Eric Feige, VP Digital Strategy, Prudential

SuperNova Award Category

Technology Optimization & Innovation

The Company

For more than 135 years, Prudential Financial (NYSE:PRU) has helped people grow and protect their wealth. We offer individual and institutional clients a wide array of financial products and services. Today, we are one of the world’s largest financial services institutions. We have approximately $1.061 trillion in assets under management as of March 31, 2013 and $3.6 trillion of gross life insurance in force worldwide as of December 31, 2011. We have operations in the United States, Asia, Europe and Latin America.

The Problem

As a result of regulatory compliance issues surrounding a landmark pension risk deal with one of the world’s largest automotive manufacturers, Prudential had six weeks to launch a comprehensive online pension management experience for 110,000 retirees, aged 75-105. Delivering an online experience that would minimize user anxiety surrounding the change was also of vital importance. Normally a project of this size would take months or even over a year, so Prudential’s digital team was already facing a major challenge when Hurricane Sandy upped the ante with flooding, power outages and mayhem across the Metro New York region.

The Solution

Rather than using a legacy on-premise content management system, which would need to be managed and implemented by IT, Prudential chose to use CrownPeak’s SaaS-based platform because it met the agility, security, and regulatory compliance requirements for the project. Switching to SaaS enabled Prudential to securely and rapidly leverage existing assets and databases and launch a site with full mobile and social capabilities on schedule, while eliminating numerous steps that would have had to be done on-site by IT staff, and concurrently working on projects that would normally need to be finished sequentially.

The Results

Despite flooding, power outages, and office closures, the team made the deadline, and Prudential met the regulatory requirements. The team has since been thanked for going the extra mile in delivering a fully social and mobile-optimized experience that offers an exceptional experience to the end user, resulting in high levels of engagement and satisfaction. The very nature of subsequent client projects has changed, allowing very rapid deployment as well as greater focus on content marketing and end user experience. 

The Technology

CrownPeak

Metrics Matter

Projects that would have once taken months or even over a year can now be completed in weeks. Web projects can now comfortably be completed in 1/3 of the time as before.

Disruptive Factor

Deploying a cloud-based solution shattered long and widely held expectations and assumptions about the time required to launch this kind of project, and enabled the team to move forward when the entire region was an a state of emergency. SaaS-based web content management simplified the process of leveraging existing content and securely accessing sensitive data, and dramatically shortened the development timeline by eliminating the need for an on-site installation and custom IT development. It also enabled the team to use an agile approach, and involve a much broader “talent ecosystem” of experts who were not on-site and could not have been involved with a project involving a legacy solution. 

Shining Moment

Working from tablets at coffee shops during Hurricane Sandy: When offices were shut down and power outages were causing mayhem across the region, the project moved forward with “flawless execution,” as an executive later commented. Team members headed to coffee shops or any place where they could get an internet connection and worked from laptops, tablets and smartphones. Choosing a solution with high service level agreements paid off and allowed the team to avert a situation that could have jeopardized a landmark deal and impacted over 100,000 retirees.

About Prudential

For more than 135 years, Prudential Financial (NYSE:PRU) has helped people grow and protect their wealth. We offer individual and institutional clients a wide array of financial products and services. Today, we are one of the world’s largest financial services institutions. We have approximately $1.061 trillion in assets under management as of March 31, 2013 and $3.6 trillion of gross life insurance in force worldwide as of December 31, 2011. We have operations in the United States, Asia, Europe and Latin America.