After studying Computer Science at the University of Basel, Daniel Jaeger worked for various companies as a software engineer. In 2014 he joined what was then Nationale Suisse Insurance. "The merger with Helvetia followed three months after I joined, giving me the opportunity to slip into various roles within IT." Today he leads a twelve-person team in the Front Solutions Pensions & Conversational area.

"I was a games programmer when I was a child."

Daniel already discovered his passion for IT topics at school. "My older brother taught me how to program. We programmed our own games." After graduating, Daniel worked as a software engineer in various companies – finally moving to Helvetia nine years ago. "As a software engineer I was involved in the entire software development process. I programmed in Java, Angular or Python, for example, but I also supervised the software architecture, advising the product owner or optimizing the collaboration. This allowed me to plan and implement customized software solutions in a fast-moving environment, and in close cooperation with all project participants."

Thinking outside the box – as scrum master

Besides his role as a software engineer, Daniel also got involved in other jobs in IT. "There are many areas that interest me." At Helvetia, he says, he was given the opportunity to try out different things – as a scrum master, for example. "Globalization, automation, digitalization – changes are happening faster today than ever before. For companies this means that we have to stay on the ball in a fast-changing market," says Daniel. To achieve this, he says, an agile mindset is important – and so is the application of responsive principles and techniques. As a scrum master and sub-project manager, he helped teams to organize themselves, supporting their cross-functionality – and the establishment of the Agile Competence Center to promote agile approaches in the company.

Agile thanks to DevOps and modern architecture

After working as a scrum master, Daniel worked as a product owner and project manager. Since 2018 he has led the Pensions & Conversational team in Front Solutions, which currently has twelve staff members. Here he is also actively involved in structuring the department. "We want to set up the teams in accordance with DevOps, which means that the development and operation of an application are united in a cross-functional team and operating processes are automated and optimized. We work more efficiently and strengthen the customer perspective." This is also the way it's practised in his team. "We benefit from Helvetia's modern event-driven architecture. The software design pattern, with which we can recognize 'events' or important business moments such as completions, address changes, etc. enables us to react to them almost in real time – but also to implement new use cases, so-called micro-services, very quickly", Daniel adds.

ChatGPT and AI in customer interaction

Another exciting topic is the use of artificial intelligence (AI). "In our team we're currently using AI mainly for our chatbot Clara, so that she can understand customer concerns in natural language and deal with them in a target-oriented way. We're also looking into ChatGPT and other language models." The ambition, however, is to identify customer concerns before needs even arise, for example with a courteous text message after a hailstorm.

First steps with Stack Overflow for Teams

In addition to Conversational & Vorsorge, Daniel is also involved in Learning & Community at Helvetia IT. As part of the Helvetia IT Academy, access to O'Reilly was introduced in addition to attractive learning paths. The learning platform provides employees with a large selection of books, webinars and live courses that impart practical knowledge about future-oriented technologies and methods from IT, marketing and business. IT is also taking its first steps with Stack Overflow for Teams, a Q&A platform that mimics the way people naturally find, view and share information. "When it comes to knowledge management", Daniel says, "we don't need more information – we need the right information "Stack Overflow for Teams helps us find the needles in the haystack and encourages active community participation. Daniel says employee development is very close to his heart in his role as team leader. "Further training and knowledge exchange in the community are success factors for innovative IT." Helvetia – already at the forefront of technology in the Swiss market – is developing rapidly. "We're at the forefront of this development!"