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The CIONET Cookbook comprises recipes for success from 25 of today’s most influential and dynamic information technology leaders, across all sectors of business.This is the result of our research and interviews with top Digital Leaders. The CIONET Cookbook uses the analogy of a five-star restaurant to explain the importance of optimally integrated technology.
Meanwhile dive in to the next recipe with our Masterchef Vanessa Escriva, CIO at MAPFRE.
Vanessa Escriva, corporate CIO of MAPFRE, is designing the technology strategy aimed at digitization, modernization of systems, redesign of technology processes and a new IT operating model, all this in parallel with the maintenance of the existing systems.
A key example includes building a hub instead of modernising current operations. Here, MAPFRE is adopting new architectures based on microservices and the open-source orchestration system Kubernetes. The aim of this work is to extract the full functionality from heritage processes as the company build new ones. MAPFRE is a global insurance company with a worldwide presence. It is the benchmark insurer in the Spanish market and the largest Spanish multinational insurance group in the world. The number one Non-Life insurance group in Latin America and one of the 15 largest European groups in terms of premium volume.
As an insurance group operating throughout the world, MAPFRE has depended historically on a decentralised organisational structure for IT operations. Of the company’s 2,000 IT resources, only 400 are located at the corporate centre under Vanessa’s direct control
However, several factors are now challenging this decentralised approach to business and IT operations in insurance, including:
This combination of market-disrupting factors means MAPFRE must undertake an end-to-end redesign of core processes and systems. This redesign will allow the company to deal with the challenges of dramatic improvements in speed and efficiency that characterise the new market environment in insurance.
Vanessa also recognises that local conditions vary considerably according to market maturity. This variability is particularly clear across Latin America. To be successful, she recognises that the company will need to maintain a broad range of product sets and channel activities. As Vanessa says: “There is no single solution to a global marketplace.”
Vanessa must help MAPFRE to balance these demands. As corporate CIO, she says the group centre will play a crucial role in helping the company’s local subsidiaries to reengineer IT and associated business operations in the coming years.
Laying out the vision for a future operating model
Vanessa’s vision for the group focuses on two main components. The first element recognizes that transforming legacy systems in the countries in which MAPFRE operates will take too long and cost too much. Instead, she is executing a parallel strategy. Instead, she is executing a parallel strategy.
In this parallel strategy, legacy processes will still be supported at the same time as the development of greenfield technology platforms. This parallel strategy will lower any potential risks to the business and will mean the IT organisation can focus on delivering entirely new IT operating models for each national organisation.
The second element of Vanessa’s vision is to establish processing hubs that will serve each region and create a common business platform for each subsidiary. These hubs will deliver economies of scale and ensure a standardised approach to technology across variable markets.
Vanessa gives as an example the financial process that is homogeneous for all operations and has allowed having a single version of SAP for more than 10 years, and the human resources processes, where the group has adopted the Success Factors cloud-based platform for general use in all its subsidiaries.
Vanessa has selected two key business processes for a greenfield development programme that will address end-to-end functionality:
As part of the process reengineering, Vanessa is applying automation, such as intelligent OCR, artificial intelligence and machine learning, to read incoming documents automatically and make better decisions on behalf of the business. The capturing of images associated with car crashes, for example, can be automated by using image-recognition technologies.
When it comes to legacy systems, Vanessa recognises that many of these processes will remain in operation for some time and will require incremental treatments. She is piloting robotic process automation as a means of streamlining existing systems and processes. She has installed several robots already in an attempt to measure potential business outcomes.
To enable the reengineering of vital business processes and the consolidation of back-office activities within regional hubs, Vanessa has taken a radical approach to IT operations across the group that centres on two key areas:
Vanessa is now adopting a coordinated approach to group IT policy, where she develops strategy and technical architecture for all subsidiaries. She is also assembling an associated toolset that will be used across the group to encourage knowledge sharing and the movement of expertise.
Many global organisations find it difficult to harmonise IT policies across an organisation that is set up as individual national units. The fast-changing nature of modern business, including the establishment of effective operations in the post-COVID age, means CIOs must adapt radical change. The only route to success is tighter central control and active investment in modern methods.
