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CIO100 2017 #31-100: Chris Trigg, Southern Cross Health Society

  • Name Chris Trigg
  • Title Head of IS and Business Transformation
  • Company Southern Cross Health Society
  • Commenced Role April 2016
  • Reporting Line CEO
  • Technology Function 70 IT staff in New Zealand
  • Related

    Southern Cross Health Society is in the midst of a digital transformation programme to build on its core health insurance platform.

    “The objectives of this transformation is to improve speed to market, increase our agility and to create a great digital experience for our members,” says Head of IS and Business Transformation Chris Trigg. “The programme also seeks to digitise business processes and to build new APIs for our core systems.”

    Trigg, who joined the not for profit health insurance firm nearly a year ago, sees a busy year ahead for his team as they work on technology projects that include building digital channels and services for members and providers, creating a digital workplace and shifting towards activity based working.

    Agility plays a key part in this transformation, says Trigg. He says the organisation invested towards the second half of 2016 in the development of an agile framework and is using the Agile methodologies in its projects. He says a change and communications strategy was created to support the programme implementation and adoption within the business.

    This year, they have established an innovation hub where they will look at testing and piloting innovations through lean sprints. This will be an organisation-wide initiative and will call on cross-functional teams to participate, he states.

    Additionally, Southern Cross Health Society plans to roll out more wellness products and services this year and the use of Agile methodologies will help them in this approach.

    Over the past two years, he says Southern Cross Health Society has been working with Fitbit as part of its internal Switch2Well wellbeing programme. “This work has enabled us to understand linkages between activity levels and our culture and engagement.

    "We have also introduced electronic health kiosks to supplement our activity data from Fitbit and provide a more holistic picture of people’s health and subsequently the link to engagement and organisational performance,” says Trigg.

    Use of the Society’s digital services including My Southern Cross continues to grow, augmented with the re-launch of its mobile app last year. Trigg says claims submitted and processed through digital channels have grown from 55 per cent to 78 per cent, with work underway to roll out more services through these channels in the coming year.

    He says reporting to the CEO ensures that IS is fully engaged in discussions regarding technology and its alignment with strategy, and its impact on members, teams, providers and the broader society.

    “We also run key business user forums to ensure we retain strong linkage to key business stakeholders,” says Trigg.

    The executive leadership team meets monthly to review the progress of IS projects, discuss investment plans and to ensure projects are tracking and sponsors are well engaged.

    The twice a year business update forums cover technology updates and initiatives and the most recent meeting shared information on the progress of their Agile development, and plans to do more agile projects.

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