South Korean insurer boosts telemarketing productivity for 2,000 agents across 6 call centers by deploying MySQL Enterprise Edition.
Introduction & Background
Lina One is the sales subsidiary of Lina Life Insurance, a company of the Lina Korea group and a member of Chubb, the world’s largest publicly traded insurance company. Lina Korea, founded in 1987, was the first foreign life insurance company in Korea and the first to integrate life insurance and non-life insurance. It was also a pioneer in direct marketing.
In 2024 the company won a YouTube award for channels that have reached 100,000 subscribers, resulting in 37.4 million views of videos promoting its services.
Currently, Lina One is integrating the telemarketing operations of Lina Life and Ace Insurance, which sells non-life insurance, both part of Lina Korea. The combined telemarketing organization numbers 2,000 agents engaged in customer-centered direct sales and omnichannel promotion.
Business Challenges & Goals
The insurance sector in Korea is growing rapidly and competition is strong. In merging sales and marketing operations, Lina One needed a system for its 2,000 agents across six call centers that would facilitate telemarketers with flexible resource-sharing abilities.
The organization was hampered by dual sales and marketing systems creating conflict through duplicate data and low performance. The goal was to increase productivity, optimize sales opportunities, and improve customer satisfaction.
Lina One searched for a database platform with centralized authentication and maximum security that would comply with information security regulations such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). In line with the company’s core technology architecture, the solution was to be based on open industry standards.
Business Results & Metrics
MySQL Enterprise Edition gave Lina One a powerful database and attendant security controls for integrating its telemarketing teams with a single source. Call center agents now interact securely with current and potential customers connected via a multiplicity of systems and devices.
New contracts have soared to the highest level in the industry along with agent incentives, as telemarketers have acquired greater speed and reliability for supplying clients and prospects online with product information and contract terms.
Speed and performance are matched by a secure platform that includes monitoring, encryption, authentication, masking, auditing, and transaction handling.
Compared to the previous system, MySQL Enterprise Backup performs demanding backup tasks 49 times faster and recovery tasks 80 times faster, reducing the burden on administrators monitoring system uptime.
MySQL Enterprise Authentication provides the glue for uniting 2,000 telemarketers in a centralized directory, authenticating users through Single Sign-On. The plugin replaced the need to enter multiple credentials in different systems used by agents for finding and explaining insurance products, protocols, and procedures. “Now users log in once and are authenticated to access all information related to their job functions. The solution has relieved pressure on our DBAs and led to a rise in user satisfaction,” says Seokpyo Hong.
By using MySQL Enterprise Encryption, Lina One protects critical customer information via a set of asymmetric encryption functions that meet global security governance requirements. Encryption is reinforced by MySQL Enterprise Masking, which protects critical data from unauthorized use, through masking and de-identification functions.
Meanwhile, MySQL Enterprise Audit provides strong security controls and easy-to-use policy-based audits, giving Lina One an audit trail of database access per individual.
With thousands of agents accessing the database whilst selling insurance, MySQL Thread Pool enables consistent and stable high performance.
Lina One ensures seamless availability of MySQL Enterprise Edition and its security plug-ins through a contract with Oracle Premier Support Services, ensuring 24/7 intervention of MySQL experts for resolving any issues around security or scalability.
To date, the fusing of telemarketing teams and their authentication has gone without a hitch. To reinforce understanding of the various tools and database plugins, Oracle Premier Support runs well-attended technical sessions for developers, DBAs, and interested end users. The sessions include introductions to the skills required for becoming a MySQL Database Administrator, MySQL Developer, or MySQL Security Administrator.
Why MySQL Enterprise Edition?
Lina One chose MySQL Enterprise Edition for being the most powerful open-source database with a wide range of security features. The new database would replace the twin telemarketing platforms of merged insurance companies that relied on third-party solutions for security and monitoring.
The choice was backed by Rockplace, its long-time system integrator, a specialist in MySQL. Support coming from the owner and developer of the database was an important factor in the choice and today Lina One works hand in hand with Oracle Premier Support. Always-on access to development and operations-related MySQL experts was a key factor in selecting MySQL Enterprise Edition.
Partner
Rockplace, Lina Korea’s system integrator, carried out the secure and efficient migration to MySQL Enterprise Edition. The Oracle Silver partner, specialized in MySQL and other open-source technologies, has worked with the Korean insurer for 20 years.