Transforming IT operations at Dhofar Insurance — in 24 weeks.

Dhofar Insurance Company was running on fragmented IT operations — low first-time resolution rates, rising incident volumes, and an escalation model that was burning out teams and breaching SLAs. SST Cloud designed and delivered a 24-week operational excellence program that turned all four metrics around, simultaneously.

First-Time Resolution

+25%

50% → 75%

Total Incident Volume

−18%

100% → 82%

SLA Compliance

+20%

78% → 94%

User Satisfaction

+25%

3.5/5 → 4.1/5

About the client

Dhofar Insurance Company (S.A.O.G.) is one of Oman's leading insurance providers, offering a broad range of personal, commercial, and corporate insurance products. As a publicly listed company with a growing digital footprint, Dhofar Insurance operates across multiple technology platforms — including core insurance systems, a data lake, web and mobile applications, and an internal LMS — all of which depend on a high-performing IT operations function.

The challenge

Dhofar Insurance's IT operations team was caught in a cycle that is common in growing organisations: incident volumes were high, resolution rates were low, and the escalation model was creating more handoffs than solutions. First-time resolution sat at just 50%, meaning half of all tickets required at least one escalation — from L1 to L2, and frequently on to external vendors.

The business impact was significant. A 15–20% backlog was building consistently. SLA breaches were becoming routine at 78% compliance. Productivity was declining and user satisfaction had fallen to 3.5 out of 5. The root cause analysis process was non-existent, meaning the same incidents kept recurring — consuming capacity that could have been deployed elsewhere.

Low FTR (48–52%): Half of all tickets escalated, creating downstream bottlenecks across L1, L2, and vendor support.

Repeat incidents: Without structured RCA, the same failures recurred — driving up volume and MTTR simultaneously.

Multiple handoffs: The L1 → L2 → Vendor escalation chain was slow, opaque, and difficult for end users to track.

Aging systems: Core insurance, data lake, LMS, and web/mobile platforms were all contributing to instability.

The combined effect was a support function operating at well below its potential — and a business that was beginning to feel the cost in both financial and operational terms.

Project goals

Primary objective

Reduce repeat incidents and improve first-time resolution by 25% within 90 days.

Secondary objectives

• Improve SLA compliance by 20%

• Reduce total ticket volume by 12–18%

• Improve user satisfaction scores by 30%

• Establish structured governance and reporting

Our approach — a 24-week phased program

SST Cloud designed a structured four-phase engagement that addressed the root causes of operational underperformance — not just the symptoms. Rather than applying quick fixes that would degrade over time, we built sustainable capability improvements across people, process, and technology, with each phase building on the last.

Phase 1

Baseline AssessmentFull audit of current IT operations — incident patterns, escalation flows, system stability, team capability gaps, and documentation quality. Established the baseline metrics against which all improvement would be measured.

W1–4

Phase 2

Problem Elimination & StabilisationIntroduced structured Root Cause Analysis (RCA) processes, rebuilt the knowledge base, redesigned escalation routing, and resolved the highest-volume recurring incidents at source. Focused on breaking the repeat-incident cycle.

W5–12

Phase 3

Automation & Tooling UpgradesDeployed automation for high-frequency, low-complexity incidents. Upgraded monitoring and alerting tooling to enable proactive detection before user impact. Reduced L2 dependency through expanded L1 capability frameworks.

W13–20

Phase 4

Governance, Reporting & Continuous ImprovementEstablished IT operations governance frameworks, standardised reporting cadences, and embedded a continuous improvement culture within the team. Built the dashboards and accountability structures to sustain performance after SST Cloud's engagement concluded.

W21–24

"The discipline of structured RCA — something the team had never formally done before — was the single biggest unlock. Once we stopped firefighting the same incidents over and over, the capacity freed up was transformational."

SST Cloud Advisory Lead · Dhofar Insurance Engagement

Final results — after 24 weeks

Every primary and secondary objective was met or exceeded. The results below represent the measured difference between the baseline established in Phase 1 and the performance metrics recorded at the end of Week 24.

Business outcomes delivered

The numbers tell the headline story, but the organisational shift is equally significant. Dhofar Insurance's IT operations team emerged from the engagement with structured processes, real capability uplift, and the governance frameworks to sustain the improvement independently.

Operational benefits

Major reduction in repetitive workload. Lower team stress. Greater operational stability. Faster ticket turnaround across all priority levels.

Financial benefits

15–22% cost savings year-on-year through lower L2/L3 dependency, reduced vendor escalations, and increased operational uptime across core systems.

Quality & governance

Standardised documentation. Predictable SLA performance. Greater transparency across IT operations for both the team and the business stakeholders they serve.

Perhaps most importantly, the engagement built internal capability that persists beyond SST Cloud's involvement. The RCA discipline, knowledge base, governance cadences, and tooling improvements are now owned and operated by Dhofar Insurance's own team — with performance metrics embedded in their regular reporting cycles.

This is what hands-on advisory looks like. Not a framework presented in a workshop and left for the client to implement. A genuine transformation, executed by a team that stayed until the numbers moved.