An interview with David Squibb, General Manager of Covenir on how his company has grown since its acquisition by Vencora.
Started in 2015, Covenir is a provider of insurance business process outsourcing (BPO) and print services to support insurance operations. Since its acquisition by Vencora, Covenir has collaborated and worked with other software businesses in the Vencora family to enable the execution of insurance software initiatives. This has resulted in a variety of new growth opportunities for Covenir, including 48% growth in new customers. We sat down with Covenir President and General Manager David Squibb to learn more about how joining Vencora enabled greater success for his business.
Q: Since its acquisition, how has Covenir worked with other businesses under Vencora to grow its print services?
A: At Covenir, one of our main offerings is print operations. Post-acquisition, we collaborated with Silvervine, which also offered print and delivery services, and we were able to consolidate our print operations. This way, both companies could leverage one state-of-the-art operation, gain economies of scale, and provide print services with maximum efficiency.
By consolidating Silvervine Print under Covenir, both teams were able to bring best practices together, such as pricing models and contracting approaches. This strengthened our operations and enabled us to provide services to more customers and expand our customer base. As a result, we began to provide print services to a greater number of existing Silvervine, Travisoft and Insuresoft customers.
Q: How did Vencora provide new growth opportunities for Covenir’s business process outsourcing (BPO) services?
A: Covenir offers a variety of BPO services, such as call center operations, premium payment services, policy servicing and claims processing. Prior to acquisition, Covenir already worked heavily to provide services to Insuresoft customers. Upon joining Vencora, we collaborated with our new sister companies to offer Covenir’s BPO services to their existing customers to complement their products. In fact, our sister companies are leveraging Covenir services to bring a more holistic solution to their client’s challenges.
When it comes to existing customers of our sister companies, we often rely on warm introductions to begin sharing how Covenir can add value. This has opened new doors and even pushed Covenir into new spaces, through selling to customers of Silvervine, Insuresoft and Travisoft and payCloud.io. While we have traditionally serviced Property & Casualty Insurance providers, we have now begun providing services to COBRA benefits providers by tailoring our services to the unique needs of Travisoft customers.
"Upon joining Vencora, we collaborated with our new sister companies to offer Covenir’s BPO services to their existing customers to complement their products."
- David Squibb
Q: How does greater collaboration provide mutual benefit for both you and other Vencora businesses?
A: Through cross-selling and collaboration, we continue to see ongoing mutual benefits with our sister companies. For example, when other businesses within the Vencora family develop proposals for new companies, they include Covenir’s service offerings to provide a full comprehensive solution to the end customer and differentiate their proposals from competitors. This enables a one-stop-shop solution for the customer, which strengthens the selling position of our sister companies and increases the “stickiness” of our mutual offerings.
Q: How has Vencora supported Covenir in implementing a new marketing and sales strategy?
After joining Vencora, we quickly built up a strong sales funnel, but we didn’t have a strong demand generation engine to drive growth of that funnel. We were heavily reliant on outbound lead generation. Recently, Vencora worked with us to refresh the Covenir brand and reshape how we approach marketing. They worked with us to strengthen our brand message in order to create market demand, and supported us in developing a strong inbound marketing model. In just three months, this new program increased both the quality and quantity of new leads for Covenir.
Q: What impacts have all these implemented strategies had on Covenir’s growth?
Since diving into cross-selling at Vencora, Covenir has seen significant growth. Since acquisition and a strong implementation of cross-selling with our sister companies, Covenir has seen a 48% increase in the number of customers we are serving, which has driven significant revenue growth. This was heavily in part due to the new customers we had access to cross-sell through the Vencora network. Meanwhile, we’ve also seen improvements in our annual operational expenses through our shared services model, while increasing our team size by only 8%. We’re greatly looking forward to seeing continued growth under the Vencora umbrella.
"Since acquisition and a strong implementation of cross-selling with our sister companies, Covenir has seen a 48% increase in the number of customers we are serving, which has driven significant revenue growth."
- David Squibb
Q: Do you see any new opportunities moving forward?
Looking forward, I am looking to continue leveraging the Vencora ecosystem in order to grow Covenir. Particularly, I plan to collaborate with our sister companies to find new opportunities to expand internationally. For example, Covenir can begin to collaborate more with SSP, recently acquired by Vencora. Given that SSP has heavy operations in the European market, greater collaboration can enable opportunities to expand into new geographical markets and potential new services that are required in other geographies. It’s ongoing