CASE STUDY

Pacific Life

Engaging customers with Salesforce for transformational digital experiences

5-MINUTE READ

Call for Change
When Tech Meets Human Ingenuity
A Valuable Difference
Meet the Team
Related Capabilities

Call for change

Putting the customer first

Pacific Life is a leading Fortune 500 life insurance and retirement solutions company in the United States with more than $200 billion in assets. The company, whose legacy dates back to 1868, provides life insurance, annuities, mutual funds and other investment products to individuals, businesses and pension plans. Pacific Life works with a network of independent financial professionals who sell these products to their end customers.

With an eye on the future, Pacific Life wanted to remain relevant in the digital age and strongly positioned to thrive over its next 150 years in business. But first, they would have to overcome challenges such as increased competition from new entrants in FinTech and InsureTech, legacy infrastructure, evolving distribution channels and changing customer expectations.

"Our goal was to operate as one company with shared visibility into every relationship and touchpoint"

— Rob Goodman, Vice President – Customer Experience Office, Pacific Life

Reimagining core products and revamping the product-focused operating model would also equip Pacific Life and its partners to market and sell in new ways. Leadership at Pacific Life knew that investing in digital transformation solutions was the answer to shifting the company from a product focus to instead having a laser focus on customer needs, and more importantly, being able to deliver on those needs.

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When tech meets human ingenuity

One new, global outlook

Pacific Life wanted to digitize its business, deliver seamless and personalized customer experiences, and operate more efficiently by building a unified technology platform. They chose Accenture and Salesforce as the partners to enable this digital transformation, from program concept through delivery.

The first step of the journey was a design thinking exercise in which Pacific Life, Salesforce, and Accenture collectively reimagined how the company’s product set and capabilities could be evolved to unlock the greatest value. During this foundational exercise, the team at Pacific Life learned more about how Salesforce products were the pathway to achieving their business goals.

The team decided on an innovative suite of solutions—including an enterprise sales, service and marketing transformation—that would deliver the digital capabilities that Pacific Life needed to build relationships and strengthen interactions with their customer and advisor base. The ultimate solution that Pacific Life adopted was built around the Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, but also included Marketing Cloud, CRM Analytics, MuleSoft, and additional Salesforce ecosystem products.

Educating the team at Pacific Life on how to use and get the most out of these new technology tools was integral to success. Accenture helped to establish a Center of Excellence (COE) operating model that instantiated program roles (such as scrum masters and product owners), program structure, agile training, delivery methodology, cadences and routines.

The last step was creating a transformation roadmap that detailed the sequence of releases across multiple divisions and across sales, service and marketing. A global delivery model allowed the team to deliver capabilities, in alignment with the roadmap, through a series of sprints.

A valuable difference

Technology that evolves

Pacific Life experienced several exciting “firsts” throughout the transformation. It was one of the first times the company’s life insurance and retirement solutions worked together on a large-scale transformation, marking a successful cross-enterprise transformation. It also was one of the first cloud programs, the first software-as-a-service programs, the first agile programs leveraging a global delivery model at scale.

Blazing the trail to digital excellence included successful delivery of five major releases and more than 20 minor releases of the solution set. Notably, more than six disparate user groups across life insurance and retirement were transitioned to the platform and can now collaborate across a single, integrated platform seamlessly.

With those releases successfully delivered, Pacific Life gave its entire organization a single, comprehensive view into customer needs. Understanding the breadth and depth of customer relationships across the company, along with the specific nuances and needs of each customer, allows Pacific Life to keep up with customers’ fast-evolving preferences and to meet their needs proactively in the channel that best suits them. Pacific Life can track conversions of lead to sales and can use predictive analytics to understand the next-best action to take in a variety of sales and service scenarios. With better customer targeting and segmentation through data-driven analytics, the company is reducing customer churn, increasing lead volume and conversions, improving wholesaler productivity, boosting operational efficiency and enhancing campaign effectiveness.

"With this new unified digital platform to better engage with the financial professional community and consumers, Pacific Life has a firm footing for the next 150 years"

— Mike Wallis, Managing Director – Accenture’s North American Salesforce Insurance Business

Pacific Life’s Salesforce platform has proven to be resilient and scalable, while also being fluid and nimble to grow iteratively as Pacific Life’s needs evolve and to serve as a platform for ongoing continued transformation. Accenture has been proud to have helped Pacific Life in this journey, and to have continued supporting Pacific Life’s Salesforce Platform running efficiently so that Pacific Life can continue to tap value from the platform—and the Salesforce ecosystem—each and every day.