HOW I.T. MADE THE LIFE EASY
Company provides auto insurance coverage for licensed drivers in the state of Indiana. The company’s headquarter is located in the city of Speedway where it has two strategic business units located at the cities of Waterloo and Corydon. In all, BWAIC employs approximately 150 people with internal departments consisting of the Policy, Claims, Payroll, Personnel, and Insurance Agents. Currently, BWAIC insures 50,000 policyholders statewide. Last year, BWAIC’s net profit was $875,000. With certain state regulations, along with related socioeconomic impacts, the company expects an increase of new policies to underwrite. Accordingly, BWAIC is interested in positioning itself in the market where: Ø Internal exchange of information is efficient, Ø It improves its Customer Service, Ø Share information with external business contacts. COMPANIES OBJECTIVE: To stimulate a vision within the company of leading the market in customer service through an efficient information system and to utilize the most current technologies at lowest possible cost. COMPANIES EXPECTED BENEFITS: Internal: An improved information process where business applications provide intelligent solutions, secured data, and improved communication exchange between units and offices. External: To provide an advantage over the market where the interactions between the company and its external business environment produces customer satisfaction. Accordingly, this will have a positive impact on customer service where efficiency on the point of contact, through the lifetime of the policy, is evident. I.T. SYSTEMS PROFILE: Currently, BWAIC’s network setup doesn’t provide an efficient exchange of information between its key departments. Each department utilizes their own business transaction system within a mainframe environment. This input-output process performs the processing of their business transactions. The departments: Policy, Claims, Personnel, Payroll, Legal and Insurance Agents, have varying application needs. Likewise, they share a common interest – to achieve the best customer service possible. The Policy department has users that perform the administrative and technical type of work as it relates to underwriting insurance policies. The Claims department has users that perform calculations for the reserves of claims. They review the potential liability costs involve in customers’ claims. The Legal department relies heavily on an efficient exchange of information. The Personnel, Policy and Legal are information oriented departments. Claims and Payroll, on the other hand, relies heavily on accurate calculations of fiscal data. It is reported that the current databank is reaching its capacity. The current system is also inhibiting their customer service where the turnaround to process a claim takes about 90 days. The strategic locations of the Business units also contribute to the problems of the current system. The mainframe system negatively impacts the company’s ability to reach out to their customers. The Insurance Agents are limited to the office in terms of processing new clients. Under the mainframe system, the structure of the database is costly to maintain and support. Also, it limits the company’s ability to intelligently process their information and exchange them with their external business environment. RECOMMENDED SOLUTIONS: There are a variety of systems available in today’s market. Costs will depend on the company’s desire on long-term solutions. In today’s information technology environment BWAIC needs to position itself to compete with other insurance firms with an advantage of having the best technological tools. An efficient system will produce satisfied customers and intelligent employees. This change in information culture will allow the company to utilize their resources more efficiently where performance reports and external data help the managers make intelligent business decisions. It is without reservations that I recommend the following solutions for the BWAIC: Network Planning of the backbone and the network foundation is vital to the success of this project. It is recommended that a Client/Server network is implemented through a TCP/IP protocol. Each office will operate as Local Area Network (LAN) connected together as a Wide Area Network (WAN). Each office and users will have the ability to exchange information instantaneously. This configuration will produce the best and secured environment for which powerful machines (Server) produce and process the information to the users (Client) of the information. The backbone (Bandwidth) has to support the type of data that will travel between the offices and through the customers. Each department will utilize their own groupware that will process their information. This information system will be accessible via remote access to allow mobility and flexibility for managers to strategically position their resources and staff. To supplement this, it is recommended that an Intranet is put in place so as to allow information to external business contacts and customers via Extranet.