Achmea is the cooperative parent of various insurance brands, including Centraal Beheer, Interpolis, and Zilveren Kruis. With sustainability as an integral part of its strategy, Achmea is the largest insurance company in the Netherlands.

Employees:

14,000
Member of:

Net-Zero Insurance Alliance
Customers:

10+ million

Summary

Challenges

Automated processes and workflows to boost time to value.
Supported cloud-first strategy.
Created digital self-service opportunities and reduced paper usage to contribute to sustainability goals.

Solution

Focused on innovation and new functionality.
Automated service ticket allocation.
Introduced cross-ITOM solution integration for faster issue resolution.
Managed security incidents effectively.

Results

Improved focus on new service delivery
Streamlined 200,000+ annual requests
Supported sustainability goals

Challenges

Automated processes and workflows for faster time to value
Supported cloud-first strategy with a move from OpenText™ Service Management on-premises to OpenText Service Management SaaS
Created more digital self-service opportunities and reduced paper usage to contribute to sustainability goals

The Achmea organization consists of different merged and acquired insurance companies. This resulted in a very differentiated and complex IT landscape with many core applications, but also legacy systems. Achmea’s IT4IT CMS Manager, Christiaan Pöttger explained, “For faster time to value, it was clear we had to consolidate and reduce the number of applications we support, as well as automate processes and workflows. In the last decade we have formulated our IT governance model based on defined digital IT value streams, standardizations, and automation wherever possible. Although we have a set of preferred suppliers, we absolutely judge individual solutions on their merit and we much prefer to work with repeatable, out-of-the-box functionality and built-in integration capabilities than create custom workflows. Our vendors also need to support our sustainability goals. We have a cloud-first strategy with a gradual move to Azure for all of our applications. During the hybrid stage, we were pleased to see that our OpenText ITOM solutions could support us during this transition phase. [OpenText Service Management] fits the bill perfectly for us.”

To support 14,000 Achmea colleagues who generate over 200,000 support and service requests each year, the team relies on OpenText Service Management for end-to-end service management. As a longtime user of OpenText Service Manager, Achmea was pleased when OpenText Service Management was introduced to provide a more modern service management environment. As Pöttger commented, “While we were undergoing a digital transformation, we found it difficult to change Service Manager processes and we encountered some legacy code issues which limited our automation potential. We also juggled management of our software licenses between OpenText™ Asset Manager, Service Manager, and OpenText™ Universal Discovery and CMDB. [OpenText Service Management] gave us the opportunity to consolidate asset management, so all our asset data was transferred into [OpenText Service Management] which eases the overall process and is more cost-effective.”

Our cross-ITOM solution integration streamlined our service and asset management in a much-simplified IT landscape. Through our [OpenText Service Management] SaaS implementation we successfully consolidated and automated key IT processes to create a central IT service management environment to benefit thousands of users.

Sander de Leeuw
IT Service Portal Specialist, Achmea

Solution

Achmea seamlessly moved to OpenText Service Management SaaS via automation and codeless configuration. This effective cross-ITOM service management solution integration led to end-to-end visibility and faster issue resolution. Achmea used OpenText Service Management to finetune its SecOps processes.

Products deployed

OpenText™ Service Management

Deliver smart IT service management (ITSM), IT asset management (ITAM), and enterprise service management (ESM) with built-in AI and analytics
OpenText™ Operations Orchestration

OpenText Operations Orchestration automates, integrates, and orchestrates any IT process, on cloud or off
OpenText™ Universal Discovery and CMDB

Configuration management for hybrid IT, multicloud, and on-premises environments
OpenText™ Operations Bridge

OpenText Operations Bridge is enterprise event and performance management software

Innovating IT service management with OpenText Service Management

The OpenText Service Management implementation follows the ITIL principles to create business value at scale and simplify the work, cost, and use of IT service management with a complete set of AI-based out-of-the-box ITIL best practices for key ITSM functions. The Achmea implementation covered request fulfillment, incident management, problem management, change management, IT asset management, configuration management, knowledge management, and service catalog management. With over 900 active offerings, and more than 1,000 active knowledge articles, user self-service is encouraged and boosts productivity.

With pervasive automation and OpenText Service Management codeless configuration, Achmea can respond easily to required process, workflow, or task changes. The team is not restricted by high customization, and this was a key requirement for its service management solution. Codeless configuration also means that the integrity of any user defined configuration is never compromised when upgrades occur. Achmea’s IT Service Portal Specialist Sander de Leeuw commented, “With the move to [OpenText Service Management] SaaS, in line with our cloud-first strategy, we no longer have to perform manual upgrades. This allows me to focus on providing innovation and new functionality for our users.”

Automating OpenText Service Management to boost productivity

“We encourage users to make use of self-service as much as possible,” commented de Leeuw. “With over 900 active offerings, users can request services and support. Requests created through an offering are automatically routed to the correct expert group. With more than 500 active functional groups defined within [OpenText Service Management], automated routing saves much time. Some of our offerings are integrated with our Genesys call center technology. When using these specific offerings, requests that are created are automatically routed to the next available Achmea Service desk agent.”

He continued, “We have also automated user provisioning through [OpenText Service Management]. By integrating it with our LDAP directory, new users are automatically created in [OpenText Service Management] and assigned the correct authorizations, according to their Active Directory profile.”

Introducing effective Observability and Service Management solution integration

The OpenText Service Management virtual agent streamlined service management even further and OpenText Service Management machine learning provided automated change risk analysis for more informed decision making. The centralized, single view of the environment simplified the IT landscape and the integration capabilities have drastically reduced the average incident resolution time.

“We created an automated closed-loop incident process through effective integration,” said de Leeuw. “The health of our infrastructure is monitored through OpenText Operations Bridge. Native integration between Operations Bridge and [OpenText Service Management] automatically triggers a ticket creation if monitoring indicates an issue.”

Achmea also leverages OpenText Operations Orchestration (OO) to integrate and orchestrate IT services across its multi-vendor hybrid environment. Examples include automated password reset processes, daily regression testing of OpenText Service Management processes, compliance controls, and pipelines.

Managing security incidents effectively with OpenText Service Management

In addition to supporting its IT processes, Achmea has a specific need to manage security incidents. These incidents need to be managed differently to standard IT incidents. They are assigned to specific security experts, require their own workflow, and have a special approval process to drive proper review and due diligence requirements. The team was pleased to discover an OpenText Service Management SecOps application package available from the OpenText marketplace. This provides full defined processes for managing security incidents and breach events based on a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) compliant application design. Achmea has implemented this without the need for further configuration and the team benefits from OpenText Service Management Studio capabilities to finetune business workflows for future requirements.

Within OpenText Service Management, organizations can create their own custom applications to fulfill specific business needs. Achmea leveraged this functionality to create a Risk Letter application to manage security vulnerabilities and a Continuity Management application to manage its disaster recovery process.

We juggled management of our software licenses between OpenText Asset Manager, Service Manager, and Universal Discovery CMDB. [OpenText Service Management] gave us the opportunity to consolidate asset management, so all our asset data was transferred into [OpenText Service Management] which eases the overall process and is more cost-effective.

Christiaan Pöttger
IT4IT CMS Manager, Achmea

Results

Moving to OpenText Service Management SaaS supported cloud-first strategy and boosted delivery of new services to users. Contributing to corporate sustainability goals with a simplified IT landscape, thousands of users benefit from streamlined service management.

Improved focus on new service delivery

By moving to OpenText Service Management SaaS, Achmea transformed its service management processes into a fast, flexible, and streamlined operation, able to deliver connected services across the enterprise. With flexible licensing options, the team benefits from consumer-style SaaS by shifting installation, maintenance, and upgrade responsibilities to OpenText. This frees up internal resources from operational tasks and allows them to focus on business outcomes and the delivery of new services to business stakeholders.

De Leeuw commented on the migration process from OpenText Service Management on-premises to SaaS, “Achmea has a zero-trust security concept which states that we do not trust anything inside or outside our network. This means we need to verify any attempts to connect to our systems before granting access. Together with OpenText engineers, we implemented mutual authentication (mTLS) for all our connections from and to the SaaS.”

Streamlined 200,000+ requests with closed-loop incident management

The Achmea team looks forward to enhancing user self-service even further through the OpenText Service Management portal, by leveraging built-in AI and analytics. This has the potential to boost productivity through the extended use of virtual agents, knowledge articles, suggested solutions, and predictive change risk analysis. Native cross-ITOM integration ensures a closed-loop incident management.

Implementing native SACM using the native integration between OpenText Service Management and OpenText Universal Discovery and CMDB gives Achmea instant access to its service asset and configuration management data in both applications. With the embedded graphical widgets for CI topology users can view and create CI relations in OpenText Service Management . Users no longer have to work in several applications, and this fits Achmea’s strategy to use OpenText Service Management as a central hub.

The team aims to further integrate OpenText Service Management with its software development lifecycle in Azure DevOps so that software pipeline deployments can be tracked end-to-end within OpenText Service Management.

Supported sustainability goals and simplified IT landscape

Achmea’s sustainability goals play an important role during the procurement process and are part of the criteria for selecting new suppliers. Achmea’s ambition is to become a fully digital insurance organization. The use of OpenText ITOM solutions drastically reduces paper usage and supports digital interaction, thus contributing to Achmea’s sustainability goals.

"Our cross-ITOM solution integration streamlined our service and asset management in a much-simplified IT landscape,” said de Leeuw. “Through our [OpenText Service Management] SaaS implementation we successfully consolidated and automated key IT processes to create a central IT service management environment to benefit thousands of users.”

Pöttger concluded, “Creating a new digital, cloud-first model does not happen overnight. It took committed executive sponsorship, and a lot of cooperation between business and technical teams from Achmea, OpenText, and other technology partners. On an ongoing basis we align our roadmaps to ensure future success so that we can continue to accelerate our service management.”