Antigonish Farmers’ goes live in the Cloud, enabling ‘Work From Home’ with their technology partners, Cognition+ and iVedha

During February 2020, Antigonish Farmers’ Mutual successfully implemented a cloud-based solution for their complete business operations. This implementation has allowed Antigonish Farmers’ Mutual to enable a ‘Work from Home’ strategy to ensure they are maintaining service to their community and policyholders while being able to keep their team and business operations efficient. Antigonish Farmer’s Mutual has successfully moved its entire technology footprint over to a private cloud solution with the assistance of its technology partners in this project, iVedha and Cognition+.

Working together, Cognition+ and iVedha relocated Antigonish’s entire IT environment onto iVedha’s cloud infrastructure platform, including Antigonish’s future enterprise insurance platform, the Insurance Business Solution (IBS®).

This has resulted in a wealth of benefits, including:

• Fully managed and monitored environment
• IT infrastructure and enterprise software
• Managed Email services
• Systems backup
• Highly secure with Canadian data residency
• All technology concerns moved to skilled professional organizations (iVedha & MCCG), the Antigonish team is freed up to focus on their core business of insurance
• Overall improved Enterprise Risk Management on Infrastructure Technology

“We’ve been thrilled that we’ve been able to enable a number of our team to work from home, staying safe, during the current COVID situation and we are able to respond to our agents and policyholder needs,” said Brian Morgan, General Manager of Antigonish Farmers’ Mutual Insurance Company.

“Enabling the cloud when we did was very fortuitous, as we likely could not have achieved the same level of efficiency working remotely with our prior onsite deployment. Our original business case for moving to the cloud was partially supported by our desire to improve our Business Continuity Plan, but truthfully we never imagined we would be leveraging these capabilities within weeks of ‘go live’. We are very impressed with the professional and quick transition the iVedha team delivered to move us to the cloud. Their strong relationship with Cognition+, our insurance platform vendor of choice, was an important factor in making our decision to choose iVedha. It’s been a very smooth transition moving all of our technology to the cloud, and iVedha’s suite of solutions are exceeding our original expectations. The heightened backup and security further supported our business case and will allow our team to focus on our core business, insurance, and not worry about technology. Our community can be confident that Antigonish will continue to support their needs for many years to come, and that in times such as these our team is safe and available to help.”

“We’re so happy with the timing of the completion of this project by Antigonish and iVedha,” said Jon Perry, VP of Client Relations at Cognition+ Inc.

"They stayed on track and within budget, which has helped them keep business operations efficient and safe for their team members during this challenging time. This will also ensure that we can keep good timelines on their current enterprise platform upgrade project, which will further enable efficiencies for their operations in 2020. Over the past two weeks, I’ve been on the phone with many of our clients and am very pleased to see how they’ve all been able to move to a ‘Work from Home’ strategy to support their policyholders, their teams, and their communities. When we look back, this would have been a major operational challenge 10 years ago, and is a great testament to the resiliency of the Mutual Insurance System, and the strong technology path that the Mutuals have pursued.”

“We’re delighted to have Antigonish Mutual Insurance Company join the community of Mutuals who are choosing to move to our cloud platform,” said Peter MacMillan, VP – Sales at iVedha.

“While we take a certain level of pride when we complete each project, this one, in particular, stands out in our team’s mind as it really highlights the benefits of cloud solutions and their benefits during a ‘pandemic’ and other possible ‘disaster’ scenarios. The Antigonish team has readily adopted the cloud capabilities to put forward a ‘Work from Home’ strategy to maintain business operations. Rarely have we seen the immediate need be greater and during a potentially stressful time to clients and team, but we’ve heard great comments back from the Antigonish team. iVedha is pleased to have been selected as Cognition+’s technology partner in the creation and delivery of a fully managed cloud hosting solution specifically tailored to meet the needs of mutual insurance companies across Canada. Our teams work well together and the Mutuals are superior organizations that are a pleasure to work with.”

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About Antigonish Farmers’ Mutual Insurance Company (AFMI)

Antigonish Farmers’ Mutual Insurance Company is a locally owned and run insurance company specializing in property insurance. Located in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, we have been serving the insurance needs of our policyholders in Northeastern Nova Scotia since 1910. Operating as a Mutual, we are owned by our policyholders, who may share in any profits generated by us.

We offer property and liability insurance for homes, mini homes, seasonal residences, farm operations, and fishing boats and equipment. We are also able to provide automobile insurance through our wholly-owned subsidiary, Farmers’ Mutual Insurance Agency. With agents located throughout Nova Scotia, you can count on us to fulfill your insurance needs.

For more information visit www.antigonishfarmersmutual.ca

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About iVedha Inc.

Established in 2001, iVedha Inc. is a leading information technology services provider and solutions integrator. iVedha delivers premier fully managed, highly secure cloud services to small, medium and large enterprises including the financial, medical, legal, and public sectors. iVedha’s cloud enablement technology facilitates end-to-end cloud provisioning and orchestration driving greater efficiencies for people, processes and technology. Its client-centric approach to the delivery of managed cloud services and vendor relationship management drives greater efficiencies in iVedha’s Canadian data centers, infrastructure and organizational processes resulting in reduced operating costs and increased competitive edge for its clients while maintaining data residency within Canadian borders. iVedha is an ISO-certified organization with its Design, Development and QA processes based on well-defined and mature quality processes according to the ISO 9001:2008 standards.

For more information visit www.ivedha.com