SD-WAN: Ensuring Optimal Network Performance for Insurance Companies
Versa Networks
December 1, 2017
Like many industries, the insurance sector increasingly depends on new technologies to provide better service while reducing operational costs, with the ultimate goal of creating an exceptional customer experience. Mobile apps, cloud-based services and video chat are just some of the ways insurance companies are using technology to reach their customers and decrease their overhead.
Consider, for example, the traditional method of filing a claim for an auto collision: a police report is filed, a copy of which must be forwarded to the claims department of the insurance company; photos of the damage are needed, which means the adjuster must make an appointment with the customer to take pictures and make an assessment; the adjuster writes a report on the damage, which is then sent to management for approval or denial of the claim. Each step is its own time-consuming process, which can draw out the insurance payout process weeks or months. Meanwhile, the customer doesn’t know when—or even if—a claim will be paid.
With mobile apps and other new technologies, however, the insurance claim process is much simpler and much faster: Police reports are automatically routed to the insurance company; customers can snap photos of the damage and send them to the insurance company using a mobile app; and adjusters can use cloud-based services from any location to create and append claim reports. All of the necessary information is located in one central location for management to access immediately and make the decision whether to approve or deny the claim. Because everything is digitized, the process takes much less time and often results in higher customer satisfaction.
Having these great technology tools comes at a price to the network, however. The majority of current networks simply aren’t built to manage the heavy bandwidth needs of new-generation technologies, especially when cost and staffing are a concern. And considering the number of critical applications running over an insurance company’s network—not to mention the need to keep remote offices connected and up to date—it’s imperative a company’s infrastructure be able to keep up with demand.
What’s more, most insurance field offices are not staffed with IT personnel; rather, any IT demands are met by central IT at the corporate or regional headquarters and roving IT administrators who visit field locations when necessary.
The cost of and time necessary for a full infrastructure upgrade isn’t feasible for most companies in any industry. Companies, therefore, must make their existing networks work smarter to manage the data loads associated with video, voice and mobile.
SD-WAN technology can help companies utilize their current networks to their fullest potential while paving the path for a smarter, more efficient network down the road. SD-WAN works with the existing network to provide application-level intelligent routing and network management, so companies can manage today’s complex and bandwidth-intensive services intelligently and more efficiently without having to replace their networking hardware.
For locations without IT staff, which may suffer from long downtimes due to outages or planned network upgrades, SD-WAN reduces the wait. SD-WAN combines the security of a traditional networking configuration with the speed and convenience of the internet to keep data traffic flowing without any bottlenecks or slowdown. It can detect the fastest or most optimal path (or paths) for network traffic in real-time and dynamically reroute packet flows for the best performance to ensure continual uptime for any networking application, be it data, voice or video. User-created policies can ensure mission-critical applications have priority on the network.
For insurance companies with remote offices, SD-WAN centralizes network provisioning and management, ensuring all locations are up-to-date on the latest application versions and security policies without the need for a full-time IT person at each location. Using SD-WAN, insurance companies can get new agency offices up and running in days. Traditional MPLS service, meanwhile, can take weeks or months for the telco to deliver, followed by the time and effort spent performing on-site and service configuration.
Versa Networks’ Secure SD-WAN solution can help insurance companies benefit from new technologies and deliver exceptional customer experiences. Versa delivers industry-leading Secure SD-WAN technology to help companies control the cost, increase the reliability and improve the security of their networks. All of which equate to lower operational costs and higher customer satisfaction.
