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Liberty Group spurs employee-led innovation, with help from Microsoft and BUI

Business teams embrace low-code technology in Power Platform hackathon
Customer Stories Feature Image 1

Project

Liberty Group spurs employee-led innovation, with help from Microsoft and BUI

Customer

Liberty Group

Year

2021

What We Did

Microsoft 365 Power Platform
Business Challenge

After adopting Microsoft 365, financial services company Liberty Group wanted to empower employees to collaborate and create using the new digital tools at their fingertips.
A history of innovation

Founded in 1957, Liberty Group has grown from a South African life insurer to a pan-African financial services company offering asset management, investment, insurance and health products to more than three million people across the continent.

“Liberty has always been a highly innovative company,” says Liberty Group CIO Benjamin Marais. “However, we lost a little bit of that spirit in the last few years. We were still relying on legacy systems and paper-based processes. We wanted to get our innovative DNA back.”

With Microsoft 365 already in place, the company sought to empower employees to fully leverage the technology at their disposal – for themselves, for their teams, and for the business.

“After our staff started using basic Microsoft 365 applications such as Teams, we decided to go further by organising a hackathon that focused specifically on Power Apps,” explains Masechaba Wessie, Lead Specialist: Business Transformation at Liberty Group. “We wanted to show that they didn’t need a technology background to build an innovative app that solved a particular business problem. Solutions could come from anywhere in the business.”
A continuing journey

“The hackathon gave individuals with varying skills and abilities, from multiple departments across Liberty Group, a hands-on experience with a powerful set of tools,” notes Lange. “And there was a real sense of enthusiasm about how they could use the technology going forward, as citizen developers.”

The winning ideas are already streamlining key processes at the financial services company, and staff who took part in the hackathon are applying their new technology skills in their own business areas. “I can see that our partnership with Microsoft will only continue to grow,” enthuses Liberty Group’s Marais. “I’m really looking forward to the future.”

“We were excited to collaborate with Microsoft on this project,” says Thys Janse van Rensburg, General Manager: Western Cape at BUI. “Power Platform opens the door for all kinds of meaningful innovation. When people feel empowered to create, test, refine and even improve upon their ideas, then great things are possible,” he concludes.

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