webqem blog

We’ve enjoyed a long and successful relationship with Allianz Australia, providing web design services for internet, extranet and intranet applications since 2000. So we were delighted in late January to hear that the recent redesign of their intranet had been selected as one of the 10 best for 2006 in a global review of hundreds of sites by Jakob Nielson’s Nielsen Norman Group.

Allianz Australia’s intranet site was selected because of its functionality, easy to understand content and user-focussed approach. Rather than making employee information needs fit the technology, the Allianz site is maintained by its own employees to meet their information needs and those of Allianz Australia’s customers.

Through employee focus groups, Allianz found that staff wanted their intranet to be a practical, everyday work tool encompassing a consistent look and feel, simple navigation tools, short cuts and company news. Over several days, design options emerged in workshops and paper prototyping that captured all of the major goals. As with all good design, “less is more” and the home page features a great method for presenting a lot of context sensitive links and tools; a ‘Quickstart’ menu that each employee can personalise to provide direct access to the web pages that are most important to them. The menu slides away when not in use.

The bottom-up approach to intranet design enabled Allianz to produce a cost effective business solution with an emphasis on internal communication.

The design principles underpinning the Allianz intranet have also been successfully transferred to the company’s external web channels including its business-to-business Partner Portals for business partner insurance transactions and Sunrise Exchange Allianz products (electronic quote-and-bind facilities for insurance brokers).

“Business partner and insurance broker feedback tells us that our systems are intuitive, easy to learn and equipped with good quick-find tools,” said Nicholas Scofield, Allianz Australia’s General Manager for Corporate Affairs.

“Ensuring more than 3000 employees dispersed throughout Australia and New Zealand receive a consistent corporate message could be tough,” said usability expert Jakob Nielsen, principal, Nielsen Norman Group.

“Designers at Allianz Australia Insurance, however, tackled the problem by making their intranet the vehicle of choice for corporate communications and strategy, and employing clear design and writing.”

About Allianz Australia

Allianz Australia is one of the largest general insurers in Australia and a leading private workers’ compensation and third party motor accident insurer. Allianz Australia has approximately 3200 staff and operates in Australia and New Zealand. The company delivers a wide range of personal, commercial and corporate insurance products and services and are proud to be of service to over 2 million policyholders. Allianz Australia is a wholly owned subsidiary of the worldwide Allianz Group, which operates in over 70 countries and services around 60 million customers globally.

About Nielsen Norman Group

Nielsen Norman Group is a user-experience research firm that advises companies on how to succeed through the human-centered design of products and services. Nielsen Norman Group principals Jakob Nielsen, Don Norman and Bruce “Tog” Tognazzini are each world-renowned experts in usability and human use of technology. Besides authoring books and evangelizing about user experience, they and the other user-experience specialists at Nielsen Norman Group offer high-level strategic consultation on usability of websites, consumer products, software designs and anything else that needs to be easy-to-use.