Insurance Client Managed Services – Case Study

The client is a large insurance provider of valuable insurance coverages and services to home and auto owners, as well as business owners.

Company Description

The client is a large insurance provider of valuable insurance coverages and services to home and auto owners, as well as business owners. Leveraging a large-scale internal and partially external-facing web application, they serve their customers daily with extensive functionality. To achieve other internal processes, they keep numerous background programs that shift data where it can be further harnessed and analyzed. This sophisticated infrastructure enables the client not only to efficiently manage policy issuance, claims processing, and customer interactions but also to extract valuable insights from the data generated. The integration of these background programs ensures a seamless flow of information, contributing to the client’s ability to make informed decisions, enhance operational efficiency, and ultimately provide top-notch services to their diverse customer base.

Challenge

Problem

The client needed to revitalize their core application for their customers and employees to increase productivity. This required an additional effort from experts to learn their systems and maintain their current operations so they could execute this initiative separately.

Our challenge was to absorb as much knowledge of their architecture as possible to transform our team into mirrors of themselves. With so many applications, all with different purposes, grasping and orchestrating the workflows as naturally as the client was paramount. Full-scope awareness was needed to ensure there was minimal effort while delivering on requirements. The sooner we became familiar with the territory, the quicker we would ramp up to clockwork.

Project Goals

· Learn client systems and applications.

· Improve functionality to increase maintainability.

· Document processes to add learned insight.

· Remediate existing issues.

· Append necessary functionality of the client’s current application.

Solution

Our strategy we employed was to build a team that the client could recognize as their own and have that team engage with the business stake holders often to keep in parallel with their goals. One unit of the team is determined to keep the intricacies of the day-to-day business in motion; the other unit is to enhance their applications and ensure evolution of business needs are met with equal development. Like incremental code changes to steadily progress these systems, we continuously, sprint after sprint, learned new facets of their business which only added to our tooling and reasoning when approaching tasks whether it be support or development.

Innovations

As mentioned above, one of our goals was to improve upon maintainability. When approaching a series of work items, our team sought to create additions to the client’s codebase that emphasized scalability and removal of limitations. One such improvement was to implement a way to migrate several stored procedures and surrounding code to utilize new extended columns that not only fixed an impassable truncation issue but did so in the least invasive way possible.

In using feature flags, new stored procedures in parallel with old, and new columns we corrected a boundary that as the system grew the values of essential fields were being truncated for one of their lines of business.

Another accomplishment that gave the client’s userbase a useful feature was our team’s implementation of stored payment methods. Putting this in place meant end users could keep their preferred selections of payment method, adding convenience to transactions with the client.

Core Technologies

To accomplish our goals, we leveraged several technologies.

· ASP.NET Core

· ASP.NET Framework

· Classic ASP

· MS SQL

· DB2 SQL

· Azure Function Apps

Their core application, due to several years of life cycles, required all these technologies to work together in unison. Some portions such as the client-side were written in VB.NET and Classic ASP while the server-side portions consisted of C#, VB.NET which retrieved data through services referencing their DB2 mainframe and MS SQL databases.

Many times, solutioning a work item called upon a combination of these technologies, where modifications, such as updating a stored procedure, meant also adjusting the .NET code to accommodate the change and ensuring regressive testing was successful. This integrated approach ensured that changes in one aspect of the system were seamlessly reflected throughout, maintaining the overall integrity and functionality of the application. Collaborative problem-solving became a cornerstone of our workflow, as we adeptly navigated the intricate interdependencies between technologies, swiftly adapting to evolving project requirements. This holistic perspective not only streamlined our development process but also fortified the robustness of the entire system, contributing to the overall success of our projects.

Process

Team

Consisting of .NET full stack engineers, we all brought extensive experience to the equation. Though split into two units, each with its unique objectives, we seamlessly collaborated to provide a comprehensive and integrated solution, ensuring a wide coverage of value for the client. Our collective expertise in front-end and back-end development, database management, and system architecture allowed us to tackle diverse challenges efficiently. By fostering a culture of open communication and knowledge-sharing, we leveraged the strengths of each unit to create a cohesive and synergistic team. This collaborative approach not only enhanced our productivity but also enriched the final deliverables, demonstrating the effectiveness of a unified, multidisciplinary team in achieving client success.

Results

Though important to keep in our purview, Primary Key Indicators (PKI) were metrics we assured through collaboration and improvisation. We applied Agile concepts and methodology to how we conducted our implementations. By always seeking ways to alleviate blockers and keep the team thriving, we kept the development momentum going and our metrics reflected this.

Our client saw a drastic reduction in ticket counts and corrections to issues that had long caused problems. No matter how small the incident was our team determined the root cause to eliminate future tickets. The more we resolved the more our service snowballed into streamlined support for their business which ultimately resulted not only in an unhindered effort towards their roadmap but also an ever-increasing, stabilizing set of applications left better than before.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this case study highlights the successful collaboration between our team and the insurance client, showcasing our commitment to delivering innovative solutions and exceptional service. Through a dedicated effort to absorb the intricacies of the client’s architecture, our team has effectively mirrored the client’s expertise, ensuring seamless delivery of services and support. This partnership demonstrates our ability to tackle complex challenges and deliver tangible results, reinforcing our position as a leader in providing top-tier managed services. We look forward to continuing our relationship with the client, driving further advancements, and contributing to their ongoing success in the dynamic insurance sector.