AgeSA's Digital Transformation Journey

A Success Story of Efficiency and Security Achieved with Information Systems (BBS)
 

Strategic Collaboration and Digital Transformation Vision

In the dynamic and competitive insurance industry, the partnership between AgeSA and Bilgi Birikim Sistemleri (BBS), shaped by the understanding that digitalization is not a choice but a strategic imperative, represents a turning point in achieving operational excellence and unwavering security goals. Combining the need for modernization with a sound vision, AgeSA has taken a solid step forward by selecting BBS, a leading solution partner with deep expertise in technology integration.
 
AgeSA, a leading player in the Turkish insurance sector, aimed to strengthen its customer-focused service approach with its technological infrastructure. BBS, a leading system integrator in the sector since 1992, possessed the expertise to realize this vision. Having undertaken successful projects in the insurance sector with IBM for over a decade, BBS's rise seven places to 11th place on the Bilişim 500 list is concrete evidence of the company's robust growth strategy and its comprehensive 360-degree service offering across software, hardware, and services. In this project, AgeSA's core operational processes, such as document and identity management, were completely modernized under BBS's leadership and with IBM's powerful technology solutions, achieving measurable increases in speed and efficiency. However, this successful transformation was fueled by deep-rooted challenges that threatened AgeSA's operational efficiency and security.
 

Challenge: Need for Modernization and Operational Risks

The rise of digital transformation beyond creating competitive advantage to becoming a necessity, coupled with the proliferation of remote working models due to the pandemic, led AgeSA to strategically strengthen its IT infrastructure. Modernizing existing systems was essential to support the organization's growth goals and adapt to changing working conditions. During this process, AgeSA faced two fundamental challenges that directly impacted operational efficiency and information security:

• Outdated Document Management System: The document management system the organization had been using for approximately 15 years was technologically outdated. This made it difficult to integrate with modern applications and caused significant problems in support processes. This outdated system put pressure on operational efficiency, slowing down business processes, and diminishing organizational agility.
• Manual Identity and Authorization Management: In a large organization like AgeSA, with a large number of employees, manually tracking user access to systems presented significant challenges. This method created serious security risks, such as "orphaned accounts," and paved the way for access-based vulnerabilities. Because it was impossible to centrally track and report which users accessed which systems with which authorizations, auditing processes became more complex and information security risks increased.

These challenges were strategic obstacles that threatened not only AgeSA's daily operations but also its long-term growth and security goals. To address these critical challenges, BBS delivered a strategic roadmap with advanced technology solutions specifically designed for AgeSA's needs.


 

Strategic Solution: Automation of Processes with Advanced Technology

BBS analyzed the specific challenges facing AgeSA and presented strategic solutions that would not only provide a technological upgrade but also fundamentally transform business processes. The selected IBM technologies were positioned to both address existing challenges and support future growth potential. The project reshaped AgeSA's digital infrastructure, progressing along two main axes.
 

Modernizing Document Management: The IBM Filenet Project

To eliminate the inefficiency and support issues inherent in the legacy system, IBM Filenet was selected as the central document management platform. The most critical and ambitious goal of this project was to migrate approximately 30 million documents from the system to the new platform with zero disruption to business processes and no disruptions felt by end users. To ensure the project's success, a comprehensive analysis phase was conducted, restructuring document types and metadata. Following this meticulous preparation process, the migration phase successfully migrated approximately 30 million documents to the new system in just two months.
 

Secure and Automated Identity Management: IBM Security Verify Governance Project

Following the successful foundation laid in 2017 with the IBM Filenet project, AgeSA and BBS further deepened their strategic partnership in 2019 by expanding their focus to the Identity and Access Management area. This project fully automated AgeSA's identity and access management processes by deploying IBM Security Verify Governance. The solution integrated the organization's human resources (HR) data with system authorizations into an integrated platform. This automated all authorization processes, from an employee's start to their departure. The system ensures that the right people have access to the right systems with the right authorizations, while authorization requests, approvals, and revocations can be managed centrally and historically reported.
 
By implementing these advanced technology solutions, AgeSA not only solved its existing problems but also achieved concrete results that will enable a leap forward in operational efficiency and security.
 

Results Achieved and Business Impact: Efficiency, Cost Advantage and Safety

The technology investments made have had a direct and transformative impact on AgeSA's operational efficiency, cost structure, and overall security posture. Projects implemented under BBS's leadership have delivered measurable and strategic benefits to the organization.
 

Increased Operational Efficiency and Speed:

• The modern architecture strategically shortened the time to deploy new services and functionality by increasing integration capabilities with enterprise applications.
• The user experience has been radically improved; employees can now access content from different systems seamlessly and quickly from a single point, accelerating decision-making processes.

Cost Optimization:

• The new, efficient architecture strategically optimized the cost structure of AgeSA's IT operations, paving the way for resources to be redirected to more valuable areas.
• Establishing a centralized, shared infrastructure eliminated duplicate coding and maintenance efforts, resulting in tangible savings in development costs.

Advanced Security and Risk Management:

• Centralizing identity and access management processes has increased the organization's holistic cybersecurity resilience by providing the ability to proactively manage access-based risks.
• Automation of critical authorization processes minimized operational risks by eliminating the human error factor and provided transparency in audit processes.

Full Control and Reporting:

• Managing all digital identities from a single platform gave AgeSA complete visibility and control over access.
• The ability to retrospectively trace authorization processes and provide instant reporting enabled legal compliance and audit requirements to be met effortlessly.

One of the most important factors in achieving these impressive results was the flawless cooperation between the teams carrying out the project as well as technological competence.
 

The Key to Success: Perfect Teamwork and Strong Partnership

The success of large-scale technology projects depends not only on selecting the right products, but also on strong synergy and teamwork among all stakeholders involved. The collaboration between AgeSA and BBS provides a prime example of this principle.
 
In both projects, the AgeSA and BBS teams acted as a single "team" focused on a common goal, rather than as stakeholders from separate institutions. This approach ensured that project challenges were quickly resolved and communication proceeded in a transparent and constructive manner. Embracing the project as a whole was the foundation of success. This strong collaborative model not only ensured that the projects were delivered to the targeted quality standards and in a robust manner, but also allowed for faster completion than the projected schedule.
 
Timely and even faster project completion played a key role in AgeSA achieving the targeted efficiency and return on its technology investment much more quickly. BBS continued to support AgeSA after project completion, providing maintenance, support, and additional consulting services, transforming this strategic partnership into a continuous and vibrant structure. This strong partnership also lays the foundation for even more ambitious future goals.
 

Looking to the Future: Sustainable Cooperation and New Goals

The productive collaboration between BBS and AgeSA goes far beyond a one-time project delivery, positioning it as a long-term, strategic partnership. As a systems integrator, BBS's primary goal is to seamlessly address its clients' digital transformation needs and offer a flexible structure that can quickly adapt to industry changes. This vision also shapes the future roadmap for its relationship with AgeSA.
 
The partnership's future objectives are summarized as follows:

• Adapting and extending the existing IBM Filenet and IBM Security Verify Identity Management systems to meet AgeSA's changing infrastructure and security needs is a top priority for BBS for the remainder of 2023.
• To further improve process efficiency with new technologies such as IBM Process Mining, which is included in the 2024 investment agenda and is considered an integral part of the automation product family .
• BBS is determined to remain AgeSA's reliable solution partner and continue to support the institution's evolving infrastructure with the most appropriate technology solutions in both automation and security.

This success story demonstrates the criticality of combining the right technology with the right partner to achieve digital transformation goals. These results, achieved through the synergy of AgeSA and BBS, are not only an operational victory but also a powerful demonstration of the strategic value created through technology and sustained customer satisfaction.