By Biswa Misra, Group Chief Technology and Life Operations Officer, AIA Group

Over the past decade our company embraced digitalisation and new technologies, and, like many financial firms, we relied on a big traditional data center with mainframes and one point of sales system. These legacy systems were no longer effective as we tried to keep up with the ever faster pace of innovation. We needed a top to bottom technology rebuild.

Leading a multi-national organisation through a three-year, $800 million technology transformation is comparable to changing the wheels of a car while it remains in motion. We needed to continue to deliver leading customer experience, strong business results, and maintain data privacy and security, all while undertaking fundamental changes to core functions across the organisation.

Our transformation involved moving 90 per cent of our workloads to the cloud, growing data richness and availability 10-fold and creating more than 300 analytics use cases. We did this across 18 markets in Asia, making our agents more effective and delivering best-in-class customer experience.

We were tasked with not just a technology transformation, but rather a comprehensive rethinking of how a company works. And I quickly learned that the success of a transformation comes down to a team of people as much as new technology. Like any team sport, you face the challenges and celebrate your wins together, as a team.

Here is how we achieved the teamwork that was required to drive our organisation through its technology, digital, and analytics transformation:

Support from the top – Change must be promoted at the very highest levels of leadership. The board of directors and CEO expressed their explicit support for the transformation, and emphasis that this change was a strategic priority. That commitment was demonstrated through sufficient resources to ensure success. Only when the leaders show that the change is part of the company’s core strategy can it become a company-wide priority.

Internalise the transition – Successful transformation requires everyone from the Executive Committee to department heads and the team members in the trenches to believe and accept the transition programme and the new ideas behind the change. From the top down, everyone in our organisation held a strong conviction that this technology rebuild could greatly improve our customer experience and distribution. Everyone agreed that we could use technology to turbocharge our future development and fulfill our Purpose to help more people across Asia Live Healthier, Longer, Better Lives.

Assign responsibility and accountability – Empower business units to determine their own roadmap within the overall change strategy and KPIs. When we did this, we created a

broader base of ownership, and invited ideas and innovation from more people. Those same leaders were held accountable with regular, structured reporting, for the progress of the transformation within their areas of responsibility.

Make it a business project – Technology transformation is not an IT project. The business leaders of an organisation need to own the transformation. Our transformation had to improve our customer service, strengthen our distribution, and most importantly, make financial sense. Mistakes and slower than desired progress cannot be blamed on “IT”. Success and failure must both be measured in business terms.

Evolve with the technology – Building new technology without a change management programme and redesigning operations will be a failure. Ours was a transformation of people and processes, enabled by technology. It was about becoming fit for purpose and ready for interoperability, and designing technology focused on human needs. Rethink your processes and how your people work, making sure you are evolving the way in which the business operates needs to work hand in hand with IT to be able to deliver.

Democratise innovation – Cloud computing enables democratisation of the innovation and change process because it makes technology more accessible. When we leveraged the cloud it allowed more people to contribute and test ideas, creating a more resilient outcome. The cloud facilitates agile, cross-functional transformation teams critical to our success.

Build a future-ready workforce – Develop your teams and their skills so they can achieve their potential and be the engine of your change. This means not only investing to attract new talent, but designing training programmes to reskill and upskill existing employees to suit the future-focused needs of your organisation. Employees that have benefited from upskilling are more likely to buy into a broader change strategy.

Communicate the process – Inspiration dies in an information vacuum. We had to ensure that we communicated our goals, the process and path to reach those goals, and the month-to-month progress we were making. We presented teams with a clear set of KPIs so the whole organisation knew what the expected outcomes were. When transformation becomes a shared mission, every challenge becomes a stepping stone—and every success is a shared victory.

Transformation as a team

Today, our transformation is complete, and the whole team can see the success they helped build. Our straight through processing is at over 85 per cent, and we have 21 million members using our digital platforms. Our number one Net Promoter Scores (NPS) in multiple markets are testament to the deliberate focus that we have put on providing the world class experience using our powerful technology.

We’ve upskilled thousands of agents and employees, cut the time required for some of the most tedious document review processes in half, and digitally-enabled our organisation to better serve our customers.

Our organisation evolved from traditional mainframe data centers to nimble technology and teams that are ready to focus on embedding generative AI across all aspects of our

business and help us scale our business further. Together, we rebuilt the foundations of the organisation so that we’re not only ready for the future, we are ready to lead it.

In the end, our greatest success was not the technology we built, but the team we became.