Sandton, Johannesburg – July 24, 2023 – Innovation Group (Pty) Ltd, announces the release of its new digital Mobility service, Hoot.
Hoot offers an easy-to-use online platform that provides customers with an accessible way to purchase a service plan. Through the platform, customers can decide how much they want to pay and lock in a policy that works for them. After successful purchase of a service plan policy, Hoot’s full self-service functionality allows customers to manage their policy – from debit order date changes right through to logging a claim – all at the click of a button.
“This is an important step for us as a business as we continue our focus on transforming the customer journey and putting our customers first in everything we do. The release of Hoot is a significant milestone in driving our digital mobility service solution and expanding our offering to market,” said Marcel de Klerk, Managing Director of Innovation Group (Pty) Ltd.
Imraan Rassool, GM: Strategic Growth and Innovation of Innovation Group (Pty) Ltd added: “Hoot offers customers, and potential customers, a central location through which to select and sign-up for service plans as well as manage future aspects related to their policies. The aim is to simplify the sign-up or purchase process and giving customers greater freedom and flexibility to choose the right cover for their needs.”
To find out more about Hoot, go to www.hootcover.co.za
Every Little Bit Extra Helps (ELBEH) is a campaign to support foodbanks lead by Carpenters Group, S&G Response, Innovation Group, Morelli Group and Onyx PDA supporting The Trussell Trust.
After launching the ELBEH initiative in November 2021, there are an incredible number of businesses who have committed to supporting this initiative from all sectors of the motor and insurance industry.
Friday 17 December 2021 is ‘Donation Day’ for industry foodbank contributions.
In the UK, more than 14 million people are living in poverty including 4.5 million children. This ELBEH campaign wants to help and support foodbanks so they are as fully stocked as possible for Christmas.
Donations have and can been be made online via the Just Giving page EveryLittleBitExtraHelps
Anyone and everyone can also donate food and goods to their local Trussell Trust foodbanks should they want to.
In addition to the donation day, the ELBEH initiative is also holding a ‘Wear anything Christmassey to work (or home) day’ on the 10 December 2021. We are asking as many people as possible to wear Christmas hats, headbands and/or jumpers for the day and make a donation of £1 to take part.
We have had lots of wonderful businesses commit to take part. Support so far has been pledged by the following businesses:
Andrew Lucia, Chief Operating Officer, Prosure Solutions “ We are proud to support such a great cause which will hopefully get some people back on their feet when it is most needed. Please keep up the fantastic work”
Richard Steer, “The Steer Group are delighted to support the Every Little Bit Extra Helps campaign. It is great to see so many organisations from across the insurance sector coming together to provide much needed support at this time of year”
Mark Leeming, LKQ, “It was heart-warming to read of the #ELBEH initiative launched last week and LKQ wanted to get involved to support our industry colleagues. We look forward to working with our colleagues to do some good this Christmas”
“We’re very honoured to be able to support such a worthy cause; one which we know will make a real difference to people’s lives over the festive period.” Tom Noble, UK Market Manager, Sherwin Williams.
Richard Ketley, Head of Network, Innovation Group, “When I learned about the #ELBEH campaign I was immediately onboard. It just really resonated with me, and I have been delighted to play a part.”
A group of five companies working in various divisions within the insurance industry are joining forces this Christmas to raise awareness and provide support for local foodbanks across the UK.
The group consists of industry leaders from across the sector, Donna Scully from leading providers of insurance and legal services Carpenters Group, Kate Goodwin from the global insuretech business Innovation Group, Ruth Moring-Beale from independent distributor company Morelli Group, Dan Chesney from the industry leading marketing agency Onyx PDA and Andy Whatmough from automotive solutions providers S&G Response.
Donna Scully said “In the run up to Christmas we know demand for food will escalate and people face the impossible decision of whether to heat or eat. A decision nobody should have to make. We hope, as a group, we can make a difference and if you want to get involved, please contact us. The more who help, the more we can help”.
In the UK, more than 14 million people are living in poverty, this includes 4.5 million children. The group want to ensure that foodbanks are stocked full this Christmas ready to support local communities and families in need.
Kate Goodwin said “This is an initiative forged through friendships made via our wonderful industry, but one that recognises that we speak from a fortunate position in comparison to so many other people within our local communities.
We would LOVE for others in the industry to join us to help support the thousands of people that will need the help of a foodbank over the next weeks and months. A couple of bags of food, to a full blown collection of goods – every single donation will help someone, somewhere. In turn, we can support efforts by collecting and delivering goods, a service kindly offered by the Morelli Group”.
Supporting The Trussell Trust, the name of their campaign is Every Little ‘Bit Extra’ Helps, and they are asking for businesses and individuals from across the insurance sector to come together in the build-up for their ‘donations day’ on Friday 17th December and deliver their contributions to their local foodbanks.
Dan Chesney, Managing Director of OnyxPDA said “We’re so thrilled to be involved with this wonderful campaign. When life is so busy, particularly at Christmas it’s really easy to get lost in it all and forget what matters most, helping those in our communities. That’s why we want to not only raise awareness of the amazing work The Trussell Trust do, but also support the foodbanks that provide for so many within our communities not only during the winter, but all year-round.”
Those getting involved can share photos of donations to one of the group members or on social media with the hashtag #ELBEH.
STUTTGART, Germany, April 28, 2021 (Newswire) – Last Thursday at the German Digital Awards 2021 organised by Bundesverband Digitale Wirtschaft (BVDW), Gateway, the AI workflow engine, received 2 awards: a bronze for Digital Transformation and a bronze for Digital Commerce, User experience. The German Digital Award is given every year for creative and innovative achievements in 10 categories and 31 sub-categories. Gateway was recognised alongside the innovations from Hamburg Port Authority, H&M, Mercedes Benz and Zalando. The expert jury commended Gateway for its innovation and user experiences, a digital revolution to the current process for insurance claims and repairs.
“I’m truly grateful for the award Gateway received, especially among so many other top-class applicants. It’s a great reassurance that our software is future-proof,” says Markus Stumpp, Managing Director, Innovation Group Fleet & Mobility GmbH.
“We’re delighted to have Gateway recognised for the disruptive nature so soon after its launch. The claim and repair processes are lengthy and overly complicated, we focused on simplifying and bringing them to the 21st century. Gateway provides real-time data and transparency so that there’s no more back and forth emails and calls between the claimant, insurer and the repairer.” says Matthew Whittall, CEO Germany, Innovation Group.
Gateway enables mobile self-service to policyholders and drivers, and integrates with insurer, fleet owner, car manufacturer and repair shop processes to provide a real-time single source of truth. Artificial Intelligence at the core of Gateway drives the claim and repair workflows and notifies all parties involved of the changes and progression. It enables insurance companies to handle the entire claims process end-to-end via a simple online platform. Workshops can simplify calculation, ordering and billing processes that significantly reduce the administrative costs and times. It also presents the never seen levels of transparency, security and data insights in the insurance and repair industries.
Gateway launched in February 2021 in Germany and proved to reduce the average time between the damage report and repair booking from 2-3 days to less than 24 hours. The current pilot phase consists of 2 insurers and over 1100 workshops. “In May we want to activate more partners and gradually drive the digital transformation forward,” said Stumpp. By autumn, more than 40 participating insurers should be able to process their claims via Gateway.
Learn more about Gateway: www.innovation.group/gateway-technology
About Innovation Group
Innovation Group resolves car or home damage and claims on behalf of insurers, fleet companies and carmakers. Through AI workflow engine Gateway, white-label claim specialist teams and integrated repairer network, Innovation Group provides efficiency and cost savings to over 1,200 clients in the US, UK, Germany, Spain, Australia and South Africa. For over the 20 years, Innovation Group has helped its clients deliver on their promise to the policyholders and drivers by processing claims and damage repairs with exceptional customer service and disruptive tech, that can automate the process end-to-end.
To watch the award submission go to: gewinner.deutscherdigitalaward.de/gewinner/digital-commerce-user-experience-usability-conversational-commerce-bronze/gateway-digitale-schadensteuerung
Earlier today, Digital Bulletin released the April edition of their e-Magazine with Innovation Group covered as the headline article. Mike Hinton (CTO) and Andrew Considine (CRO) were interviewed for the article and both outlined the digital transformation journey the company has been travelling for the previous 3 years, the development of the Group’s strategic technology platform in partnership with Microsoft, and their thoughts on the future of the Insurance industry, InsureTech and the impact of our switch to a technology-led organisation.
The business landscape is evolving at quite a rate. A sharp focus on technology is seeing organisations dig up their roots and sow fresh seeds for a future dominated by digital.
Hinton and Considine knew that making Gateway cloud-native was the only option if Innovation Group wanted to meet its global requirements through a single platform. It chose Microsoft Azure as its cloud partner, Hinton having enjoyed a positive experience with Azure in a previous role.
Innovation Group worked closely with Microsoft from the very beginning and Gateway leverages a number of its PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) products to deliver complete application performance out of Azure, from the security layer with Microsoft ADFS to continuous integration through CI/CD and database services with SQL and BlobStorage.
“When these services are readily available and served to you on Azure as PaaS products, it enables you to transform quicker. I think the speed of transformation was absolutely key to Innovation Group in terms of achieving its goals,” explains Hinton, who also highlighted the number of Azure Availability Zones worldwide as an important factor.
“The partnership with Microsoft works because not only have they got good tech that we can use, but from a relationship perspective, we’ve got executive sponsors right at the top in the UK, going all the way down to engineering resources out in Redmond. That enables us to implement their products very quickly and it enables us to solve issues very quickly.”
Gateway exists to offer end-to-end management to every stakeholder involved in an insurance claim, from FNOL (First Notice of Loss) to settlement. Policyholders are able to log a FNOL from any device, with Gateway recommending certified body shop or home repair contractors based on factors such as location, quality of service and customer preference. All parties are then able to monitor the progression of the claim through to completion.
Innovation Group says the platform is built on the principles of “simplicity, connectivity and collaboration” and that it fits the future of an insurance industry intent on putting customer service at its heart. Automation is the glue that holds Gateway together, with a number of previously manual processes now automated and enabling huge strides in operational efficiency.
“Previously, a lot of the operational processes were being managed through call centres and there was a lot of hand holding of policyholders and customers. With a single platform, we’re able to bring automation into that entire journey,” outlines Considine. “We’ve moved from a very manual environment into one where we have centres of excellence, where we’ve got app support and experts who are able to guide the customer through the journey.”
The full article can be found here: https://www.digitalbullet.in/casestudies/technology/2020/april/innovation-group/bringing-innovation-to-insurance/
The Fleetcoach programme has won a highly commended award at the 2018 Australasian Fleet Safety Awards, held in New Zealand last week. The company was presented with the Fleet Safety Product Award which recognises products that does the most to improve fleet safety through innovation.
Tony Brand, Head of Client Development at Innovation Group, said: “This is a well–deserved win for Fleetcoach, who are a key partner in our established online driver coaching programme. They consistently demonstrate that they are at the forefront of road safety innovation and we commend them for all the work they have done in building a positive road safety culture.”
The Fleet Safety Awards is run by Brake, a national road safety charity that works to prevent road deaths and injuries and support people bereaved and injured in crashes across New Zealand.
You can find out more about Brake here, as well as road safety advice for drivers, families, teachers and road safety professionals; information on Road Safety Week; support for road crash victims; and ideas for supporting Brake.
While the term design most often conjures up images of objects – from clothing to consumer products to skyscrapers – true design in its most honest form refers to a dynamic process rather than a static end-result. Quite simply, design thinking is the process of observing, researching, experimenting, modelling and testing processes (as well as products), in order to improve them to their maximum potential.
In today’s digital era, with an abundance of information, as well as data collection, storage and processing technology growing in leaps and bounds, more and more enterprises are finding ways to process this data into actionable insights to fulfil their business objectives, and this is just the beginning.
Design thinking is being adopted by every industry imaginable, whether it’s medicine, law, engineering or advertising. Take the humble contact centre (once referred to as the call centre) for example. In today’s contact centres, huge amounts of customer data are generated on a daily basis that, more often than not, goes unused.
With improved data analytics taking centre stage in the business arena, just think of the kind of information that can be gathered, sifted through, and used to increase the customer experience beyond anything possible just a few years ago. What is your clients’ average level of satisfaction? Which customers contacted your company, and why? What is the most frequent complaint, and what is causing it? What is your average turnaround time, and how can it be reduced?
What’s more, the advantages of big data don’t just extend to callers and their complaints. A savvy contact centre will make use of design thinking to not only better “design” the customer experience, but also to improve products, identify operational flaws, drive sales, increase up-sales and cross-sales, and ultimately fatten up their business’s bottom line.
Many companies now employ advanced text and voice-based sentiment analysis, to analyse call centre agent records, identify customer concerns, highlight trends and patterns, and provide early warning capabilities. Many more also cross-reference their call centre data with their transactional data records, providing every contact centre agent with valuable knowledge about the customer. With this information, not only can they provide better customer service, but they can also turn the customer service channels into product research channels, as well as active sales channels. Contact centre records are an untapped resource that can provide valuable insights into how products and services can be improved and differentiated from their competitors.
When a mass of information meets the technology needed to unlock it, the sky is the limit in terms of the strategic advantage it gives businesses. The only challenge that remains is for companies to figure out how to use the information they generate to its maximum potential. For design thinking to provide any real return on investment, the analytics need to drive action, not only insight, and should be the basis of the future CRM strategies that companies employ.
With customers being more efficiently and accurately catered for in every step of their customer journey, and businesses gaining valuable insights into every aspect of their customers’ experience, big data analysis in contact centres is a win-win situation that is set to become the gold standard in CRM, no matter what industry you are in.
