Suncorp Group Increases Online Revenues

A Digital Transformation Success Story

April 29, 2015

Digital Transformation can be a key to effective marketing. Learn how one company's digital strategy is leading to impressive results. Suncorp Group, a financial services firm that serves 9 million customers in Australia and New Zealand, has standardized its marketing platforms across its 15 brands. Suncorp uses a digital marketing maturity model with 21 capabilities. Each business unit has competency scores for each capability. Their goal: become masterful in delivering the right interaction, for the right customer, at the right time, on any channel.

NETTING IT OUT

Leaders in digital transformation foster a culture of experimentation, customer experience management supported by mature optimization programs, and measurements relevant to their goals. They demonstrate how an integrated platform, skilled people, and mature optimization capabilities are the keys to success.

One such leader is Murray Howe, Executive Manager of Digital Strategy & Innovation at Suncorp Group. Recognizing the need to adapt to changing customer needs and expectations, and the vital importance of digital transformation to achieve the desired results, he identified five necessary cultural changes:

Integrated platforms
Customer knowledge
Using data assets
Consistent customer experience
Continuous improvement

Suncorp Group’s efforts has yielded impressive results: the group’s sales in the personal insurance business now start online 70 percent of the time and uptake of the mobile banking app exceeded 20 percent of customers within 6 months.

Editor’s Note: Sue Aldrich’s case study on Suncorp Group is reprinted here with permission and minor updates, from research commissioned by Adobe Systems, Inc. in 2014.

SUNCORP GROUP'S DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Evolving Customer Expectations

Suncorp Group is a conglomerate of 15 insurance and banking brands in Australia and New Zealand with nine million customers. It is structured so that each business’s results are transparent to investors. Senior management has been focused on operations, solving business problems, and executing business and operations plans, but in recent years has recognized that the customer must be central to focus, strategies, and plans. Suncorp can control changes to its own business operations, but it must react to changes to customer needs and expectations. The organization realized it needed to become agile and adaptable in order to meet evolving customer expectations, and that digital transformation is the heart of this evolution.

Murray Howe, Executive
Manager of Digital Strategy & Innovation

Digital Strategy Goals

Suncorp’s digital transformation, started in 2010, has made great strides in establishing a unified digital platform used by all businesses; streamlining some customer experiences resulting in a dramatic increase in sales; and shifting focus from operations to customer needs.

The digital strategy leads this transformation. Murray Howe, Executive Manager of Digital Strategy & Innovation, describes five broad cultural changes necessary to support Suncorp’s digital transformation...(more)