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Sonae Financial Services

Sonae is a multinational company founded in 1959 and manages a diversified portfolio of businesses  in retail, financial services, technology, shopping centers and telecommunications. It is present in 74 countries across all continents and geographies.

Sonae FS is the business segment responsible for providing financial services for its internal customers across seven major Business Areas, as well as external retail customers. Some of the key financial offerings include the “Universo” card, In-store Credit, Personal Loans, “Dá” card, Continente Money Transfer and the insurance broker MDS.

Sonae Financial Services: From Improving the Customer Relationship to Back Office Operations

 

Business Problem

Sonae FS operates in a multi-partnership model, managing the strategy, value proposition and customer relationship management internally, while orchestrating processes operated through external Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) partners.

In this context, there is a need to have a single platform where the Business Areas can define, model and follow-up all process executions within their products and services value chain – from direct relationship with the customer to back office operations.

One of the main goals was for this platform to be used directly by the Business Leads and not to require a deep technical expertise. This allows agility and autonomy for the different departments,  while minimizing the need for a technical IT developer for every process to be developed or updated.

Appian Solution

The multinational company chose Appian to address these needs and to help grow its business.

The first use case was to implement a new end-to-end Universo Insurance product value chain. The team developed several Web APIs in Appian to provide the Universo app with current data about the products, the price and existing client policies. The Appian platform is also responsible for the subscription process via a Web API. This new feature automatically charges the client, registers the data in the customer database, generates the new policy document and emails it to the client.

Another important feature is for the back-office call center, which is entirely developed in Appian. Call center operators now log into Appian and from only one dedicated site, they can search and consult the customer with existing policy data, alter or cancel policies and create new ones.