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Getting an insurance quote from an independent insurance agent used to be a very manual process. Agents began by acquiring the latest rate information, which was mailed to them on disk by each insurance agency.
Agents would load these updated rates onto their desktop, where their rating program would recalculate the most accurate quote. The independent agent would scour prices from multiple insurance agencies.
If the client accepted a quote, the agent would print out the application, fill it out, put all the materials in the mail and send it to the insurance agency. When the insurance agency received it, it would key the information into the mainframe, print out the results and send it back to the agent via the mail.
The whole process took a long time, and, along the way, there could be any number of mistakes, such as improper data entry, said Dan Pitcher, vice president of IT for Western Reserve Mutual Casualty Company, one of the companies in the Western Reserve Group, of Wooster, Ohio.
“Even though the quotes were close, they always were different, say, off by a couple of bucks,” said Pitcher. “That was universal to the industry.”
And, as Pitcher said he had noticed since his consulting days, the industry was shifting to real-time rate information.
“Anybody who spent any time in the industry said youve got to be easy to do business with, youve got to improve services and youve got to manage expenses,” said Pitcher. “And extending mainframe applications to agents via Web services was just the mantra. Everybody knew they needed to do that.”
WRG wanted to end diskette-based mailings and move to live rate information via the Web, Pitcher said.
But Pitcher said he didnt have the time or money to redevelop the WRG systems. He has 14 IT people on staff, and theyre mostly COBOL programmers. Given WRGs location, Pitcher claims its tough to get and keep Java programmers.
WRG data and logic was entrenched in the mainframe. So Pitcher said he began looking at SOA (service-oriented architecture) structured solutions that facilitate communications between two services (for example, a mainframe and the Web).
“The emergence of SOA is actually providing a lifeline to the mainframe business,” said Dana Gardner, principal analyst for Interarbor Solutions, of Gilford, N.H.
“If you have assets that you can already tap and reuse, it actually allows you to decrease your risk and you get more value out of what youre already using, obviously, and it increases your productivity,” said Ed Peters, CEO of Dallas-based OpenConnect Systems.
Pitcher said he wanted a solution that would isolate all maintenance on the mainframe and take advantage of WRGs existing mainframe business logic. So he began researching a handful of vendors that could offer some type of Web interface with their mainframe and selected OpenConnect, an SOA vendor that came to his attention through a piece of direct mail.
OpenConnect had a tool, eXtremeVista (since rebranded as Configure), that enabled a developer to easily configure a Web service from mainframe business processes.
The product looks at each field on a mainframes green screen, creates a connector for it to the Web and then automatically programs the Web code so users can populate the field on the mainframe from the Web, Pitcher said.
The major advantage OpenConnect had over the competition, said Pitcher, was time to market.
According to Alex Moulas, OpenConnects senior vice president of business development and marketing, it takes on average 18 to 24 months to complete a mainframe project.
When OpenConnect and WRG built the prototype, a farm owners policy, it took only six weeks to roll out, Pitcher said. The prototype was necessary because Pitcher wanted to make sure that eXtremeVista could work with WRGs system.
OpenConnects vice president of product marketing, Chris Houck, said the company had done projects like WRGs many times before. “Youre not creating anything; youre just repurposing it in the Web world,” said Houck. “The hard part has already been done on the mainframe.”
Next Page: Comprehending the mainframe.
Comprehending the mainframe
To develop the look of the Web interface, Pitcher and his team first manually mapped out the mainframe process. The team considered what the navigation path was and how it played out in terms of the design of the Web pages, said Pitcher. After manually mapping out the mainframe, Pitcher said he felt he had an accurate view of the processes.
Given WRGs small size, mapping out its mainframe application wasnt very difficult, said Pitcher. But he noted that if a larger organization had to do this, it wouldnt be as easy. Thats when OpenConnect saw an opportunity to expand its business.
OpenConnect developed a mainframe process discovery application called Comprehend. The program sits outside the mainframe and listens to every users interaction with the mainframe, cataloging the behavior, Houck said.
Given the success of the prototype—which went unused—WRG and OpenConnect spent three months in 2003 to Web-enable WRGs first line of business, homeowners insurance. Pitcher said he was stunned at the speed of implementation, which, from there, quickly rolled out all but one line of WRGs business in just three years.
Once the Web connection to the mainframe was established and independent agents started using it, a dominolike effect of benefits began that Pitcher refers to as “straight through processing.”
Now that agents receive quotes and write policies directly from the Web, 97 percent of all WRGs auto and homeowner policies are created by the agents themselves instead of by WRG employees, Pitcher said. Before the OpenConnect implementation, WRG employees were typing all their policies into the mainframe.
The new system also allowed for gains such as an end to data-transcription errors as well as the production and mailing of data diskettes.
In addition, the processing is “straight through” because the agent can submit the policy on their own with all the supporting documents via e-mail, Pitcher explained.
“The more of these Web applications you put out to the agent, you get pull-through with other functionality that you already had out there,” noted Pitcher.
Pitcher said WRG spent a total of $1.2 million to make all but one of the companys lines of businesses Web-accessible. “If we didnt find this product, we couldnt have afforded to stay competitive,” Pitcher said.
David Spark is a freelance writer in San Francisco. Contact him at [email protected].
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