The Customer

An On-line insurance startup with a unique "b2b" approach to insurance broker services, based in Maine, U.S.A.

The Challenge

The creation of an on-line insurance community involved duplicating the off-line workflow for getting (and bargaining for) insurance quotes, buying insurance, and a whole host of other functionalities - many of which were not suited to a non real-time web-based paradigm. The challenge involved making the entire application very interactive, while still maintaining the simplicity and robustness of the architecture.

The Solution

After surveying the customer's requirements, Analytica proposed a solution based on the Java development environment. This allowed the customer to deploy the entire solution initially on Linux based systems at a fraction of the cost of what a proprietary OS (Windows/AIX/Solaris) based server solution would have inccured. It also protected their investment in software by giving them the ability to transition at any time to either a Microsoft based solution, or to the Sun/IBM platforms.

The entire software was also designed to be modular and component-based - with all the logic encoded in specialized "business objects". All the communication between the brokers and the users of the site were managed through automated emails from the system. A "confidentiality" engine was designed to retain two-way anonymity between the users and the insurance sales agents, till the "deal" was finalized.

The entire system, including the individual and group insurance functionality, was designed after studying the insurance purchasing process at first hand. The website was designed to allow an insurance agent to interface easily with their existing desktop programs and insurance databases. It was also designed to integrate with their messaging and email tools, in order to provide the best possible user experience.

The project was handled in an entirely off-shore mode- from the design to the final deployment - and delivered on schedule. Analytica performed a remote install from our lab in India, to our client servers in the U.S.A., and load tested the application to perform to the customer's requirements. Complete application support too was provided remotely overcoming considerable challenges in remote management, training, and administration.

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