Company provides auto insurance coverage for licensed drivers in the state ofIndiana. The companys headquarter is located in the city of Speedway where ithas two strategic business units located at the cities of Waterloo and Corydon. In all, BWAIC employs approximately 150 people with internal departmentsconsisting of the Policy, Claims, Payroll, Personnel, and Insurance Agents. Currently, BWAIC insures 50,000 policyholders statewide. Last year, BWAICsnet profit was $875,000.
With certain state regulations, along with relatedsocioeconomic impacts, the company expects an increase of new policies tounderwrite. Accordingly, BWAIC is interested in positioning itself in the marketwhere: 1) Internal exchange of information is efficient, 2) It improves itsCustomer Service, 3) Share information with external business contacts. PROJECTOBJECTIVE To stimulate a vision within the company of leading the market incustomer service through an efficient information system and to utilize the mostcurrent technologies at lowest possible cost. EXPECTED BENEFITS Internal: Animproved information process where business applications provide intelligentsolutions, secured data, and improved communication exchange between units andoffices.
External: To provide an advantage over the market where theinteractions between the company and its external business environment producescustomer satisfaction. Accordingly, this will have a positive impact on customerservice where efficiency on the point of contact, through the lifetime of thepolicy, is evident. SYSTEMS PROFILE Currently, BWAICs network setup doesntprovide an efficient exchange of information between its key departments. Eachdepartment utilizes their own business transaction system within a mainframeenvironment. This input-output process performs the processing of their businesstransactions. The departments: Policy, Claims, Personnel, Payroll, Legal andInsurance Agents, have varying application needs.
Likewise, they share a commoninterest to achieve the best customer service possible. The Policydepartment has users that perform the administrative and technical type of workas it relates to underwriting insurance policies. The Claims department hasusers that perform calculations for the reserves of claims. They review thepotential liability costs involve in customers claims. The Legal departmentrelies heavily on an efficient exchange of information.
The Personnel, Policyand Legal are information oriented departments. Claims and Payroll, on the otherhand, relies heavily on accurate calculations of fiscal data. It is reportedthat the current databank is reaching its capacity. The current system is alsoinhibiting their customer service where the turnaround to process a claim takesabout 90 days.
The strategic locations of the Business units also contribute tothe problems of the current system. The mainframe system negatively impacts thecompanys ability to reach out to their customers. The Insurance Agents arelimited to the office in terms of processing new clients. Under the mainframesystem, the structure of the database is costly to maintain and support. Also,it limits the companys ability to intelligently process their information andexchange them with their external business environment.
RECOMMENDED SOLUTIONSThere are a variety of systems available in todays market. Costs will dependon the companys desire on long-term solutions. In todays informationenvironment BWAIC needs to position itself to compete with other insurance firmswith an advantage of having the best technological tools. An efficient systemwill produce satisfied customers and intelligent employees.
This change ininformation culture will allow the company to utilize their resources moreefficiently where performance reports and external data help the managers makeintelligent business decisions. It is without reservations that I recommend thefollowing solutions for the BWAIC: Network Planning of the backbone and thenetwork foundation is vital to the success of this project. It is recommendedthat a Client/Server network is implemented through a TCP/IP protocol. Eachoffices will operate as Local Area Network (LAN) connected together as a WideArea Network (WAN).
Each office and users will have the ability to exchangeinformation instantaneously. This configuration will produce the best andsecured environment for which powerful machines (Server) produce and process theinformation to the users (Client) of the information. The backbone (Bandwidth)have to support the type of data that will travel between the offices andthrough the customers. Each department will utilize their own groupware thatwill process their information. This information system will be accessible viaremote access to allow mobility and flexibility for managers to strategicallyposition their resources and staff. To supplement this, it is recommended thatan Intranet is put in place so as to allow information to external businesscontacts and customers via Extranet.
The Intranet solution will also be themethod that will enable E-Commerce activity and gain a market advantageConversion of the database to a Relational Database
