How AI 360 Drives Advancements at Southern Cross Insurance
The Client
Southern Cross is New Zealand’s largest non-public health care organization, focusing on insurance products, private hospitals, and healthcare. Operating on not-for-profit principles, it is imperative that the business remains innovative so that they may continue to achieve their goal of providing better value healthcare for New Zealanders.
Southern Cross has been a long-time partner and customer of elementX (formerly Spark 64). Throughout our multi-year partnership, elementX has helped Southern Cross improve their contact centre, implemented conversational AI, performed user experience research to improve product understanding, and worked alongside their internal research team to improve members’ ability to lodge claims using Machine Learning.
What is the problem?
The world of AI is rapidly developing. It seems every other day there is a new breakthrough, new process, new learnings from those who have tried to implement AI in their organisation, and new problems that have been solved using AI. Keeping up to date with the latest developments can be time consuming and confusing, particularly when a lot of the information available may not be important to your business and buried in jargon. However, failing to keep up could mean your company is missing out on valuable improvements that could benefit the company and its members dramatically.
What did the solution look like?
elementX worked with Southern Cross to create the “AI 360” program. This program provided tailored consultation, workshops, and presentations focused on data and AI to staff at Southern Cross.
Rather than just provide a general overview of all things AI, the content and recommendations specifically focused on updating Southern Cross on key content that was relevant to their individual needs and goals as a company. Our long term relationship with the Southern Cross team allowed us to accurately understand their needs and deliver information that was of high value to them.
What was the outcome?
Through regular presentations and consultation, teams and individuals working on AI and data were kept up-to-date on the latest advancements without having to spend time researching. As a result of this information, the team was able to stay informed and inspired to find new projects and solutions to the company's problems.
By presenting the information at an “all-hands” meeting, staff from all across Southern Cross were informed and inspired on how they can adopt the latest AI to improve their efficiency. Some solutions that were inspired by these workshops included the creation of an MLOps strategy to prepare for supporting machine learning in production, as well as identifying opportunities to enhance self service for the IT helpdesk with a virtual assistant. These projects were later built and launched as a result of the spark initiated by these workshops.
The value of the workshops has resulted in an ongoing agreement with workshops delivered at a regular cadence for more than a year.
Stakeholders
Key stakeholders in the AI 360 project include:
Chief Digital Officer
Head of Platforms and Innovation
Data and ML Lead
Architecture Team
Digital Platforms
