The increasing digitalisation of business processes combined with the normalisation of a distributed work environment have contributed to the tripling of Microsoft Teams adoption. As companies across the globe, including insurers, embrace this platform to improve collaboration between staff regardless of their geographic location, Silverbridge identified an opportunity to provide a more convenient way for users of their enterprise policy administration suite, Exergy, to action assigned tasks via Teams.
“This integration delivers incredible value to the ‘occasional Exergy users’, typically part of an approval or review workflow, by enabling them to simply click on a work item in Teams and get routed directly to the right component in the SilverBridge platform. Not only does this save time, but it delivers a frictionless experience for those employees who might not be intimately familiar with the enhanced functionality that Exergy delivers,” says Annalie Terblanche, Head of Product at SilverBridge.
As a Microsoft Managed Partner, SilverBridge was able to work closely with Microsoft experts to ensure the integration enables both organisations to deliver additional value to their respective clients. This is just another example of where the two companies are exploring the potential opportunities collaborating can create to address specific customer requirements in a digitally-led environment. In this instance, the multinational technology company’s focus on Teams and expanding its value proposition will see SilverBridge add additional value to users and improve the customer experience on both Teams and Exergy.
“As a Microsoft partner we have access to products and expertise that provided us with insights into how best to approach the integration process. Initially, we had a brainstorming session with a Microsoft specialist to generate ideas and to explore potential opportunities for integrating Exergy with Teams. Given the access we have to Microsoft’s comprehensive training material, the integration process was a relatively straightforward one,” adds Terblanche.
“According to our Work Reworked study, almost nine out of ten leaders at large enterprises in South Africa expect they will permanently adopt a more hybrid way of working. Senior executives see this as an opportunity to maintain the productivity gains they have experienced while, at the same time, improving employee satisfaction. Partners, such as SilverBridge, are responding accordingly by building and integrating technologies that drive efficiency, save time, and improve the customer experience. This agility and innovation are accelerating digital transformation and helping our customers to reimagine a new world of work and become more digitally resilient,” says Lionel Moyal, Commercial Partners Director at Microsoft South Africa.
All SilverBridge Exergy workflows can now be pushed via the Teams platform. As such, the integration becomes a nice enabler for the company to add even more value to its Exergy customers. For instance, scheme quotes are typically done via a spreadsheet and go through several iterations. Imports can now be done directly via the Teams interface and insurers can store the history of the quotes.
“Microsoft is continually expanding its Teams ecosystem including the platform’s functionality and supported applications and even though Exergy has already benefitted from leveraging Microsoft PowerBI, the integration with Teams paves the way for further improvement of the end-user experience through integrations with other products in the Microsoft stable. Our current focus, however, is on Teams. It is simple to learn and easy to use, and many people are already familiar with it. While we will be demonstrating the integration to existing and potential new clients via digital roadshows, we anticipate significant interest considering the rate at which Teams has been adopted in the workplace” says Terblanche.
