Reich Insurance Case Study
The Client
An ambitious and expanding commercial, personal, health and life insurance brokerage, Reich Insurance operates nationally and internationally.
Headquartered in Salford, the privately owned business manages annual premium valued at nearly £100m and has grown to become one of the UK’s top 10 independent insurance brokers.
An impressive trading pedigree means Reich’s clients benefit from knowledge and expertise drawn from the company’s near 80 years’ experience. This ensures consistent service excellence.
Among many satisfied clients is actress Dame Maureen Lipman who has praised Reich as “a fine example of a coherent, ethical and joined up business.”
Business Needs
In 2018 Avoira upgraded Reich’s ISDN telephony system to a SIP-trunked Avaya platform that delivered a more resilient, lower cost solution which strengthened disaster recovery (DR) protocols.
This more than met the company’s expectations with Chief Risk Officer, Andy Kay praising a “significant reduction” in call costs, a greatly enhanced DR regime and impressive flexibility.
However, the arrival of COVID-19 restrictions created new operational and communication challenges as Reich embraced working from home (WFH).
The quality of home broadband provision among the company’s 130 staff was among them. “We were running different communication and collaboration tools which strained the bandwidth of some home broadband connections,” says Kay. “Call routing was proving problematic and over reliance on the Avaya mobile app was draining batteries.”
“We needed to upgrade to a solution that wasn’t as bandwidth hungry and provided a much more seamless user experience.”
The Solution
In discussions with Reich it quickly became apparent that use of Microsoft Teams had been amplified by the transition to WFH.
“We were already using Teams but the move to remote working meant it had become absolutely vital, particularly for internal communications,” confirms Kay.
We therefore recommended consolidating Reich’s collaboration and telephony functions through migration to Teams Direct Routing. This cloud-hosted, low-cost subscription service enables calls to be made and received over any Teams enabled device using existing DDIs.
Creation of a single platform would significantly reduce bandwidth hunger and increase resilience whilst enhancing the user experience.
“Migrating to Direct Routing made sense on a number of levels. Our staff were already familiar with Teams so we knew they’d need minimal training. They’d also no longer need to switch between apps when working.”
We also recommended installing Clobba, a simple to use yet highly powerful management reporting and analytics tool. This would yield invaluable insights into key metrics. Oak’s Clarify compliance recording for Teams would complete the package, enabling capture of all calls, video conferencing and chat.
The Benefits
Noting that the migration by Avoira was “exceptionally smooth” Kay reports Reich’s staff have welcomed the switch. “They’ve found it easy to use with the ability to do multi-task using just one app, making for a much more pleasant and productive user experience.”
“Because it’s not eating bandwidth, it’s also proven to be exceptionally resilient.”
