Dear Member, The next session of the Coalface Community will be a breakfast event held in Sydney on Wednesday June 20th in the Hilton Hotel, 488 George St, Sydney. Topic: Reusing and extending applications – how Allianz transformed its robust and proven legacy systems with Business Process Management tools and a Business Rules engine to create business agility while boosting operational efficiencies. The case history is being presented by Kerry Fullagar, Head of IT Architecture & Program Delivery at Allianz. Buffet breakfast 7:30 am In 2010, with a new business strategy calling for a focus on enhancing the customer experience, Allianz realised it needed to overhaul its Claims & New business systems. The systems were solid foundations but the needs of new client facing channels like online and call centres had added a level of complexity that made it very inefficient to process customer claims. Rejecting conventional wisdom, Allianz elected to build rather than buy and began the implementation of a Service-oriented architecture. They web service enabled the existing robust mainframe applications that are now consumed by a Business Process Management tool and a Business Rules engine to streamline business processes. While the project was delivered three months late the results have been impressive. Lodgement times for claims have been slashed in half, work can now be better allocated across the business to accommodate sudden increases in processing volumes and training costs have been trimmed significantly. Both customer satisfaction and staff engagement levels have increased as a result of the implementations to date. n this briefing Kerry will outline why Allianz shunned prevailing thinking and elected to retain its legacy systems and how it sought to build and extend them. She will describe the architecture and standards that Allianz established, and how this was determined. She will look at how applications have been migrated to this new environment and how testing has been undertaken to ensure these new systems are solid enough to be deployed at the front-line of the business. Her presentation will then review why system training costs have been dramatically reduced. Kerry recognises that Allianz has very much gone out on a limb in pursuing this strategy but will contend that the business outcomes that have already been realised have justified this decision. Nevertheless, lessons have been learned and Kerry will share the aspects of the change management journey that worked well and where she would do things differently if she had to start again. Your company may send three delegates to this session. They should come prepared to discuss and debate their views, experiences or concerns that will be raised by the approach Allianz has taken. This might include issues like: build v buy, service oriented architecture (SOA), training when staff turnover is high, Java on the mainframe, testing practices, web services, business process management tools and business rules engines. Moreover, if you have items that you would particularly like the meeting to discuss can you please include your questions when you reply. For catering and seating purposes we need to know who will be attending the session by Thursday June 15th. As such, can you please let us know whether your organisation is intending to send representatives to this session, and, if so, who they are, by registering via this link - registration form. Sincerely,
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June 2012 |
