“We collaborate better than ever but not at the expense of confidentiality”

Norwegian Gard knows all about embracing changes and the value of providing a great customer experience. To last a hundred years as an industry influencer you have to adapt quickly when your customers face change - that’s the “Gard way”.; “It’s important to us that our members always feel that we are on their side, all of the time. Whenever they face changes we have to adapt really quickly”, says Line Døskeland Dahle, Vice President at Gard.; As a mutual company Gard is owned by its members and has since it was founded in 1907 improved it’s concept of transparency creating the unique and friendly “Gard way”. The core purpose is to help members and clients in the marine industry to manage risk and its consequences.

“We handle everything for our clients from loss prevention to handling their claims. It’s important that our clients and members trust us, that we are financially solid and give them the right product.”

Gard is one of the worlds leading marine insurers, with headquarters in Norway and offices around the world, insuring thousands of vessels all over the globe.

They are certainly a big fish in the industry. To take the success even further, Gard uses Salesforce as a future-proof platform with all the benefits of the cloud model.

“We have been working on the Gard-concept for a hundred years. Salesforce took us to the next level by automating our processes and making them transparent, both for our clients and for us internally in the company.”

For a social enterprise such as Gard it is vital to collaborate across departments and countries to evolve and create an even better customer experience.

When other companies may choose to shut the transparency between teams to spark internal competition, the “Gard way” is to be totally open. That way employees across geographical and industrial teams can work together and learn about each other’s markets and build trust within the company.

Chatter has really taken Gard to the next level, creating more transparency by enabling its employees to share their expertise with each other across teams and country borders. This has resulted in better risk assessments and, perhaps most importantly, collaborations to provide better risk solutions for members and clients.

Gard uses team dashboards to continuously monitor were they are in terms of sales goals, project goals or adoptions goals, at any given time.

“We have moved from using email to also collaborating in Chatter. It is definitely an evolution taking place”, says Line Døskeland Dahle. “Everybody at Gard want to share their experiences, teach and collaborate. We can see that on Chatter.”

The organization was particularly enthusiastic about the “managing ideas” - feature and has decided to change the way they handle projects by intergrading all of the issues and suggestion from employees into Chatter. Now every project has its own Chatter group and can be discussed before getting passed on to a third party handler.

“It is fantastic, it changed the way we run projects and the collaboration between Business and ICT is great”, she says.

“And there’s no need for specialized skills! Anyone can apply their basic knowledge of Internet tools and our business processes, and with a well-defined and accessible training program carry out their tasks in a transparent and collaborative manner to achieve Gard’s core purpose.”

An accident can happen anywhere in the world. For Gard it’s important to have industry experts in all time zones ready to take on a claim. Whether it’s a fire or a collision it’s an enormous strain on an organization to handle a catastrophe and Gard needs to be able to bring its experts together to resolve the situation quickly.

Salesforce’s cloud model gives Gard the ability to display transparent processes for client service throughout the global organization, and in addition to more efficient service it affects time-to-value when the whole client team is instantly updated on development.

The people at Gard are now able to collaborate across departments supporting their pillars of excellence in expertise and long-term relationships in order to smoothen the process for the client, keeping all involved parties updated and making sure nothing is left out.

”We collaborate better than ever but not at the expense of confidentiality”, says Line Døskeland Dahle.

The world is changing at a pace that has never been seen before and Gard has to be there for members and clients when they face new challenges. This means Gard has to be able to quickly meet the request of the shipping industry and adapt to them.

“The cloud model providing limitless scalability is perfect for this and for achieving our core purpose.”

We have implemented Salesforce to users throughout the organization – everyone involved with client contact and business processes has a license and is expected to contribute to the Customer Experience with their particular business skills. What is great is that there is no need for specialized skills anyone can apply their basic knowledge of internet tools and our business processes, and with a well-defined and accessible training program carry out their tasks and functions in a transparent and collaborative manner to achieve Gard’s core purpose.