PowerTerm® Host Publisher Helps Beacon Insurance Get to the Point
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Industry
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Finance
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Customer
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Beacon Insurance Group, Wichita Falls, TX
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Host Connectivity Solution
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PowerTerm® Host Publisher
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Host Server
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IBM AS/400
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Users
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480 agents
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The Challenge
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Beacon Insurance required a solution to connect their legacy rating engine to the Web that would meet their tight time frame and budget.
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The Solution
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PowerTerm Host Publisher provided Beacon with a cost effective solution to deploy a single system for obtaining insurance quotes.
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Benefits
- PowerTerm Host Publisher uses standard development tools and languages making it easy to learn and reducing development time and development costs.
- PowerTerm Host Publisher offers an easy-to-use graphical user interface, making it simple to use and navigate.
- The Ericom Support Team was there to answer Beacon's questions promptly whenever needed.
"After investigating three or four vendors, we decided on Ericom Software's PowerTerm Host Publisher because it is easy to learn and cost effective"
Barbara Hitz Director of Internet Technology Beacon Insurance Group
Background
Beacon Insurance Group of Wichita Falls, Texas provides property and casualty insurance for homeowners, farm and ranch, and commercial businesses throughout Texas and Arkansas. Service is provided by professional customer service associates and by over 480 Beacon agents.
Beacon uses the POINT policy management and rating system to handle claims, billing, rating and to produce policies. The POINT system is a legacy application written in COBOL that runs on an IBM AS/400 system.
Agents would send a fax with a request for quotes, and would have to wait for a response from the main office. Quotes were obtained using the POINT System, but were merely a replication of those generated by Beacon's legacy system. This meant that Beacon's IT department was required to maintain the legacy's rating engine while, at the same time, update the Web application's rating program. This process not only caused duplication of work, but was also, at times, inaccurate. Keeping up with maintenance, changes and updates for two rating engines was not efficient, says Barbara Hitz, Director of Internet Technology for Beacon Insurance Group.
Hitz explains that the information was presented in green screens and function key driven menus. In addition, data was incorporated into multiple tables that define the rating process. This meant that insured policy and claim information was not found in one place, but rather was located on up to 30-40 different tables, making it difficult for agents to navigate and read.
Connecting legacy to the web
Beacon wanted a solution that would provide its agents, customer service, claims and sales support representatives, with real-time access to insurance rates. The company wanted a solution that was easy to use and that would help improve customer service by giving agents the tools they needed to service their accounts. Beacon wanted its agents to be able to retrieve insured policy and claim information, and update the organization's database with insured policy information.
Beacon sought a solution that would enable data to be uploaded from the Internet to the POINT system. They wanted to bring the POINT System, running on an AS/400, directly into Microsoft's Active Server Pages, an NT-based Web application. However, since this meant the merging of disparate systems, the company was unsure as to exactly how it would go about accomplishing this goal. One thing was certain. Beacon was not prepared to add staff to complete the project.
Beacon turned to the owners of POINT system for a possible solution. "We were told that it would take a year or more to do what we wanted to do," explained Hitz, who was surprised by the estimated lengthiness of the task.
According to Hitz, the alternative was to bypass the POINT System's built-in edits. "We would have to replicate the POINT System's edits that directly update the system's database into our Web application," she said. "That would have taken an enormous amount of time and effort." In addition, Beacon's goal of completing the project without having to add staff would have been unattainable had it bypassed the POINT System's edits.
Hitz decided to look for alternatives, and began researching and evaluating solutions on the Internet. After investigating three or four vendors, she and Chris Blue, Beacon's software engineer, decided on Ericom Software's PowerTerm Host Publisher. The key factor in their decision was the fact that PowerTerm Host Publisher is easy to learn and cost effective, since development is done using standard development tools and languages.
Seeing the results
One of the advantages offered by PowerTerm Host Publisher was that it enabled Beacon to avoid the considerable time, cost and risk involved in transferring data to a new system. "We immediately started developing in it," says Hitz. "Our software programmer learned the system inside of a week." No training was required for the coder, who was able to learn the system through a PDF instruction manual and comprehensive help files.
A prototype was done and testing was completed within three months. Beacon agents now obtain rates from the POINT System using Active Server Pages. " We were able to get a rating from the POINT System and we didn't have to add staff," says Hitz.
PowerTerm Host Publisher did not interfere with Beacon's existing host system structure or operations, and united the POINT management system with the AS/400 for easy access to policy and ratings information without duplication of tasks. PowerTerm Host Publisher enabled the integration of specific information from the two diverse sources, combining them into a single transaction process. With PowerTerm Host Publisher, no changes had to be made to the existing applications since the same business processes that are stored on the AS/400 can be exposed to any Windows® or Java-based client in real time.
With PowerTerm Host Publisher Beacon has realized its goals of greater accuracy and efficiency. "Ericom's PowerTerm Host Publisher is saving us from having to work on code to maintain two separate rating engines," says Hitz. "In the past, there were two people spending 50 percent of the time coding." Insurance quotes obtained using PowerTerm Host Publisher are also more accurate.
The Visual Basic Code that was written with the Application Wizard easily fit into Beacon's Active Server Page. In addition, using Host Publisher, Beacon's software programmers enhanced the legacy information by presenting them in HTML pages, which brought the user interface up to date with a user-friendly GUI, and also made it graphically appealing. Agents do not even notice they're working with a host application Information and tables that were previously displayed in multiple screens were now displayed on one screen. PowerTerm Host Publisher enables Beacon agents to access the data they need, so that they can present quotes and rates to customers in real time.
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