AMI Insurance has ranked as one of the best places to work in the Unlimited/JRA Best Place to Work in New Zealand Survey six years running. That success is in no small way related to the company's focus on internal communication, a key area in which AMI keenly invests.

It has been an escalating challenge to manage business information and staff contact directories across 725 staff located in a network of 70 branches, two call centers and 23 agencies nationwide.
 
The picture had become one of several different mediums holding information. Communication was often by email distribution groups. Policy information required continual checking of addendums. The shortcomings were increasingly limiting.

Effective information management
AMI had no consistent, company wide access to business information.

“We needed a simple and flexible platform to give us a well controlled environment for managing information and in the process improving aspects of our internal communications,” says AMI web analyst Ernie Schoenfeld.

AMI had spent some time going down the path towards an intranet but had pulled up short in their search, determined to find a solution that was well suited to their communication needs and existing Microsoft environment. On the back of a recommendation, Intergen entered the picture with EPiServer.

“The whole EPiServer package was well suited to us, offering most of what we wanted out-of-the-box. It runs on a Microsoft platform so it was a good technical match for us. Once we saw it, it was clearly the right tool for our needs,” says Schoenfeld, adding the package's affordability was also attractive.

“We weren’t paying for development from scratch. EPiServer was very affordable and we could see it would require minimal training to bring our various user groups up to speed.”

Control and consistency
The intranet site, Mysite, was timed to go live with the nationwide launch of AMI’s new "going the extra smile" rebranding. The look and feel of Mysite needed to reflect the brand, so an important aspect was maintaining consistency in all communications.

As a template-driven system, EPiServer has excellent enable/restrict features to give AMI the control it requires as content evolves.

The name Mysite says it all for AMI staff. Mysite is a one-stop-shop information source, being the point to go to for anything from news, views and events, to product information, policies, forms and FAQs. 

The most used feature is ‘AMI Contacts’, an internal staff search tool, vital in a company with more than 700 staff. This feature eliminated the need for several disconnected and separately maintained contact lists and was built by Intergen using a custom contact directory, integrated with EPiServer. Intergen is also further customising Mysite’s standard search mechanism with the addition of MondoSearch.

Mysite will also provide a very good integration point for other applications within AMI. Schoenfeld says the company's decision to select Intergen was based on working with a "long term player" where the relationship didn’t end with the delivery of the product.

“Intergen was a natural choice because they expressed interest in working with us in the long term," he says.

"The intranet is a launch pad to improving many other business applications within the company, such as HR systems. This first project has shown Intergen pays very good attention to quality and have the experience and resources to make what they promise happen.” 

Results
Mysite is turning around access to information and assisting internal communications. The situation has changed from a scenario where AMI had inconsistent directories, information in a number of locations and disparate mediums into a one-stop source that is reliable, direct and up-to-date.

This is something to smile about for friendly staff who are the face of an insurance company that is proud to be different.

For more information
Shaun Donaghey
General Manager, Auckland
Intergen
09 966-3072
021 359 061
shaun.donaghey@intergen.co.nz
www.intergen.co.nz

June 2007