North Risk Partners
North Risk Partners helps businesses face risk head on, which has fueled their growth as one of the largest, privately owned independent insurance agencies in the Midwest. The firm enjoys a reputation of proactive customer service and takes great pride in their ability to provide highly knowledgeable risk management consulting to their commercial and personal clients.
Challenge
North Risk Partners’ rapid growth has occurred organically and through strategic acquisitions. It became apparent to the firm’s leadership that their future growth would be compromised without greatly enhancing their ability to communicate with clients and prospects. North Risk’s primary business challenge was to fully scale the entire technology operation and IT services to enterprise levels without sacrificing the extraordinary quality of the personalized service their clientele expects. It is this personal service that sets them apart from their competition.
North Risk Partners brought on Aric Fier as CIO who was immediately charged with improving their communications stance and to have it done in weeks; something he anticipated might take months. Aric’s team was working toward a standard that every call would be answered immediately by a North Risk employee and that all client information was immediately on-hand to give each client a personalized experience with expert service. North Risk Partners transformed the way technology supported the business and trusted Avail Partners to collaborate through the journey.
“When I heard about Avail’s business model and high-quality results from a fellow CIO, I honestly thought that it was too good to be true. Avail proved that they could get us where we needed to be in less than two months and saved my team dozens if not hundreds of hours of research. We delivered the project well ahead of schedule.”
Approach
North Risk Partners’ leadership team, including IT, Communications, and Line of Business managers, engaged Avail Partners to define a long-term strategy roadmap, define needed solution options and analyze projected costs.
After engaging in workshops with North Risk Partners, Avail aligned North Risk Partners’ strategy and culture across two distinct practice areas of technical need that could scale with expected growth:
Unified Communications – Telephony, mobility, messaging, presence and conferencing
Contact Center & Customer Experience – Ingestion of calls routed properly supporting CRM and primary business applications with actionable analytics
While keeping North Risk Partners anonymous, Avail independently produced Market Intelligence Assessments for each solution set, initially identifying several possible vendors best suited to support the two practice areas of need. Avail’s process ensured there were no distractions from disruptive vendor sales teams , allowing North Risk Partners to remain focused on their clients. The Avail team evaluated all potential vendors and assisted North Risk Partners with selecting the single vendor that could best supply both UCaaS and CCaaS services aligned with North Risk Partners’ culture of personalized service. Further, Avail assisted North Risk Partners through the migration and onboarding experience ensuring aggressive timelines were achieved while minimizing disruption to daily business operations.
Services Delivered
Solutions Design and Architecture Validation
Market Intelligence Assessment and Due Diligence
Proposal Management / Vendor Selection
Technology Rationalization and Standardization
Results
The Avail engagement resulted in North Risk quickly having the confidence in research and solution design to move forward with the selected vendor. Migration was predictable and professional. North Risk can now scale the entire operation at an enterprise level, while improving the personalized service and customer experience North Risk Partners’ clients expect. In addition to the operational success, the process of optimizing vendors and services yielded significant hard savings annually.
Internally, North Risk Partners’ technology team got a big win. IT is seen by the business as an internal strategic partner. Additionally, internal morale and client satisfaction levels across the organization are up. This project reinforces North Risk’s ability to outpace their competitors, maintain strong customer relationships and reinforce their brand.