If is a leading casualty insurance company in the Nordic region with 3.6 million clients and 6,800 employees. If is part of the Sampo Group.
If provides indemnity insurances in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Baltic countries. If also provides services to globally operating companies based in the Nordic countries through branches and networks. The company has branches in, for example, Russia, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Germany.
If operates with a Nordic perspective on business. The operations are divided into three areas: Private customers, commercial clients and large enterprises.
Application’s clarity and supplier’s flexibility made the difference
In the fall of 2014, If’s Private Customer 
Department decided to implement Thinking Portfolio’s project portfolio application in order to improve the efficiency of the department’s project operations. The move was preceded by a mapping stage, during which several applications and suppliers were compared with one another. “Thinking Portfolio impressed with its clarity and user-friendliness, the supplier – with its flexibility,” says Anniina Palola. Business Developer Anniina Palola operates in If’s Private Sales & Services unit. Palola was part of the team that was tasked with finding the right project portfolio solution for If. She also participated in the implementation project, and she is currently the administrator of the application. In addition to being the administrator, Palola is using the application as a project manager, performing portfolio analyses.
“The supplier’s ability to listen to us and reassure us that our wishes will be considered moving forward, in addition to the clarity of the application, sealed the deal for us.
Working with Thinking Portfolio’s experts has been a positive experience throughout. During the definition stage, their hints were very useful, and they are being implemented along with our own, original wishes.
Following the implementation stage, Thinking Portfolio’s personnel have continued to show interest in our progress with the application. We have never felt left alone with the tool. It’s quite the contrary. Every query is addressed promptly every time.”
Thinking Portfolio highlights options to support decision-making
At If, Thinking Portfolio is used by project and program managers as well as steering committee members. The use of Thinking Portfolio’s views has been implemented in decision-making.
Compared to the old approach of manually searching and combining Excel and other document types, Thinking Portfolio’s views and reports have provided longed-for smoothness in everyday operations. This fact is constantly praised by the users. Project information is saved in Thinking Portfolio, which enables each user to prepare reports and analyses as necessary.
The tool’s features have simplified the workflow and reduced the documentation workload for project managers. Decision makers are pleased with the application’s ability to provide a reliable overview with little effort. Various views on the project portfolio’s status are viewed as an excellent tool, for example, for project prioritization and implementation plan preparation.
Thinking Portfolio’s benefits have been noted quickly at If, resulting in a continuously increasing usage rate.
“As manual combining of reports has become obsolete, the rate of errors has also gone down. The portfolio does the preparation work for us, and we can generate reports with a simple click of the mouse.
Our users have been pleased with the user-friendliness and clarity of Thinking Portfolio.
The implementation has been successful. The training of new users has actually mainly consisted of in-house protocol and strategy. Learning the tool has happened almost by itself.
Thinking Portfolio analyses has formed a foundation for strategic decisions, as the tool elicits key facts for different options.”
Ideas and innovations
In addition to projects, If’s portfolio contains ideas, although optimally the company would prefer moving these into idea processing. With this in mind, If has already taken steps to get to know Thinking Portfolio’s idea portfolio, which will be discussed in detail with the application supplier in the near future.
“We are really looking forward to seeing the idea portfolio. I am also interested in other Thinking Portfolio innovations as well.
It will be interesting to hear the experiences of other Thinking Portfolio users during the Administrator event.”
Contact information:
Anniina Palola
Business Developer, Private Sales & Service
If Casualty Insurance Company
