Leading investment group in the insurance and reinsurance fields gets ahead of business challenges using Microsoft Power Apps

As a leading global investment group for two decades, Chedid Capital relentlessly strives for excellence in the insurance and reinsurance business. Already present in four continents, the group continues to expand internationally. Enabling this growth is a Microsoft ecosystem that the company has put in place, with licensing support from technology partner Midware Data Systems. Now Chedid Capital wants to go even further.

A more accessible appraisal system

In 2020, Chedid Capital’s annual performance appraisals were due when the lockdown was at its most stringent. “We used to conduct employee appraisals through face-to-face discussions and Word and Excel forms,” starts Bahaa Bou Ghanem, Senior IT Manager Department at Chedid Capital. “It was very time-consuming and error-prone, and it was difficult to track and retrieve documents.”
To enable remote performance assessment, the IT team launched a custom tool built on Microsoft Power Apps. “The app currently provides 600 employees across 15 entities with objectives about their daily and yearly targets," says Bou Ghanem. "Users can track their goals and discuss them with colleagues and supervisors via Microsoft Teams." The app then connects to Power BI for detailed reporting, providing visibility across the organization. With this data, the Human Resources team can get an overview of the company's performance or drill down to specific departments or even employees.
The app also enables managers to provide precise feedback, which empowers employees to improve. "Employees get a clear idea about what is expected of them, which increases their productivity," Bou Ghanem confirms. The new system was widely adopted—97 percent of employees said they are pleased with the automated process.

Collating data for sales

Chedid Capital built a second tool using Power Apps—a customer relationship management (CRM) system for storing and tracking sales leads. This app was especially useful for smaller offices across the globe that function as startups. Previously, the company’s smaller or emerging subsidiaries relied on spreadsheets, which were inefficient. Users couldn't work on shared files simultaneously because of macros, plus the history of their actions was hard to find. However, getting a full CRM system would be too expensive. “Using a full-fledged system would be an added and unnecessary cost for these smaller entities, as they only need limited functions,” explains Bou Ghanem.
With the new app, sales managers gained a holistic view of essential data. "Users can see all activities by all salespeople on every target," shares Bou Ghanem. "Sales managers can work simultaneously and cooperate on leads, which saves plenty of time.” The app also connects to other tools, including LinkedIn, Microsoft 365, and Power BI. The latter generates comprehensive sales reports more than 50 percent faster than in the previous system, enabling salespeople to quickly identify which areas and clients to focus on.
With Power BI dashboards and reports, group-wide stakeholders can now analyze their data, derive insights, and make informed decisions. “This is a significant contributor to instilling not only a digital mindset, but also a data-driven approach within the group,” says Edwin Hage, Director of Digital Transformation at Chedid Capital.

Progressively driving change

The COVID-19 pandemic was a catalyst for Chedid Capital’s ongoing plans to digitize and streamline business operations. “Following the swift transition to Microsoft’s collaboration suite to adapt to remote work, we turned our attention to automating workflows and digitizing manual processes,” notes Imad Jabbour, Chief Technology Officer at Chedid Capital. “This has enabled us to progress and reinforce our sustainability agenda,” Jabbour says. “We used Power Automate to manage the archiving flows of documents after being signed digitally. We save hundreds of thousands of sheets of paper per year, and significantly reduced our carbon footprint.”
Now empowered to quickly launch apps they need, the company's teams are currently working on several projects, including a 'Mark as safe' app for crisis management and a multilingual card reader. "We are using an AI builder that comes with Power Apps to read business cards in different languages," reveals Bou Ghanem. "We're continuously exploring how we can further leverage this and other Power Apps technologies to automate interactions and customer journeys," concludes Hage.