Publication

Sovereign (New Zealand)

Managing the risks of outsourcing a critical business service to a small, young supplier

Since its establishment in 1989, Sovereign has become one of New Zealand’s leading providers of financial services, widely seen as one of the country’s most innovative companies and an industry leader in its approach to customer service. Key to this was the early adoption in the 1990s of scanning technology for mail handling, which enabled Sovereign to gain competitive advantage.

The integration of Sovereign with Colonial in 2000 greatly increased the size and complexity of the combined businesses. This presented major challenges in the maintenance of service standards within the mail handling area and image processing. Sovereign decided to outsource this critical business process and asked PA to assist them in outsourcing their mail handling and imaging processing.

By focusing closely on the business benefits and process alignments, as opposed to simply the technology components, PA was able to help Sovereign negotiate a service contract delivering a significantly improved service at a saving of 42% per annum over a three-year period.