With 9.4 million insureds and more than 400 locations, BARMER is one of the leading insurance companies in Germany. Teamwire provides easy and efficient communication to employees and teams of BARMER to better serve customer needs and improve customer service.
Teamwire ensures strong German data protection and security for highly sensitive customer and insurance data. For the initial phase, BARMER has acquired 3,000 user licenses from Teamwire and is running the solution at T-Systems‘ high-security data center.
Executive Summary:
- BARMER is a leading German health insurance company
- T-Systems implements Teamwire’s enterprise messaging app
- Highly secure, integrated solution for fast communication and information exchange
- 3,000 user licenses for employees
- Intuitive usage with WhatsApp look & feel
- Only for operational use
- Parallel usage of three devices per user with automatic synchronization
- Increased efficiency and increased productivity in customer service and support
- Operation on dedicated servers in German high security data center
- Compliance with all requirements regarding social data protection
- Integration into MobileIron’s mobile device management
- An important building block in the digitalization strategy
The Task:
A key element of BARMER’s digital strategy is the digitization of internal communication. Whether for the central organization of units, the coordination of teams or simple scheduling of meetings, employees should be able to communicate with a modern tool as easy, fast and efficiently as possible. After all, BARMER is always concerned with the speedy handling of customer requirements and customer service. At the same time, the protection of highly-sensitive data must be guaranteed for health insurance companies. BARMER therefore wanted a central, modern and secure tool as a driver for the rapid information exchange between the employees and the departments.
As with WhatsApp, messages and digital content should be sent intuitively and professional group chats for various teams and topics should be possible. In this way, BARMER also wanted to reduce the e-mail overload on the mobile devices and to minimize the storage requirements. In addition, the focus was on a mobilization in the direction of interconnected, mobile devices. Top priority in the selection of the new enterprise messaging app was not only the functionality but also the security and protection of the insurance data and the exclusion of a private usage. For security and data protection reasons, a use of WhatsApp for business was out of the question for BARMER health insurance.
The Solution:
BARMER has decided to implement Teamwire’s enterprise messaging app together with T-Systems and purchased 3,000 user licenses for the initial phase. Despite careful internal security tests, the app was launched within just three months for the first 1,800 BARMER employees with iOS and Android devices. Teamwire offers a wide range of functions, from 1:1 and group messaging, video and voice messages, team chats, sending files, photos and weblinks with previews, sharing locations and exchanging calendar appointments. Each employee can simultaneously use the app on three devices that synchronize chats and conversations automatically.
At BARMER, Teamwire is integrated into the mobile device management solution of MobileIron, which was also implemented by T-Systems. It also manages the access control and all users of Teamwire. Numerous features ensure the compliance with the high security requirements: Full encryption, anonymous user data, minimized data usage, not even the administrators of BARMER have an insight into the messages, and access to other cloud services is generally not allowed. Teamwire can only be used within the BARMER domain.
T-Systems runs the BARMER solution in a highly secure German data center in compliance with strict German data protection law with a high availability of 99.5 percent in average. With Teamwire for enterprise messaging and MobileIron for mobile device management, BARMER has an integrated mobility solution from T-Systems, which fulfills the highest requirements for the protection of sensitive corporate and customer data.
The Benefit:
BARMER is now able to communicate internally without e-mails in real-time and to provide even better customer service for the insured. Messages, news, content and reports are exchanged faster between colleagues and teams, and are fully encrypted and completely anonymous on the servers. Not even an adaption from the privately used WhatsApp look & feel was necessary, since Teamwire is just as intuitive and easy to use.
As a charming side effect, a sent smiley can generate the necessary motivation at the right time. Employees gain valuable time, which in turn can flow into the personal support of the customer. The recruitment of talent is also easier, since “Digital Natives” attach great importance to working environments with a “social media character”.
In the context of BARMER’s superior digitization strategy, Teamwire is an important step in the acceptance of digital workstations. Thanks to an API, BARMER can integrate further services into Teamwire and thus make an additional, valuable contribution to the digitization efforts.