all of our workloads to the cloud.
While Steggles adds there is a desire to move workflows off premise, this will likely take another five or 10 years, with certain groups of employees being used as test cases:
We might have 100 people who don’t use anything bar the Office suite. Are they then the perfect candidate to move their workloads? That’s something we’re evaluating. Are we able to identify the users based on their patterns, that actually they don’t need to sit on-premise, they can consume their apps through the cloud. If they then need an on-premise resource, they can consume that through a published app.
As and when Beazley decides to go ahead with this new model, one of the first steps it will take is to involve and educate its staff. Steggles explains:
Some users don’t like change. The biggest thing is to actually engage with the user base, be clear on communications. We had engineering sit in with the users to understand is it right for exactly the workflows they’re trying to do. Users today, given the experience they can get on their mobiles, they like to know how things work. So provide regular updates, and show them how it really works.