Geir Tveraaen

Global Head of Marketing Procurement Zurich

In the past 12 months Geir has insourced Zurich’s social media monitoring to one of Shared Service Centres in Barcelona. The success of this project is shown by the quality of services performed by the team, the increased demand for the services provided across the organisation beyond marketing and communications, and finally by the growth of the team into new areas beyond traditional monitoring in order to improve customer experience and capture innovation and improvements. Not only did this lower our overall costs, but the quality of servicing by building knowledge and skills internally have provided tremendous value to the organisation beyond expectations. 

The main barrier with this project was the lack of appetite to take on the risk of hiring FTEs to build a team dedicated to providing these services. It was a true collaboration between procurement, marketing and their HR team to source the right technology, people and put in place the right process for the project to succeed. By providing a comprehensive business case beyond mere cost savings, by focusing on the total value provided and potential opportunity, key decision makers were convinced of the merit of the project. 

Digital innovation is driving tremendous change in customer experience within the insurance sector. Procurement needs to be at the forefront of enabling trial and innovation of new technology required by marketing, communications and other customer facing functions. The key goal in the coming months will be to enable stakeholders to work with existing and new suppliers to foster true value creation through close partnerships, risk management, speed and good commercial practices.