It’s global, it’s digital, it’s a factory where engaging customer experiences are produced. But if you’re looking for assembly lines and heavy machinery in this factory, you’re in for a disappointment. They’ve been replaced by laptops, collaboration cells and blueprints of tomorrow’s insurance solutions hand-drawn on walls and windows.

The new innovation hub of Allianz sets a favorable scene for experts from across the Allianz universe to co-create digital solutions for customers and Allianz companies. Located in the Werk 3 building in Ostbahnhof, Munich, the Global Digital Factory is also far removed from what an insurance office traditionally looks like.

Workstations are desks with swings or hanging chairs. Cozy corners and seat cushions on the stairs dot the office landscape. Bright, modern, and spacey – complete with a charming little butler robot, George, who helps with room bookings or just rolls by wishing everyone a nice day.

Digitalization is among Allianz’s key focus areas. Little wonder then that the Factory feels like a technology company, where virtual reality and artificial intelligence are topics of watercooler conversations. But technology is – and has always been – just a tool to solve problems and serve customers. The Global Digital Factory builds simple, engaging customer experiences by focusing mainly on customer journeys.

Simply put, a customer journey is an ensemble of experiences a customer goes through when engaging with Allianz. For example, in the case of a car accident, a customer notifies the insurance company of the claim, gives information about the damage, helps assess the extent of the damage, and gets the car fixed to get back on the road again.

Guided by constant customer testing and feedback, experts at the Factory work on making insurance as easy and effortless as possible, taking into account cultural differences between the more than 70 countries Allianz operates in. This is also why the customer journey projects start with an intensive eight-week co-location of international teams coming from a host of Allianz companies worldwide.

Of the total 140 globally relevant customer journeys identified, 25–30 of the most important ones have been selected as current projects across business segments and Allianz companies operating entities.

In 2016, the Global Digital Factory teams started working on their first journeys – the processing of motor claims and onboarding of new customers in life insurance. The reshaped life onboarding journey was launched in Belgium in February this year and the motor claims journey will be launched in Austria this spring.

Later this year, these and several other solutions will be launched in selected countries and eventually scaled to all relevant markets for Allianz’s more than 85 million customers.

But unlike in traditional factories of previous centuries, product development is not over after the launch. In the digital era, today’s best practices can quickly be outplaced by tomorrow’s solutions. Hence, iterations according to customer feedback are constantly needed.

The Global Digital Factory might be run by Allianz but it’s led by our customers.

As with all content published on this site, these statements are subject to our Forward Looking Statement disclaimer: