How does a large, international organization with numerous lines of business create a customer-centric business model while implementing configurable, agile systems for faster business transactions? The solution is not so simple, but with AIS’ assistance, we’ve managed to point our large insurance client in the right direction. What began as a plan to develop a 360-degree customer profile and connect the disparate information silos between business units ultimately became the first step towards a more customer-centric organization. We are currently engaged in a major multi-year initiative to modernize the organization’s mainframe systems onto the Microsoft technology platform. The initiative will not only provide significant cost savings over current systems, but provides a technology platform that will enable years of future business innovation for the company.
Background
Our client is a large property and casualty insurance company that supports several lines of personal and commercial insurance with a policy count ranging in the millions. Many insurance carriers want to modernize their core systems to both lower IT cost ratios and put in place more configurable, more flexible systems. As one of the largest companies in the industry, it wasn’t surprising that over time, the inflexible customer solutions within the business units became information silos that were not efficiently connected.
Challenge
Given the wide range of service offerings and many lines of business, our client experiences lags and delays in customer service functions. For instance, a customer with multiple policies could spend a lot of time trying to get information updated on each policy. Because each line of business operated as a silo, service reps had limited access to other lines of business, and customers would be transferred from department to department. These silos created issues with information sharing and resulted in a poor customer experience. The company set a goal to break through the business unit silos to provide a more customer-centric experience for their clients; unfortunately their mainframe customer management system was inflexible and difficult to enhance. Additionally, the costs associated with supporting and maintaining the mainframe system were fairly high. There was also a limited resource pool for the skill set needed to maintain the COBOL system. The organization embarked on a modernization effort to replace the customer management system with the intent to provide a solution that was flexible, interconnected and capable of being enhanced to display a 360-degree view of every customer.
Solution
Any system at is the center of an expansive multi-line organization has many complex dependencies. We needed to take into account the integration with hundreds of legacy applications/programs across the entire organization. Our first order of business was to replace the older and error-prone core customer management system with a system built on the Microsoft technology platform. This platform supported the requirements of the demanding core customer management system at a lower price point, and was in line with the market’s skill sets to support the mission-critical system for many years to come.
We leveraged service-based architectures and technologies such as .NET 4.5, Entity Framework, SQL Server 2008/2012, BizTalk Server 2009, REST and Windows Communication Foundation services to accomplish this challenging feat. Our goal in this approach was to minimize the impact to other IT systems during the replacement. It is important to note that this was a multi-layered solution with multiple parts, including a database and services that provided the functions. All development for the multi-department effort was conducted in a private cloud environment with Team Foundation Server 2008/2012 and Visual Studio 2008/2012. Development processes utilized agile methodologies through Team Foundation Server’s agile process templates and reporting.
Replacing the old mainframe system was the first step in creating a more effective customer experience, as it simply began the process of integrating multiple systems across lines of business to provide the organization with a better idea of what customers desired from their experience. This was the start of shifting the business to a more customer-centric organization. Future projects will continue to extend this plan, and none of this would have been possible on the mainframe platform of yesterday.
Business and Technological Advances
Utilizing an agile methodology, we were able to provide our client with an updated solution that provided the following business benefits:
- An updated and more thorough customer profile available across lines of business
- A new system capable of providing a better customer experience
- Significant cost savings
- A technology platform that will enable future business innovation for the organization
Future technological advances include:
- System integration
- Low latency
- Routing logic
- Responsive design
Technology
- .NET Framework 4.x
- Visual Studio 2012 / C#
- SQL Server 2012
- SSIS
- Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Services
- Microsoft MSMQ
- IBM message queuing
- BizTalk 2010
- Microsoft SCOM
- Splunk