American Enterprise (Wellabe) Enhances Service with Vivantio ITSM Tool
Introduction
American Enterprise (now Wellabe) originally only considered implementing Vivantio for its IT department, but then quickly realized it could utilize the platform across multiple departments, including HR for employee form submissions; Facilities for shipping requests; Marketing for compliance approvals; and Legal for contracts, security and privacy reports, and legal research requests.
The Customer
As a mutual insurance holding company, American Enterprise is committed to helping customers secure a financial future by providing solutions that protect their health, happiness, and financial resources. American Enterprise Group, Inc. (rebranded under Wellabe), has multiple insurance company subsidiaries under the American Republic®, Great Western Insurance Company (GWIC®), and Medico® brands. These companies distribute Medicare Supplement, Dental, Hospital Indemnity, Preneed, and Final Expense insurance products through various distribution channels and are licensed in 49 states, plus the District of Columbia. American Enterprise (Wellabe) is based in Des Moines, Iowa, and employs more than 400 people.
The Need
Until 2017, American Enterprise, a mutual insurance holding company, relied on a legacy in-house system to help manage customer service requests, which included services such as providing enhancements and fixes to IT business applications and supporting infrastructure, hardware replacements and new ID requests.
But as the business grew, the company decided to invest in an ITSM software solution to keep up with its needs.
“We reached a point where we thought, ‘How do we get an affordable, customizable system that empowers our team without requiring domain and coding knowledge?’ And that’s when we started looking at Vivantio,” said Burt Hixenbaugh, Cloud Architect at American Enterprise.
Although American Enterprise was originally only considering a service management tool for one department, Burt quickly realized that Vivantio could be implemented company-wide: Human Resources now relies on the platform for employee form submissions; Facilities currently fulfills shipping service requests through the platform; Marketing uses it to request compliance reviews; and the Legal department relies on Vivantio for contracts, privacy and security reports, and legal research requests.
The company wanted a platform that offers the right features without being overly complicated and overwhelming to users, and the IT department was hoping to avoid having their own teams managing deployment, maintenance, and programming—all of which are services Vivantio has expertise in and provides.
The Solution
The American Enterprise team started a trial of Vivantio and quickly had a basic handle on the platform.
“We love that Vivantio is a company designing a system for a mid-size, growing company like us, instead of creating a system for a one-size-fits-all large corporation,” Burt said.
Despite its ease of use, Vivantio offers customization and flexibility and is built with integration and automation in mind.
“You can create custom forms and consolidate all of your service requests in one place. You don’t have to build out an entire portfolio of applications to support department needs,” Burt said. “We can focus on one process at a time and ensure the data is in the right spot.”
During implementation, Burt had several stakeholders in various departments test the platform to ensure it would meet their needs. Because their userbase demands more control over the systems in place, American Enterprise made use of pool licensing so that each department could access it.
“We were excited to customize the platform and push out-of-the-box configurations in Vivantio. The support team made us feel comfortable and confident in the product, too,” Burt said.
The Result
American Enterprise has since made the Vivantio platform its own, and thanks to the launch of FLEX—the product’s new UI and tool set that allows users, multi-department teams, and companies to customize Vivantio to their needs—Burt has found the software even more user-friendly and is excited to provide customer feedback that enables Vivantio to make continuous improvements to its platform.
