Allianz Partners saves over $1 million in potential outside agency fees with Workfront.

Allianz Partners relies on Workfront to more easily deliver quality work faster.

France
www.allianz-partners.com

$1M

Saved in potential agency fees

Products:

Adobe Workfront ›

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The challenge

Allianz Partners needed to replace a discontinued tool used by non-marketing departments to make work ticket requests of Creative and Compliance team members. With work coming from everywhere, small but growing teams sought to provide visibility into all requests, better manage deadlines, increase collaboration and simplify communication. A workflow solution was needed by the end of 2014 to help prioritise the work to make it more manageable because the organisation was expanding fast.

The Adobe Workfront solution

Allianz Partners quickly designed and implemented a creative project request replacement solution in Adobe Workfront. Soon after, other teams realised how expeditious and efficient the tool was and they wanted to use it for similar tasks such as: a request queue, a view for all work requests across teams and departments and the ability to prioritise work to ensure production in the most timely and efficient manner. It didn’t take long before individual team goals grew into enterprise-level realisations.

2015 — The implementation of Adobe Workfront focused on the growing of both the Creative and Compliance teams. The organisation consolidated four separate tools used for project management across multiple departments into one central work repository that made it possible to assess what work was requested, determine work volume and timing, eliminate work duplication and prioritise requests based on business needs — without inefficient customisation by team. User adoption more than doubled and the new workflow solution was presented to corporate-level executives.

2016 — The business teamed with Adobe to launch four more Market Management teams and a Product Provider team — all focused on supporting new processes and continuously optimising others. Priorities included building request queues, project templates, dashboards and real-time status reports, as well as introducing online proofing capabilities for automated reviews and approvals.

Allianz Partners used Adobe Workfront to establish more efficient workflows and new processes for employees working in its Market Management department. The company also implemented Regulatory Compliance as a separate entity and created automated workflows for compliance review and approval.

Shortly after, Product Provider joined the solution and the Implementations Department was activated. Several other teams and departments quickly followed.

“Evolutionary change has been impactful. We’ve gone from reacting to organising to scaling our work. Now, we can begin to optimise for full operational excellence. Workfront is giving us a competitive advantage not only in the U.S., but globally.”

Mary Ann Erickson, SA

Workflow Systems Engineer, Allianz Partners

2017 - Workfront Proof was introduced to deliver even more automation and faster approval turnaround across departments. Time tracking also was implemented, allowing for better estimation of project timelines as well as resource allocation and utilisation. Market Management teams replaced weekly work request review and status meetings with daily stand-ups, returning several hours per week back to team members. Daily decision-making for backlogue and prioritisation management was shifted to team managers which freed up time at the VP/Director levels for strategic initiatives.

2018 - Agile teams and workflows rolled out. The Business Intelligence & Analysis team was the first to introduce sprint planning and backlogue management within Workfront. User adoption increased. Executive-level reporting and data summary dashboards continued to give decision makers and team members across the world more visibility into the work being done, allowing for increased transparency and collaboration.

Allianz Partners’ success led to the launch of another Workfront instance for Allianz Partners Organisational Management at the company’s headquarters in Europe. The new instance introduced a global project request queue and collaborative project management for capital projects. Several departments at Allianz Global Assistance Canada also began implementation and requests for new work from other business units began to flow in.

Benefits

Employees at Allianz Partners have greater project consistency and the ability to work collaboratively on single initiatives as well as function cross-departmentally and cross-regionally. They also have significantly increased time available for strategic business initiatives. The insurer has saved money, notably reduced time spent on approvals and gained competitive advantage on a global scale with Workfront.

At Allianz Partners, Workfront has an 84% user satisfaction rate. It is helping the insurer move closer to enterprise-wide operational excellence and achieve benefits:

Saved over $1 million in potential outside agency fees Allianz Partners estimated a savings of more than $1 million in potential outside agency fees in 2017 by completing 500+ projects through its in-house agency.
Reduced regulatory compliance SLAs by 10 days or more The organisation’s 15-day SLA for marketing material regulatory compliance review was reduced to five days, with requests often receiving approvals within 24 hours of submission.
Passed global audit with flying colours Workfront streamlined internal audit processes by providing a single source of reference and process documentation for auditors.
Increased consistency and collaboration The organisation integrated multiple applications into one project management solution, reducing or eliminating the use of Access databases, Microsoft Excel and Project, PDF and email.
Allowed more time for strategic business initiatives Weekly project meetings for several large teams were replaced with daily stand-up meetings lasting 10 to 15 minutes.
Enhanced competitive advantage New workflow processes in Workfront allows high-performance talent to flourish. The result of greater simplification and efficiency in critical development teams helped grow sales by double digits.

“Evolutionary change has been impactful,” says Mary Ann Erickson, SA, Workflow Systems Engineer, Allianz Partners. “We’ve gone from reacting to organising to scaling our work. Now, we can begin to optimise for full operational excellence. Workfront is giving us a competitive advantage not only in the U.S., but globally.”