Antártida Compañía Argentina de Seguros S.A. is a locally owned company founded in 1949. It is the fifth company in the ranking in the surety products category. The company’s headquarters are located in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

At present, Antártida has brokers in Tucumán, Mendoza, Chubut, La Pampa, San Juan, Chaco, Santa Fe, Formosa, Río Negro and in many cities of the Buenos Aires province.

The Challenge: Remote Access to Applications and Centralized Management

Before the deployment of the Citrix solution, Antártida Seguros worked with independent brokers from different provinces in a decentralized manner, which produced delays in the general administrative processes of the company.

“The company started operations in different provinces with insurance brokers, which needed to be added to the Antártida system. The Citrix software enabled us to integrate them in a fast, efficient and secure way,” Mr. Suárez said.

Deploying a Citrix Solution for Remote Connectivity

Keeping in mind its objective of implementing a centralized management and integrating its brokers, Antártida Seguros chose Citrix Access Essentials™. The successful solution deployment was carried out by Grupo Intecser, a Silver Citrix® Solution Advisor.

In 2005, the company acquired 10 Citrix Access Essentials licenses, run on a single server with Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003. Nowadays, it has 15 licenses.

Integration of Remote Workers and Faster, Enhanced Transactions

“Thanks to the Citrix solution, we can manage the whole policy issuance operation we have at the moment in an agile and simple way, without having to modify the existing personnel structure,” stated Héctor Suárez, Antártida Seguros IT assistant manager.

Before deploying the Citrix software, the company used to receive proposals from every broker. These were entered at headquarters and forwarded to the insurance broker for presentation to the clients. This process could take four to five days. Today, with the aid of the Citrix solution, every broker can enter a proposal and instantly print an insurance binder for the policyholder.

“The advantage is that by being online, the broker himself can enter the proposal. There are no transcriptions or mediators and no extra resources are needed, since only the policy control is carried out from our headquarters,” the executive pointed out. ”Our plans for this year include the capability for every broker to print the policies, after verification in our head office.”

The company chose the Citrix solution for the benefits it provides: connectivity, security, simplicity and optimization of resources. Additionally, it allowed the whole IT structure to be managed by only three IT employees.

“We decided to implement the Citrix product since only Internet access was necessary for the operators to integrate into the system. Other advantages are the use of the same system by the brokers from the different provinces and our employees, and the fact that there was no need to make further investments in hardware,” Mr. Suárez explained.

Citrix Access Essentials was welcomed by Antártida’s brokers from all over the country, due to its unique features of responsiveness and technical support, which enable the company to provide better customer service.

“The brokers’ feedback was very good. They highly valued the possibility of working online and the system’s responsiveness. Moreover, we could solve any potential problems remotely in a matter of minutes,” the executive emphasized.

Future Plans

The company is planning to acquire additional Citrix Access Essentials licenses in the next six months, with the aim of extending its operations in the different provinces.

©2007 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix® and Citrix Access Essentials™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. in the United States and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Microsoft®, Windows® and Windows Server® are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.