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Insurance Company of the West (ICW) Group is a multi-line property/casualty insurance group headquartered in San Diego, California. The group was founded in 1972 and currently has office locations in 14 states. ICW offers a broad range of insurance products including commercial property, workers' compensation, surety bonds and personal automobile insurance. The Surety Division has grown to become among the largest in the U.S., with 17 branch offices staffed with experienced surety underwriters. Situation As a leader in the insurance sector, ICW is dedicated to top-quality performance, sustained growth, and transactional excellence -- the superior management of claims, underwriting, and operating costs. ICW's primary objective was to streamline its bond approval process while ensuring data integrity. In 1998 ICW had hired another IT vendor to build a solution with a Versada platform DB2 fat client using dual entry to replace the 18 year old legacy system. In 2004, to support the rapid growth of the Surety Division, the company wanted to further streamline and automate its processes. ICW needed a solution to transfer data between the lines of business applications to an enterprise mainframe system in one simple process. ICW business practices included a process of repetitively re-keying complex insurance policy information into their mainframe system. This process was time consuming and allowed high levels of input error. Key Goals
As a leader in their industry, ICW required a leading edge technical solution. SCG's approach emphasized project management and process around best practices for the software development life cycle. To arrive at a comprehensive solution, SCG and ICW performed an extensive collaborative requirements analysis to thoroughly define ICW's business processes. SCG designed and developed a high-performance Web and database solution that utilized Microsoft's .NET Framework and Biztalk Server to provide a dynamic data-driven solution. BizTalk was configured to allow the transfer of final insurance policy data from ICW's Surety business underwriting system into the mainframe billing system. Leveraging BizTalk to map out integration logic allowed SCG to create many complex data flow orchestrations while reducing input error. SCG utilized SQL Server Reporting Services because of its ability to rapidly create highly scalable, sophisticated Web reports for a wide range of functional requirements. Results ICW now has an integrated IT solution that includes successful mainframe data feeds for the 18-year old legacy system. The results are 100 percent reduction in re-keying man-hours. BizTalk also eliminated the need for the entire user base of 75 people to access the mainframe. Their surety underwriting business processes are now consolidated into one integrated solution. The system automates the bond rating process, enables authentication based on company group, allows the attachment of diary entries, tasks, and notes, features advanced search capabilities, eliminates data redundancies, and allows for an audit trail creating regulatory transparency. The modified screens in the Contractor and Developer modules include cash flow analysis, net worth reconciliation, and other analysis capabilities. Much of the business logic is now enforced reducing the frequency of error. As a side-benefit, support and licensing costs are down. By relying on Microsoft technologies, the ICW solution is scalable, sustainable, and promises to take customer satisfaction to an even higher level. Using SCG's proprietary project management methodology, "SOLUTIONSMethod," ensured that ICW's business and technical requirements were thoroughly documented throughout the project life cycle. As ICW's Surety Division grows, they can extend and enhance their solution as needed, adding new features that will help them continue to outperform their industry competitors. |
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