Microsoft Office System
Customer Solution Case Study
Insurance Company Ensures Consistency in
Quotations with New Collaboration Solution
Overview
Country: Indonesia
Industry: Financial services—Insurance
Customer Profile
PT Asuransi Allianz Utama Indonesia
(Allianz Indonesia) is a member of the
global Allianz Group. It provides life and
non-life insurance to clients in Indonesia
through 7 branches, 20 smaller service
centers, and many agents nationwide.
Business Situation
In order to get the least expensive offer,
clients asked for quotations from the
agent, the branch, and the head office.
Allianz Indonesia faced challenges
managing which version of an insurance
quote was offered to a client and ensuring
consistency.
Solution
Allianz Indonesia used Microsoft® Office
Groove® 2007 to support collaboration and
to ensure that only one version of a
quotation is used by the agent, the branch,
and the head office.
Benefits
 Synchronized workspace folder
 Ability to collaborate offline
 Ensured consistency
 Faster search
 Improved security features
“As Groove works by synchronizing the workspace, it
helps us solve the versioning problem, expedites timeto-market, and enables us to collaborate even when
some of us are offline.”
Erwin Purwadarma, Chief Information Officer, Information Technology, Allianz Indonesia
PT Asuransi Allianz Utama Indonesia (Allianz Indonesia) offers life
and non-life insurance policies to customers across Indonesia.
Issuing consistent price quotations was a challenge, as insurance
agents had no effective way of ensuring that their quotations would
match the ones offered by a branch or by the head office. Although
agents used e-mail to exchange information, keeping track of the
versions and identifying which version was most recent was almost
impossible. Allianz Indonesia decided to become the first company
in Indonesia to pilot Microsoft® Office Groove® 2007. Because
Office Groove 2007 helps ensure effective collaboration, all
representatives now work with the most up-to-date version of a
quotation, and customers receive consistent information.
Situation
“Quotations can be
reviewed and revised as
necessary, and when
the agents connect to
the branch or the head
office, they will get the
right version as their
Groove workspaces are
synchronized.”
Erwin Purwadarma, Chief Information Officer,
Information Technology, PT Asuransi Allianz
Utama Indonesia
PT Asuransi Allianz Utama Indonesia (Allianz
Indonesia) is a subsidiary of the global
insurer and financial services provider Allianz
Group. Established in Indonesia in 1981 as a
joint venture among Allianz Asia Pacific &
Africa GmbH and two local insurance
companies, PT Asuransi Jasa Indonesia and
PT Asuransi Wuwungan, PT Allianz Utama
Indonesia has always remained on the
leading edge of the information technology
wave. Today, it has 282 employees, 7
branches, and 20 smaller service centers—
also called points of sales—throughout
Indonesia.
Upon requests from their clients, Allianz
Indonesia’s agents regularly produce
insurance quotes. Clients also sometimes
request quotes from branches and even the
head office. Often, the same client tries to
obtain three different quotations from three
different sources in order to find the best
deal.
Many of Allianz Indonesia’s smaller service
center locations are not connected online
with the branches or the head office.
Therefore, agents rely on fax and the
telephone to get quotations reviewed or
approved by supervisors. However, faxes are
sometimes misplaced or lost, and when this
happens, clients are given the wrong version
of the quotation.
“We had situations in which quotations were
flying around between the head office, the
branches, and the agents, and no one knew
which was the right version for the client,”
explains Erwin Purwadarma, Chief
Information Officer, Information Technology,
PT Asuransi Allianz Utama Indonesia.
Allianz Indonesia needed to create a single
version of the quotation that would be placed
in the company’s portal and could then be
used by agents, branch offices, and the head
office, This way, no matter from where the
client requests a quote, the company would
be able to provide a client with exactly the
same information on the policy and
premiums..
Distribution of quotations to clients was
another challenge. Agents often had multiple
versions of the same quotation residing on
their computers, which would invariably lead
to confusion. Documents were distributed as
e-mail attachments; however, e-mail was not
a viable alternative. Keeping track of different
versions was difficult and time-consuming.
And, there was also always a chance, if one
of the underwriters or agents was not copied
on an e-mail, that vital information would be
missed.
Purwadarma adds, “A quotation may also be
revised a couple of times in a day. How can
we control the versions that have been
distributed among the agents but are no
longer valid?”
In addition, collaborating on the quotation
involved a lot of reconciling. Each of the
agents and underwriters might have made
revisions on the quotation that they had on
their portable computers. When it was time to
merge the revisions into a final version, they
would have to find the relevant versions and
compile all the revisions.
Being able to answer a client’s question with
consistency when the agent or surveyor was
not in the office was also a challenge.
“Sometimes our surveyor was out of town
when a client phoned in and asked to be
updated on the latest status of his claim.
Allianz requires a repository of information
that other agents could use, so that any one
of them would be able to provide the client
with the information that they needed,” says
Purwadarma.
“We have a sustainable IT environment. Now
it’s time for us to leverage what we already
have and turn it into our competitive assets,
for example, by using it to improve
productivity and efficiency as well as shorten
processing time,” said Purwadarma. “E-mail
is definitely not the right tool for
collaboration, and therefore we need a more
suitable alternative.”
Solution
“I have often felt that
each time I need a new
functionality in the
software that we use, it
seems that Microsoft
reads my mind and
provides it in the next
product upgrade.
Groove is an example.”
Erwin Purwadarma, Chief Information Officer,
Information Technology, PT Asuransi Allianz
Utama Indonesia
Allianz Indonesia is among the few
companies in Indonesia that has reached the
stage where its primary IT concern is to utilize
technology to improve its business processes.
For this reason, Microsoft Indonesia offered
the insurance company an opportunity to
participate in a pilot program using
Microsoft® Office Groove® 2007 for a period
of three months.
When Purwadarma first saw the
demonstration of Office Groove 2007 in
November 2006, he immediately accepted
the offer to participate in the pilot. “We
recognized the power of this new
collaborative tool and how it would solve
many of our ongoing problems, especially the
inconsistency of the quotations that we
submit to our clients,” he said.
Office Groove 2007 enables any user to
create a workspace and then invite others to
join as they work on a project. The
participants do not have to be online to take
part in the collaboration. At Allianz Indonesia,
the underwriters or anyone from the head
office can invite agents to a workspace as
they prepare a quotation to fulfill a client’s
request. As soon as participants go online,
quotations are synchronized with the file
stored in the workspace folder of each
participant’s computer. Previous versions are
automatically replaced with the most recent.
Benefits
Office Groove 2007 enables Allianz Indonesia
to ensure consistency in the quotations that it
gives to its clients. In addition, it allows the
company to come up with new products much
faster. “All we have to do now is create a
workspace and then invite the underwriters,
the agents, and others to join and work
together on a quotation that will meet a
client’s request,” says Purwadarma .
Previously, Allianz had to rely on e-mail to
inform the branches, smaller service centers,
and individual agents that the latest version
of a quotation was available. ”Today, we just
have to drag and drop a file into the
workspace, and the moment the participant
gets online his own workspace will get
updated,” Purwadarma says.
Because all the files are stored in the
workspace folder of each participant’s
computer, instead of in multiple e-mails,
using search in Office Groove is much more
efficient. “We all know how time consuming
e-mail search can be,” Purwadarma says .
The possibility of collaborating even when
offline solves another problem for PT Allianz
Utama Indonesia. “Groove allows us to get rid
of the fax. Quotations can be reviewed and
revised as necessary, and when the agents
connect to the branch or the head office, they
will get the right version as their Groove
workspaces are synchronized,” said
Purwadarma .
With Office Groove, the most recent version is
pushed to the computers. Since everybody
always has the same version of the
quotation, a client can no longer try to get a
better deal by requesting different quotes.
Allianz Indonesia will use Microsoft Office
SharePoint® Server 2007 to make the most
recent versions of documents available
through a portal.
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 4269400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
Canada Information Centre at (877) 5682495. Customers who are deaf or hard-ofhearing can reach Microsoft text telephone
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in
the United States or (905) 568-9641 in
Canada. Outside the 50 United States and
Canada, please contact your local
Microsoft subsidiary. To access information
using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about PT Asuransi
Allianz Utama Indonesia products and
services, call (62-21) 252 2470 or visit the
Web site at:
www.allianz.co.id
For more information about the Microsoft
Office system, go to:
www.microsoft.com/office
“I have often felt that each time I need a new
functionality in the software that we use, it
seems that Microsoft reads my mind and
provides it in the next product upgrade.
Groove is an example,” Purwadarma
concludes.

Document published April 2007
The Microsoft Office system is the business
world’s chosen environment for information
work, providing the programs, servers, and
services that help you succeed by
transforming information into impact.
Security is also improved in Office Groove due
to the automatic use of 128-bit encryption.
“In the past, we relied on the individual users
to secure their files, but now it is done
automatically for them,” said Purwadarma .
Also, the owner of a workspace can manage
that workspace completely. For example, if
necessary, a workspace owner can terminate
access for certain participants by deleting the
workspace.
Software and Services
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT
MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY.
Microsoft Office System
“As Groove works by synchronizing the
workspace, it helps us solve the versioning
problem, expedites time-to-market, and
enables us to collaborate even when some of
us are offline,” says Purwadarma.
Products
− Microsoft Office Groove 2007
− Microsoft Office Groove Server 2007
− Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
2007
Hardware

Dell PowerEdge 1955 Server