Where were they?
Aioi Europe is the motor insurance arm of Aioi Japan, partly owned by Toyota and primarily serving Toyota customers.
Aioi’s traditional IT structure gave each European operation a high degree of autonomy over how it managed IT decisions. This approach had worked well because the number of markets was small, and the IT was in most cases outsourced to 3rd party service providers.
However, one of Aioi’s strategic aims has been expansion into new European countries. A second has been to increase the premium income from its current markets, by offering new products, having a greater internet presence and increasing the customer service level. To achieve these aims, country organisations needed to make significant IT investments, either to provide the IT capability in the new markets or to implement more sophisticated solutions in the existing countries.
Aioi had concerns that the local investment decisions were being made without a clear view of the long-term business priorities and end-state architecture, and that economies of scale were not being achieved.
How did Berkeley help?
Berkeley worked with the management team to prioritise the business capabilities that IT needed to support in the short-, medium- and long-term. This served as an input into different workstreams which Berkeley managed, involving Aioi representatives from each country, to develop the details behind the strategy.
By taking into account the pace at which the strategy could be realistically implemented, Berkeley then helped shape a 6-year roadmap delivering consolidated capabilities and solutions across the core insurance business, infrastructure and back-office functions. Berkeley also helped develop an IT governance model to ensure that going forward, main IT decisions were aligned with the overall strategy.
Given that a major change in Aioi’s infrastructure direction was required quickly, Berkeley took an active role in implementing the first stages of this part of the strategy.
Where are they now?
Aioi is well underway in executing the infrastructure consolidation, the first part of the strategy. The consolidation of IT infrastructure into a single country location is already producing real savings through a sharing of capacity and people, while the level of service is improving. Going forward Aioi will also be able to realise economies of scale in other parts of IT, making further cost savings and creating higher profile roles for their people. The new governance model is encouraging greater collaboration between the different countries which will provide a solid organisational platform for Aioi to continue to execute its IT strategy in the future.