Logicalis

Increased customer satisfaction and secure archiving from a content management solution

Company Profile

Admiral Insurance was launched in 1993 with the idea that cheaper car insurance premiums should be available to more people, not just married couples over 40 with 2.4 kids, suburbanites. The company was interested in people who currently pay high premiums such as younger drivers, hot-hatch drivers, drivers of executive/luxury cars, people who live in cities - and often a combination of these.

Customer's Business Issues

With a steadily growing customer services base, and a rapidly developing claims department, it was imperative that Admiral have a reliable IT infrastructure that improved the total customer service process.

Without compromise, Admiral's concern was the lacklustre service performance and response times due to limitations in existing hardware and applications.

Admiral's goal was to put in place a solution that:

• Reduce administration and personnel costs
• Ensure a more prompt response to employees and members, improving customer satisfaction
• Meet customer demands for document tracking service

Customer's Business Objectives

Admiral's business objectives centered around how to:

• Integrate an automated unique claims tracking service that is differentiated from competitors and improves customer service process
• Manage a rising volume of information retention
• Streamline support costs
• Improve electronic information management for quicker and easier accessibility, especially email

Initial Customer Set up

Admirals main - heavily bespoked - business application runs on the IBM i-series platform. This application - Insure/90 (I/90) - manages all related information for a policyholder including policy creation and administration, claims management and related workflow, policy claim payments and management reports. While this data was held within structured DB/2 databases, the unstructured information relating to I/90 such as customer correspondence, claim forms etc was located somewhere within the building with no clear management procedures around the related processes these documents were connected to. Admiral required a solution that was simple to manage, enabling them to:

• Improve customer service
• Keep internal costs to a minimum
• Implement a solution that fitted into their overall IT infrastructure.

To achieve this, the implemented document management solution – with backup/recovery and high availability processes - was made available to end users whenever I/90 was running; typically from 8am to 10pm. The backup implementation was designed so that if the main production IBM i-series server failed, an alternative backup IBM i-series server would automatically take effect and be the production server with minimal disruption to the customer and end user.

The Logicalis Solution

Logicalis established relationship with Admiral and with in-depth knowledge of their systems, produced a comprehensive analysis of the existing infrastructure to gain a full understanding of their requirements both from a business perspective as well as covering all IT requirements. Recognizing the difficulties of their initial set up, the Admiral group explored an enterprise approach to content integration that could be implemented incrementally, deciding on IBM's Content Management Software for their i-Series platform.

Using the Enterprise Content management solution from IBM, Logicalis created an integrated solution with I/90, providing customer service and workflow applications.

For the claims process, this meant having an integrated single desktop application for the workforce so staff can access the appropriate documents, such as claims forms, client documentation and customer statements while also processing the data held within I/90. With this solution, the business unit could be more responsive to their employees and customers, building customer loyalty and enabling employees to focus on maximizing the value of each customer contact. Unrestricted by technology, the solution gives Admiral staff the ability to seamlessly integrate the content they need to enable powerful business applications and processes. "With this solution, our customer helpdesks are making their decisions based on what they need to do and facilitating a smooth customer service process", comments Steve Carnell, Image IT Development Team Manager of Admiral.

Admiral chose to implement a number of Kodak scanners. This was based on trials done with Admiral's documents with a variety of scanner manufacturers to ensure the feeding quality, durability, scaleability and reliability matched their expectations for a document capture process that was going to potentially capture 30,000 pages of information per day.

Logicalis designed, installed and implemented the complete solution in conjunction with the internal development team at Admiral:

Hardware

• IBM 3995 Optical Jukeboxes
• Kodak scanners

Software

• IBM Content Management I-Series software
• Kofax Ascent

Services

• Design of solution
• Onsite implementation of solution guiding Admiral staff through procedure, installation and documentation
• Integration development
• Installation and configuration
• Training on all hardware and software

Ongoing Support

• Logicalis provided One Call ongoing support for hardware and software
• Pre agreed SLA to deliver rapid response and resolution OneCall

Customer Benefits

Admiral have received the following key benefits:

• Increased manageability of IT infrastructure, with inhouse staff to maintain newly installed hardware
• Customer satisfaction increased
• Lowered administration and personnel costs
• More efficient workforce, leading to faster processing of customer queries and claims
• High availability and efficient backup environment
• Full Business Continuity plan

Why Logicalis?

Logicalis was instrumental in developing a solution that worked seamlessly with Admiral's in-house bespoke business applications

The solution provided a manageable environment that did not require an increase in manpower, enabling staff to concentrate on true customer service.

According to Steve Carnell, "Admiral have been working with Logicalis since 1994 with the same group of consultants. They know our business inside out and provide a level of continuity that it would be very difficult to replace with another supplier.

Logicalis work very closely with our internal development team and have provided an excellent system that fully meets our needs, works without disruption and most importantly fits perfectly into our existing business operations."