Case Studies

DCS

Technical solution

Application Data Centre Hosting, Internet explorer based application, enterprise level database, disaster recovery and fail over real time replication.

Sector

Professions - Insurance

About DCS

DCS is a unique claims handling operation specialising in the control and administration of all classes of commercial liability claims. Their aim is to provide clients with all the benefits and services expected of an in-house claims department but with greater cost control.

The services offered are designed to be of benefit to insurers, brokers, and insured's alike by providing:

• claims handling expertise
• cradle to grave administration
• advice on market trends and policy application
• cost efficient investigation
• advanced statistical analysis

The Need

DCS architected their claims management system from their vast years of experience in the London Market. 3SIXTY was approached by DCS to enhance and re-develop their current claims management system from a Microsoft Access based solution to a web based approach in order to support the growth and client access required to login via an extranet secure area for viewing claims.

The business was expanding dramatically and the current Access based system could not cater for their needs of expansion, hence the approach to re-develop the application and base the functionality on how it was originally architected by DCS, Neil McManus and Neil Sully.

DCS also required a disaster recovery plan to cater for the ongoing operation of their vital claims application, a requirement set out by the FSA and other insurance bodies.

DCS soon, opened an office in Sydney Australia whereby 3SIXTY had to cater for the deployment, support and time zone difference for the real time replication within the disaster recovery plan.

The Solution

The brief was to ensure the same look and feel was kept throughout the claims application to ensure a minimal change management effort and increased adoption of the new system.

Quite a challenge for 3SIXTY at the time as we were proposing a web based internet explorer solution which was difficult to ensure the look at feel was like a Microsoft Access business application.

3SIXTY quickly delivered the internet explorer based solution with an exact likeness to the existing access data base application look, feel and layout. The reporting elements were enhanced dramatically to include intuitive selection, detailed criteria and Microsoft Excel based output with automatic formatting.

Soon afterward, 3SIXTY wee asked to ensure the application was in line with their required disaster recovery procedures. To ensure this was met, 3SIXTY replicated their information from our main data centre at Intechnology to our disaster recovery data centre at Fasthosts. This ensure business continuity in the event of failure of the application or connectivity at the office locations.

Finally, 3SIXTY was asked to deploy, maintain, support the DCS AP Sydney office in Australia. A challenge once again to cater for the different time zones of up to 10 hours to ensure the disaster recovery and reporting procedures required by the London office were still adhered.

3SIXTY is currently working on the latest project, to ensure a paperless claims process whereby all correspondence inbound and outbound is scanned, stored, referenced and archived for up to 7 years.

The Benefits

• Seamless upgrade to the latest web based technologies from a legacy Microsoft Access based solution
• Offering disaster recovery, business continuity and multi site capability across the globe
• Easy to use intuitive report writer
• Client extranet login capability to enable viewing of claim progress
• Giving DCS the leading competitive edge in the London market with the use of latest technologies and real time back up capability on a global basis

www.dcsclaims.co.uk