Business Continuity, Remote Work Drive Web Conferencing Upgrade at Unum

With more carriers looking to employ remote workers and run webinars, latest-generation web conferencing solutions that are flexible and offer multiple capabilities have become increasingly important. Chattanooga, Tenn.-based life and disability lines carrier Unum recently made a move to Adobe Connect Web Conferencing to address those issues.

"We had 3 different platforms for on demand, training, webinars that were at end of life, and needed to update and consolidate the platform," says Todd Crawford, manager of Unum's Advanced Services team. "We do about a million and a half minutes a month of ad-hoc team use, our training dept uses it a lot and we host a lot of industry-sponsored webinars."

Unum selected the Adobe system because it allows them to assign rooms to employees for ad-hoc use, as well as break out separate groups within those rooms as needed.

"We can have a central place that all organizations come to, then you can send them off to other rooms as appropriate," Crawford says. "It definitely helps us make meetings more efficient."

Crawford noted that Unum has a number of remote workers, and that web conferencing use goes up when employees transition to home offices. Also, he noted, if weather or other issues prevent people from getting to the external office, the Adobe platform allows them to access their rooms from home with no changes.

"When we shut a campus down, which doesn't happen often, it's a big help," he says.

Nathan Golia is senior editor of Insurance & Technology. He joined the publication in 2010 as associate editor and covers all aspects of the nexus between insurance and information technology, including mobility, distribution, core systems, customer interaction, and risk ... View Full Bio