Gain without pain

The process of improving an existing system without disrupting business processes and customer service is not one to be approached lightly. Oakwell Solutions has been working with LegalWise for the last 18 months to replace legacy systems that were not meeting the desired goals with Microsoft technology, while still meeting the objective of minimal disruption.

LegalWise has been running nationwide as a provider of legal expenses insurance since 1984. In nearly two decades of operation, the company has gained some 800 000 policyholders and runs branch offices in all major centres. The company`s IT systems were designed to cope with large volumes of policy enquiries, capturing new policies and an extensive monthly premium payment system.

Unfortunately, the successful growth of the business had begun to expose the deficiencies of the existing solution. Problems were noted in areas familiar to any client-facing organisation: poor customer service resulting from the lack of a unified view of the client; information on new policies only available after scheduled database updates; poor data integrity and inadequate verification of information; delays in making changes to information; and slow tracking of claims made by clients.

Although it is always a major decision to replace an existing system - involving disruption of workflow as well as capital investment - LegalWise was able to achieve a cost-effective and smooth transition with the solution engineered by Oakwell, which was based on a sensible, phased approach to introducing the latest Microsoft products.

The former system had relied on batch processing of the data coming in from branches to the company`s Central Services department in Johannesburg. This was replaced by a Web-enabled system that allowed live updates and instant access for all the branches around the country. An SQL Server database provided the central data store as well as the ability to move the existing data across and simultaneously check it for accuracy. This was achieved with SQL`s Data Transformation Services (DTS) functionality, which allows iterative data scrubbing while information is imported into the database.

The phased approach applied by Oakwell Solutions during the introduction of the new systems ensured that LegalWise and its many customers experienced minimal disruption of service.

The completed solution provides answers to all the challenges the business was facing. Branches now have immediate access to up-to-date information and all changes can now be subject to proper standards of authorisation. Capturing and changing data is far faster, with automatic completion of basic details such as postcodes and verification of important information such as bank account details. The integrity and verification of information in the central database is automated and fully reliable.

What is more, the system provides for scaling up to meet future needs of larger storage and the introduction of further sophisticated applications to provide business intelligence analysis, with obvious benefits for both the company and its clients.