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Modernizing Legacy Applications Boosts Efficiency and Business
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
- Sales & Marketing
Use Cases
- Service Parts Management
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Hibernian General Insurance, one of Ireland's largest and most respected insurers, was facing challenges in serving insurance brokers and policy holders while reducing the time and cost to administer insurance policies. One of Hibernian’s key applications is its Branch Policy System (BPS)—a character-based application used by internal administration and call center staff to service insurance brokers and policy holders. To improve response times to these customers and reduce the costs of administering insurance policies, Hibernian decided to take a service-oriented approach and create a Web-based, easy-to-use interface that leverages and reuses existing key functionality contained within the business-critical Branch Policy application. Initially, Hibernian planned to replace its legacy application with an off-the-shelf general insurance package. However, over the years, there has been a large investment in this system which has provided users with a very high-level of functionality. This was found extremely hard to replace with an off-the-shelf general insurance package.
About The Customer
Hibernian General Insurance of Ireland, established in 1908, is one of Ireland’s largest and most respected insurers. The company has a business philosophy of providing competitive products and excellent service to customers. Consequently, the organization is constantly striving to improve operations. One of Hibernian’s key applications is its Branch Policy System—a character-based application used by internal administration and call center staff to service insurance brokers and policy holders. The company processes 800,000 policies representing 2 million transactions per year, with applications that support a Web channel but still take advantage of the legacy investment. About 2,000 users, in 400 brokers’ offices, use blive.
The Solution
Hibernian decided to extend the capabilities of BPS by creating a Web-based interface, blive, which takes advantage of key features of the existing application. The Web interface could reduce the costs of administering insurance policies by providing self-administration capabilities to brokers and give brokers and policy holders the ability to access information using the Internet. Hibernian also wanted to retain a single processing system with one view of the truth. To ensure flexibility to support these and future requirements, Hibernian took a service-oriented approach to extend the BPS application. First, Sinnott and his team decided to separate the BPS presentation layer and the database access layer from the business logic stored in the application. To achieve this, Hibernian used Software AG’s Natural Productivity Package, a set of tools for developing and maintaining Natural applications using a single, remote Windows-based development environment. Complementing the package is Natural Engineer, a maintenance and reengineering tool that let Hibernian restructure its existing application and reuse essential business logic.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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