Futureproofing the business with best practices in sales, service and claims delivery.

Online Insurance Portal | Customer Aquisition & Retention | Cost Reduction

The Client

The client is one of Western Australia’s largest insurers trusted with an excess of 600,000 policies. They constantly strive to provide the best possible benefits to their customers, and work closely with technology partners like Beacon to realise their strategic vision.

The Challenge

The client tasked Beacon to create a new and complete online channel for quoting and issuing policies to customers, necessitated by the need to move off their existing platform by a target date. The new platform will increase customer acquisition and retention while reducing expenses, further strengthen the client’s market position, and have the capacity to meet long-term strategic objectives.

This online channel will also enable claims to be lodged and monitored, provide convenient access to all forms, manage contact details, link policies and relationships, record a ‘diary’ of policy details and notes for each client entry, and initiate reminders regarding appointments to facilitate customer relationship management.

The solution aims to support best practices in sales, service and claims delivery, as well as integrate smoothly with existing and new systems going forward.

The Solution

Beacon’s proposal defined the scope of work, provided a cost-benefit analysis of options to consider, recommended an approach to delivery that will serve the client for the long run, sketched a timeline for implementing key functional requirements, and identified an overview of potential delivery risks.

The client accepted Beacon’s recommendation to build a real-time end-to-end solution and to seamlessly integrate the web application with the the client’s core backend systems.

Technology – Beacon provided a team of three developers to build the B2C web site using the Microsoft ASP.NET MVC framework, AJAX technology and JQuery components to provide a rich and responsive user experience. Integration with the underlying insurance system is performed via web services, including the use of a real-time credit card processing service. The B2C web site is hosted on several Microsoft Windows servers running Internet Information Services (IIS) with load-balancing provided by CISCO hardware, allowing hundreds to use the system simultaneous online.

The Outcomes

The project was successfully completed and met all the acceptance criteria. The client is well positioned to leverage the B2C architecture to support strategic objectives for the long run.