Aseguradora del Sur is an 100% Ecuadorian company with more than 30 years of experience in insurance, ranked among the top 5 nationally, and with a presence in practically all branches of the sector, focusing especially on automobiles. 

“The challenge posed to us by the company was to help them structure their strategic planning,” says María Paula Muñoz, Project Leader at Opinno Ecuador. “As an innovation consulting firm, we use Agile technologies to generate customer-focused initiatives, laying the foundations so that Aseguradora del Sur can follow them up.  

“The collaboration started with a talk on digital transformation trends in the insurance market, which helped create a mindset shift in which the focus began to shift from the market to the real needs of the client. An Agile Strategic Planning (SP) approach that allowed us to help Aseguradora del Sur generate their strategic pillars and objectives. 

The As Is/To Be model used began with the assessment of the starting situation (As Is). Once established, it is contrasted with the desired objective (To Be), which in turn must be aligned with the business vision. From this initial analysis, the time comes to determine the path to be followed. 

What is the core of Aseguradora del Sur's business, its capacity, or its real demand? Which services should be prioritized, and which should be left out? These are key questions that are best answered by putting yourself in the customer's and employee's shoes, finding out what they really think and what their needs are. This approach was key to defining the empathy map whose content contributed to the definition of Aseguradora del Sur's strategic pillars and objectives. The Customer Canvas helped us identify all the service-related factors that could bring real value.  

“The development began by identifying the strategic pillars and then establishing the objectives and their measurement indicators,” says José Sanchez, Product Owner at Opinno Ecuador. “To empower employees, we communicated these strategic objectives and the added value of the project to the organization, working at a strategic, practical and operational level, thus generating a sense of belonging”. 

Strategic clarity implies answering with certainty to 2 basic questions, what and how. In this sense, Aseguradora del Sur defined itself as an insurance company with products tailored to its customers, and as a facilitator of positive experiences in a simple and practical way. From this initial positioning, we defined the 6 value streams (Hyperlink) or strategic priorities that were key to identify its strategic objectives and review the project portfolio. 

The next phase of this collaboration focused on reviewing Aseguradora del Sur's project portfolio with a criterion of suitability with its business needs. Through the implementation of the SDA (Single Development Agenda), from 50 initial projects with a low level of execution, we proposed to limit their number to 10 projects that were truly manageable and with a double focus based on the client and agility. 

Finally, we developed the project implementation schedule by means of a very detailed business case that has been applied in Aseguradora del Sur since last January. 

After an initial period of reflection and organizational design, several of the projects are already being executed at Aseguradora del Sur, thus fulfilling the initial objective of this collaboration.  

Project KPIs: 

  • To optimize the project portfolio, reducing the number of projects from 50 to 10 that have a high probability of success and capacity for execution.  
  • To implement a replicable Agile methodology for future strategic planning.  
  • To improve resource allocation by defining a proprietary ADS tool for resource management (capacity vs. demand).