In any highly competitive marketplace, investment in new systems must be targeted not only at delivering successful innovation, but also at profitability. Factor in the all-important element of time and it's a tall order, but specialist business insurance group Premierline is more than happy with its recent system update on all three counts, thanks to consultancy support from Roger Clements of ORIAC Solutions Ltd, who worked closely with Premierline's in-house team to deliver the project. The combined implementation team achieved every one of their project objectives, on budget and, every bit as importantly, well on schedule.
Premierline, a subsidiary of the Allianz Group and one of the biggest insurers in the UK, specialises in providing insurance for a wide range of commercial interests including motor traders, surgeries, wholesalers, hospitality enterprises, salon and retail. The company wanted to refine the rating engine that covered most of these products, with enhancements to increase the precision of the rating algorithm. But its own - highly competent - in-house development team were committed to working on other activities ...
ORIAC is a specialist consultancy with more than 120 years cumulative experience in implementing the general insurance administration tool developed by market-leading Danish company TIA Technology A/S, the system widely used by the Allianz Group in the UK.
The TIA business model regards specialisation as key, and has developed a dedicated specialised partner network to provide its customers with the range of skills and knowledge of country-specific rules, regulations and business practices needed for the products' optimum performance.
ORIAC, a member of this carefully selected international and local partner community, had previously worked on a number of Allianz Group implementations. And as the leading TIA Partner in the UK, with globally acknowledged expertise, ORIAC was the obvious choice, said Premierline IT Director Dave Ebbitt. "I had worked with a number of the ORIAC guys in the past at Axa Direct during the 90s and again during the launch of Premierline. It made sense to approach ORIAC as first port of call since we needed a consultant with all the skills in place, who could hit the ground running," Ebbitt added.
Preliminary work started in November 2010 when Roger Clements began working with Premierline as the project's functional architect - the role of ensuring that the TIA application meets the client's objectives, either using the capabilities within the standard system or designing a way of enhancing the system, without affecting the core functionality, in order to meet those objectives.
"When we are invited on site it is important to clearly understand and interpret the business requirements in terms of the current capability and utilising the flexibility of TIA." explained ORIAC functional architect Clements. "There are always many ways of meeting the requirements - we apply a TIA Best Practice approach to ensure that development is carried out 'in the TIA way', usually by advising on the best use of user exits rather than trying to re-invent the wheel." Clements&aposls first task was therefore to analyse the requirements, to provide an estimate and to determine what was feasible within the available budget - a two day exercise carried out mid - November 2010. Once the estimate was agreed by the Premierline IT department, Premierline invited Clements to carry out further analysis, design and the major part of the build.
Throughout the product precision enhancement project, Clements was supported by Premierline's own staff. ORIAC views the practice of working closely with existing in - house teams as fundamental to the on - going, longer - term success of any project - and one of the dynamic aspects of working with such a specialist consultancy.
ORIAC director Kevin Wallis-Eade said: "Customers such as Premierline have created highly competent in-house teams and are more than capable of supporting and enhancing their TIA implementations. However, in such circumstances there is significant value in the unrivalled wealth of TIA experience that our consultants bring to projects. With experience of more than 10 successful TIA implementations, consultants such as Roger will almost certainly help to complete the project in a shorter time than otherwise possible. But that is not the only advantage."
Besides the assistance and guidance they offer the existing team, our consultants leave behind them much of the profit of their expertise in particular applications with the in-house staff. It's a mentoring role, teaching, in effect, which leaves an on-going benefit.
Clements worked with Premierline's business analysts during the analysis and design stages and with the offshore development team in India during the build (and later for the development when that team was brought onshore to the UK), to provide closely knit teams led by the ORIAC functional architect.
The initial analysis and design stages produced a Functional Specification and a Technical Specification. The Functional Specification, which must meet the business requirements and defines functionally how the system will be changed, is written in such a way that non-technical people can understand the document, Clements emphasised. "It's important that non-IT personnel are able to understand and buy into the solution design and the functional design document provides the vehicle to achieve this, they can then also use this document to provide the basis for their system testing" he explained.
The document was agreed and signed off by Premierline's pricing and IT department in early January 2011. The Technical Specification explaining how the Functional Specification details can be met - which is produced primarily so that the development team know what changes to make to the affected programs - followed shortly afterwards and was agreed and signed off by Premierline's in-house development team.
The build, which is when the code is actually written to meet the requirements of the project, was carried out by ORIAC functional architect Clements and the Premierline offshore development team working in tandem. The majority of the build was completed and ready for system test by February 2011.
Premierline's offshore team completed the final elements of the build. It went live in early April after system and user acceptance testing had been completed.
In thanking Clements for his significant contribution to the project Jeremy Richards, Premierline's Business Systems Manager, confirmed that, "during the testing phases there was a much lower than average incidence of issues which illustrates the good quality of the work undertaken during the analysis, design and development stages".
The verdict of Premierline IT Director Dave Ebbitt is positive: "The targeted involvement of Roger and ORIAC Solutions Ltd combined with Premierline's onshore team in Lancaster and our offshore colleagues in India delivered a change which will make a real difference to the profitability of Premierline in the very competitive marketplace where we compete."