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Sun Life Financial to use BlackBerry Playbook for group retirement sign-ups

By Adam Zeis on 11 Nov 2010 12:24 pm
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Sun Life Financial has become the first major corporation to announce that they'll be using RIMs upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook in the field. The Canadian insurance company stated that it hopes to bring the PlayBook in for employee use during group retirement sign-up events. Traditionally comapny employees attend enrollment sessions put on by Sun Life, leave with forms and instructions, yet they don't sign up on the spot. Sun Life would put the PlayBook to use allowing the attendees of these events to complete the forms on the spot from the device and be done with it.

"Our vision is to make the enrolment process as simple and easy as possible," says Tom Reid, senior vice president of group retirement services at Sun Life Financial. "Employees who attend enrolment sessions will each have access to a BlackBerry PlayBook. Our education specialists will take them through the plan design, explain the benefits and walk them through the enrolment process. They will be able to use the PlayBook to instantly input all enrolment data."

They also noted that in the states where wireless sign-up methods like this have been implemented, they have seen sign-ups increase from 50% to nearly 90%. The PlayBook hasn't even been released yet (let alone announced) and already Sun Life is jumping right in. I'm sure we'll see plenty more stories like this in the coming months.

Source: TheRecord.com

Topics: Sun Life News & Rumors

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Adam Zeis Adam Zeis 3030 (articles) 2790 (forum posts)
10 comments

RetroAndreas

Maybe I'll get a Sun Life Rep to the house for consultation so I can touch the playbook ;-)

oh and first!

WillieLee

This move will also get the PlayBook exposure to the average consumer who might not be interested in tablets otherwise as they hold around 3000 of these seminars per year.

What seems to have been lost in the declarations of RIM's tablet being "late to the party" is the relationship with their enterprise customers. The sales channels already exist and they can build momentum with new customers by demonstrating the means in which others have adopted the platform.

pmich

While i really look forward to the Playbook, without actually seeing how it functions and works, how does a giant insurance company already commit to using the device?

This is more about Press than function.

taylortbb

While Sun Life's HQ is in Toronto, their Canadian operations division is headquartered in Waterloo. I'm certain Waterloo's major companies have more than a few contact channels between them. I would not be surprised if their execs have used a PlayBook.

canucknh

It makes sense to sign up a company like Sun Life Financial to use the Playbook given they are the type of business that would benefit. They are a great customer of RIM in Ontario that it made sense for Sun Life to act as a early test site. They would get the Playbook at an attractive price and would have a high level support in the rolling and implementation.

zoom--zoom

You are right and i agree with you ;)

pipotobe

Did you know that the Sunlife Pc's infrastructures is old.
Most of their tech support is unable to help especialy since they are located in India (meaning they do not have the appropriate training to support the software and hardware rented by Sun Life)

This is aimed to be a large fiasco since most of the employees won't be able to use the Playbook properly.

gord888

There are a lot of companies with aging legacy systems that are capable of growing with new technologies. I don't see old infrastructure as a limiting factor as long as they can place a healthy facade over the whole backend mess.

BerryDiva

Most companies have old infrastructures because they're expensive to maintain. Work, however, still gets accomplished. Every company is not Google or some other fast moving high tech company. People are so detached from reality because of the glitz of where they believe the standard is set.