The Project for Upgrading the Information System of the Slovak Insurance Company

When top managers attempt to bridge the gap between their initial resolution to innovate marketing strategy and the realization of this idea, they are, even in this decade, inevitably driven towards the "gate of the stronghold" of the corporate information system. But at this point, they often have to pay the toll to the unwritten rule of "any change is a risk you want too much change the change."

Slovenska Poistovna, a.s. (The Slovak Insurance Company, joint-stock company) was one of the first financial institutions operating on the Slovak market to decide they would no longer pay this toll of unchanging rigidity.
The question of questions was, "To what extent should the changes be revolutionary?"

Will all roads lead to the center?
One of the possibilities was to build upon the centralistic model of the existing system. This would mean focusing all investments in one place l the center. This spot would house the whole logic, and the processing bulk would go on here. Nevertheless, the software would not escape a small revolution, as the most important parts of the system would have to be moved to a more up-to-date database and operating systems. In this case, however, any plans were limited, not only by the funds available, but also by a serious lack of expert programmers specializing in mainframe computing in the Slovak and global markets.

The disadvantages of this approach included its costliness and the big momentum of the old information system philosophy. The previous system caused delays in providing client services. The advantage was that the changes were not as dramatic when viewed on the background of the general history of information technologies.

If you innovate, then innovate thoroughly
If you invest, don't invest in a copy
The centralist model of the information system has been replaced by distributed architecture. The knowledge base has been decentralized, along with processing algorithms and computing capacity.
The principle was simple to minimize the time needed to process the data originating at the different business units, i.e. subsidiaries, branch offices and dealerships. The other important principle was the intention to create a system that could easily be adapted alongside the changes of the enterprise's business strategy.

The distribution of cutting-edge technology to the individual business units helped create a team of top-notch experts, based in several places around Slovakia. This should be considered one of the prominent competitive advantages.

No progress without a corporate data network
Philosophically, it would be absurd to attempt to build a distributed solution without an extensive data network.

The new system is born with the capacity to "remember"
Even at the very beginning of the vast project, it was evident that it could not be conceived as a new construction. The Slovak Insurance Company handles a long list of contractual partnerships, acquired during its lengthy presence on the insurance services market. The earliest partnerships go back to the first half of this century, with some continuing today.

Full automation of the system requires a functioning model to be created, which would reflect the specific historical features of the contractual relationships between the Insurance Company and its clients.

The situation can be illustrated by the following data:
The new system has to handle 122 templates of life insurance contracts in 306 historic versions. In the field of personal property insurance, the system manages approximately 62 contract templates in 102 historic versions.

Within the system, any business rules, insurance calculations, and legal bindings have to be applied by the date when the contractual relationship started. In this respect, the new insurance system could be described as a rule-governed expert system.

The key task, however, was the completion of the knowledge base. The success of this step was largely dependent on the enormous knowledge and experience of the employees of the Slovak Insurance Company, who cooperated with the team of analysts and developers from Gratex International, ltd. to create solid knowledge foundations for the system.

Technical
The model describing insurance business is implemented as a relational model operating in the environment of the Microsoft SQL Server. It is composed of 1100 tables, 1984 stored procedures, and 1272 triggers.

The POB database:
1100 tables
1984 stored procedures 116680 lines
1272 triggers 38246 lines

C/C++ code: + CPP H
VSQLB 193554 33589
Patrik 70284 2725
Dispatcher 11165 3127

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