>>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of IBM. Think 2021 brought to you by IBM. >>Welcome to the cubes coverage of IBM. Think the digital experience I'm Lisa Martin. I've got two guests with me here today. Ryan Dennings joins us manager of ECM solutions at auto owners insurance company, Ryan, welcome to the program. Thank you. And Michelle Christianson is here as well. VP of enterprise report management practice at end choice, Michelle. It's good to have you on the program. Thank you. Thank you. So let's, let's go ahead and start with you. You guys are a customer of and choice and IBM, talk to us a little bit about auto owners company. I know this is a fortune 500. This was founded in 1916. You've got about nearly 3 million policy holders, but give us an overview of auto owners insurance. >>Sure. So I don't want to said insurance is an insurance company. That's headquartered in Lansing, Michigan. We write insurance in 26 States throughout the United States. Um, just by our name being auto owners insurance, which is how we started. Um, we write all personal lines, commercial lines and also have a life insurance company, >>So comprehensive and that across those nearly 3 million policy holders. Michelle, tell us a little bit about end choice. I know this, you guys are an IBM gold business partner, but this is end choices first time on the cubes. So give us a background. Sure, sure. Great. So in choice are an IBM gold business partner. Uh, we have had 28 years success with IBM as a business partner. Our headquarters are in areas, um, Austin, Texas, and, uh, Tempe, Arizona, as well as Shelton Connecticut. We cover all of North America and we are a hundred percent focused on the IBM digital business automation space. We have about 500 customers now that we've helped, uh, through the years. And we continue to be a leading support provider as well as an implementation partner with all the IBM solutions. And talk to me a little bit Michelle, about how it is that you work with with, um, auto owners. >>So we assisted auto owners recently in their digital transformation journey and they were, uh, dealing with an antiquated product and wanted to get for moving forward, you know, provided better customer satisfaction, um, experience, um, for their clients agents. And so we partnered with them and with IBM and bringing them a content manager on demand solution as well as navigator and several other products within the IBM digital business automation portfolio. Excellent client. Oh, sorry Michelle, go ahead. Nope. That's that's fine. All right, Ryan, tell us a little bit about auto owners, your relationship with IBM and choice and how is it helping you to address some, the challenges in the market today? >>Sure. So I don't know if this has a long-term relationship with IBM. Um, originally starting back as we go as a mainframe customer and then, you know, more recently, um, helping us with different modern technology initiatives. Uh, they were instrumental in the nineties when we created our initial web offerings. And then more recently they've been helping us with our digital business automation, which has helped us to, um, mature our content, offering it. >>So you have had a long standing relationship with IBM. Right. And you mentioned the nineties, ah, a time when we didn't have to wear a mask on our faces. So a couple of decades it goes back. Yeah. >>Yes. For sure. Yes. Even further than that back, you know, back into the seventies from the mainframe side of things, >>Uh, the seventies, another good time. All right. So Michelle had talked to me a little bit about what end choices doing with IBM solutions to help auto owners from a digital transformation perspective is as I said, this is a company that was founded in 1916. And I always love to hear how history companies like that are actually working with technology companies to facilitate that transformation a lot harder than it sounds well. That's correct. Just as I mentioned, we're focused on helping customers develop their strategies, their digital strategy and creating those transformative solutions. So we're helping organizations like auto owners, um, with their journey by first realizing, um, their existing, existing, digital state, what challenges they might have and what needs they might need. And then we break that down or we deconstruct those technical and process. And finally we re-invent, um, their strategic offering with modern capabilities. >>So we're focused on technologies like RPA machine learning, artificial intelligence, they're more efficient, scalable, and secure. So any way we can bring those technologies into the equation we go forward. So this offers us, our clients, um, smarter and more into intuitive interfaces, creating basically a better user experience and a better user experience then becomes disruptive to their competition. So they gain a better place in the market space. Ryan talked to us about that process as much as you were involved in it. I liked that Michelle said, you know, we kind of look at the environment, we deconstruct it and then we reinvent it. Talk to me about how IBM and enChoice have ha has helped auto owners to do that so that your digital infrastructure is much more modern. And I presume much more resilient when there are market dynamics like we're living in now. >>Yeah, for sure. So, you know, we've, we've gone through a couple of transformation journeys at auto owners with IBM. Um, when I started the team about seven years ago, we originally started using file NATS and data cap and case manager and content aggregator, um, as our first, um, movement from a traditional, um, platform that we had for content management into a more modern platform. And that helped us a lot to improve our business process, um, improve how we capture content and bring it into the system and make it actionable more recently, we've been working with Michelle and the team on our, um, migration to a content management on demand platform. And that's really going to be transformative in terms of how we're able to present content and documents and bills, um, to our agents and customers, um, to be able to transform that content and show it in ways that are, um, important, um, for our customers to be able to see it to, um, engage from, with auto owners in a, in a digital era. >>So Ryan, just a couple of questions on that is that, is that a facilitation of like the digitization of processes that had some paper involved cause you guys have about 48,000 agents. So a lot of folks, a lot of content, tell me a little bit more about how, um, that like content manager on demand, for example, and what you're doing with ETF, how has that really revolutionizing and driving part of that digital transformation? >>Sure. So, uh, you know, there's two parts to that in terms of that content management management on demand journey. Um, one is the technology portion of it, but IBM's provided and that suite of software gives us some functionality that we haven't had in the past. Um, specifically some functionality around searching and searchability of our content, um, that will make it easier for people to find the content that they're looking for, um, ability to implement, uh, records management policies and other things that help us manage that content more effectively, um, as well as, um, some different options to be able to present the content, uh, to our customers and agents in a, in a better and more modern way. Um, and I'm choices role rolling that has really been, sorry, guide us on that journey, um, to help us make the right choices along the way on the project and help us get to a successful implementation and production. >>Excellent. Michelle, talk to me about hybrid cloud AI data, a big theme of, uh, IBM think is your, how is enChoice using hybrid cloud and AI, you mentioned some of the ways, but kind of break into that a little bit more about how you're helping customers like auto owners and others really take advantage of those modern technologies. Well, sure, sure. So, um, of course with the Calpec offerings that IBM has come forward with and where we focus in the cloud Pak for automation, um, several of those offerings are, some of them are, um, uh, built specifically to, uh, survive or to, to, um, be hosted in a hybrid environment. And as we working with auto owners, um, transforming their platforms going forward, for example, they just invested in, in a, um, a, uh, I just lost the word here. I, they just invested in a new platform mainframe platform where they're going to be leveraging the red hats and from there they'll drive forward into containerization. >>So, um, Ryan mentioned, uh, some of the ways that we'll be presenting the content for his agents and his customers and a particular, um, that entire viewing platform itself can be moved to a containerization state. So, um, so it's going to be a lot easier for him to transition into that and to maintain it and to management manage it. And of course, um, just that whole, um, the ease of function around it will be a lot easier. So we are in our area as an IBM business partner. Um, we work with, uh, these solutions to try to stay ahead of the game, to try to be able to assist our customers to understand what makes sense, when is it time to move into those? Um, it's great to take advantage of the new stuff, but nobody wants to be, you know, the bleeding game. We want to be the leading game. >>And, um, so that's some of the areas we focus with our clients to really stay tight with the labs tight with IBM and understanding their strategies and convey those and educate our customers on those excellent leading edge. Ran, talk to me a little bit. I love this a bank, uh, sorry. Uh, an insurance company from the early 19 hundreds moving into the using container technology. I'll have stories like that. Talk to me a little bit about hybrid cloud AI and how those technologies are going to be facilitators of the continuation of the digital transformation and probably enabling more opportunities for your agents to meet more needs from, from your policy holders. >>Yeah, for sure. So, uh, first and foremost, um, we were a red hat open shift, uh, customer before IBM acquired them and we were doing microservices development and things like that on the platform. Um, and then we were super excited about IBM's digital business automation strategy to, uh, move to cloud pack, um, and have that available for software products to run on OpenShift. Um, at the end of last year, we updated our license thing so that we can move in that direction and we're starting to, um, deploy, um, digital business automation products on our OpenShift platform, which is super exciting for me. It's going to make for faster upgrades, more scalability. Um, just a lot of ease of use things, um, for my team, um, to make their jobs easier, but also easier for us to adapt new upgrades and software offerings from IBM. Um, there's also a number of products that are in the, um, containerized or OpenShift only offering as they're initially coming out, whether it's mobile capture or automated document processing, um, the same a couple, um, and those are both things that we're looking at auto owners to continue to mature in this space and be able to offer more functionality to our associates, our customers, and our agents, um, to continue to grow the business >>Very forward-thinking uh, awesome Ryan, thanks for sharing with us. What auto insurance or auto owners insurance is doing, how you're being successful and how, how you've done so much transformation already. I want to throw the last question to Michelle. Take us out Michelle with what's next from end choices perspective in terms of your digital transformation. Um, well we have been a hundred percent focus on helping all of our customers develop their digital strategy and, uh, and creating their own transformative solutions. So as we continue to work with our clients, take them through the journey. Um, as I mentioned before, we try to encourage them not to focus on the, the technology itself, but really to focus on creating their exceptional customer experience when driving their digital strategy. And we see ourselves as, you know, helping transform our clients experience such that, you know, customer experience becomes what enChoice does best. >>So we see not only our own organization going through the transformation, but making sure that we're taking our clients with us and with 500 clients, we're, we're really busy. So that's always good. That is good. It sounds like the last year has been, uh, very fruitful for you. And I love that you mentioned customer experience, Michelle. I think that is so important and as well as employee experience, but having a good customer experience, especially these days. Table-stakes I thank you both so much for sharing what you guys are doing with IBM solutions, the transformation that you're both of your companies are on, and we look forward to hearing what's to come. Thank you both for your time. Thank you. Thank you for Rand Dunnings and Michelle Christiansen. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes coverage of IBM. Think that digital experience.

(upbeat music) >> From around the globe. It's theCUBE with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021 brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think, The Digital Experience. I'm Lisa Martin. I've got two guests with me here today. Ryan Dennings joins us, Manager of ECM Solutions at Auto-Owners Insurance Company, Ryan, welcome to the program. >> Thank you. And Michelle Christensen is here as well, VP of Enterprise Report Management Practice at enChoice, Michelle, it's good to have you on the program. >> Thank you. Thank you. So let's, Ryan let's go ahead and start with you. You guys are a customer of enChoice and IBM, talk to us a little bit about Auto-Owners Company. I know this is a fortune 500. This was founded in 1916. You've got about nearly 3 million policy holders but give us an overview of Auto-Owners Insurance. >> Sure. So Auto-Owners Insurance is an insurance company that's headquartered in Lansing, Michigan. We write insurance in 26 States throughout the United States. Despite our name being Auto-Owners Insurance, which is how we started, we write all personal lines, commercial lines, and also have a life insurance company. >> So comprehensive and that across those nearly 3 million policy holders. Michelle, tell us a little bit about enChoice. I know this, you guys are an IBM Gold Business Partner but this is enChoice's first time on the Cube, so give us a background. >> Sure, sure, great. So enChoice are an IBM Gold Business Partner. We have had 28 years success with IBM as a business partner. Our headquarters are in areas of Austin, Texas, and Tempe, Arizona, as well as Shelton, Connecticut. We cover all of North America and we are a hundred percent focused on the IBM Digital Business Automation Space. We have about 500 customers now that we've helped through the years and we continue to be a leading support provider as well as an implementation partner with all the IBM Solutions. >> And talk to me a little bit Michelle about how it is that you work with with Auto-Owners. >> So we assisted Auto-Owners recently in their digital transformations journey and they were dealing with an antiquated product and wanted to get moving forward, you know provide a better customer satisfaction experience for their client's agents, and so we partnered with them and with IBM and bringing them a content manager on-demand solution as well as navigator and several other products within the IBM Digital Business Automation Portfolio. >> Excellent, Ryan Oh, sorry Michelle, go ahead. >> Nope. That's that's fine. All right, Ryan, tell us a little bit about Auto-Owners, your relationship with IBM and enChoice and how is it helping you to address some of the challenges in the market today? >> Sure. So Auto-Owners has a long-term relationship with IBM originally starting back years ago as a mainframe customer and then, you know more recently helping us with different modern technology initiatives. They were instrumental in the nineties when we redid our initial web offerings, and then more recently they've been helping us with our Digital Business Automation which has helped us to mature our content offering at Owners. >> So you have had a long standing relationship with IBM, Ryan, and then you mentioned the nineties at a time when we didn't have to wear masks on our faces. (laughing) So a couple of decades it goes back, yeah? >> Yes. For sure. Yes. Even further than that, that, you know back into the seventies from the mainframe side of things. >> The seventies, another good time. (laughing) All right. So Michelle, talk to me a little bit about what enChoice is doing with IBM Solutions to help Auto-Owners from a digital transformation perspective is as I said this is a company that was founded in 1916, and I always love to hear how history companies like that are actually working with technology companies to facilitate that transformation. It's a lot harder than it sounds. >> Well, that's correct. Yes. As I mentioned, we're focused on helping customers develop their strategy, their digital strategy and creating those transformative solutions. So we're helping organizations like Auto-Owners with their journey, by first realizing their existing digital state, what challenges they might have and what needs they might need, and then we break that down or we deconstruct those technical and processizations and finally we re-invent their strategic offering with modern capabilities. So we're focused on technologies like RPA, machine learning, artificial intelligence, they're more efficient, scalable, and secure, so any way we can bring those technologies into the equation we go for it. So this offers us, our clients smarter and more intuitive interfaces creating basically a better user experience, and a better user experience then becomes disruptive to their competition. So they gain a better place in the market space. >> Ryan talked to us about that process as much as you were involved in it. I liked that Michelle said, you know we kind of look at the environment, we deconstruct it and then we re-invent it. Talk to me about how IBM and enChoice has helped Auto-Owners to do that so that your digital infrastructure is much more modern, and I presume much more resilient when there are market dynamics like we're living in now. >> Yeah, for sure. So, you know, we've, we've gone through a couple of transformation journeys at Auto-Owners with IBM. When I started the team about seven years ago we originally started using file NATS and data cap, and case manager, and content aggregator as our first movement from a traditional platform that we had for content management into a more modern platform, and that helped us a lot to improve our business process, improve how we capture content and bring it into the system and make it actionable. More recently, we've been working with Michelle and the enChoice team on our migration to a content management on-demand platform, and that's really going to be transformative in terms of how we're able to present content and documents and bills to our agents and customers, to be able to transform that content and show it in ways that are important for our customers to be able to see it, to engage with Auto-Owners in a, in a digital era. >> So Ryan, just a couple of questions on that, is that is that a facilitation of like the digitization of processes that had some paper involved cause you guys have about 48,000 agents, so a lot of folks, a lot of content, tell me a little bit more about how that like content manager on-demand, for example and what you're doing with ECF, how has that really revolutionizing and driving part of that digital transformation? >> Sure. So, you know, there's two parts to that in terms of that content management on-demand journey. One is the technology portion of it, but IBM's provided, and that suite of software gives us some functionality that we haven't had in the past. Specifically, some functionality around searching and searchability of our content that will make it easier for people to find the content that they're looking for, ability to implement records management policies and other things that help us manage that content more effectively, as well as some different options to be able to present the content to our customers and agents in a in a better and more modern way and enChoice's role in that has really been to guide us on that journey to help us make the right choices along the way on the project and help us get to a successful implementation and production. >> Excellent. Michelle, talk to me about Hybrid Cloud AI Data a big theme of IBM Think this year. How is enChoice using Hybrid Cloud and AI? You mentioned some of the other ways but kind of break into that a little bit more about how you're helping customers like Auto-Owners and others really take advantage of those modern technologies. >> Well, sure, sure. So of course with the Cloud Pak offerings that IBM has come forward with and where we focus in the Cloud Pak for automation, several of those offerings are some of them are built specifically to survive or to to be hosted in a hybrid environment, and as we're working with Auto-Owners transforming their platforms going forward for example, they just invested in, in a, a I just lost the word here. They just invested in a, a new platform, mainframe platform where they're going to be leveraging the red hats, and from there they'll drive forward into containerization. So Ryan mentioned some of the ways that we'll be presenting the content for his agents and his customers in a particular that entire viewing platform itself can be moved to a containerization state. So, so it's going to be a lot easier for him to transition into that and to maintain it and to manage it. And of course, just that whole, the ease of function around it will be a lot easier. So we are in our area as an IBM business partner, we work with these solutions to try to stay ahead of the game, to try to be able to assist our customers to understand what makes sense, when is it time to move into those. It's great to take advantage of the new stuff but nobody wants to be, you know, the bleeding game. We want to be the leading game. And so that's some of the areas we focus with our clients to really stay tight with the labs, tight with IBM and understanding their strategies and convey those and educate our customers on those. >> Excellent leading edge. Ryan, talk to me a little bit. I love this a bank, sorry an insurance company from the early 1900's moving into the using container technology. I love stories like that. Talk to me a little bit about Hybrid Cloud AI and how those technologies are going to be facilitators of the continuation of the digital transformation, and probably enabling more opportunities for your agents to meet more needs from from your policy holders. >> Yeah, for sure. So first and foremost, we were a Red Hat OpenShift customer before IBM acquired them and we were doing microservices development and things like that on the platform, and then we were super excited about IBM's digital business automation strategy to move to a Cloud Pak and have that available for software products to run on OpenShift. At the end of last year, we updated our licensing so that we can move in that direction, and we're starting to deploy digital business automation products on our OpenShift platform which is super exciting for me. It's going to make for faster upgrades, more scalability, just a lot of ease of use things for my team to make their jobs easier but also easier for us to adapt new upgrades and software offerings from IBM. There's also a number of products that are in the containerized or OpenShift only offering as they're initially coming out, whether it's mobile capture or automated document processing to name a couple. And those are both things that we're looking at Auto-Owners to continue to mature in this space and be able to offer more functionality to our associates, our customers, and our agents to continue to grow the business. >> Very forward-thinking, awesome Ryan. Thanks for sharing with us what Auto-Owners Insurance is doing, how you're being successful and how you've done so much transformation already. I want to throw the last question to Michelle. Take us out Michelle with what's next from enChoice's perspective in terms of your digital transformation. >> Well, we have been a hundred percent focused on helping all of our customers develop their digital strategy and and creating their own transformative solutions. So as we continue to work with our clients, take them through the journey, as I mentioned before, we try to encourage them not to focus on the, the technology itself, but really to focus on creating their exceptional customer experience when driving their digital strategy. And we see ourselves as, you know helping transform our client's experience such that you know customer experience becomes what enChoice does best. So we see not only our own organization going through the transformation, but making sure that we're taking our clients with us and with 500 clients we're, we're really busy. So that's always good. >> That is good. It sounds like the last year has been very fruitful for you, and I love that you mentioned customer experience, Michelle. I think that is so important and as well as employee experience, but having a good customer experience, especially these days. Table-stakes. I thank you both so much for sharing what you guys are doing with IBM Solutions, the transformation that both of your companies are on and we look forward to hearing what's to come. Thank you both for your time. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for Ryan Dennings and Michelle Christiansen. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think The Digital Experience. (upbeat music)