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Success Stories > Managed Healthcare/Insurance Company

A Fortune 500 Managed Healthcare and Insurance Company.

Challenge: To stay competitive, the customer needed fast and accurate decision-making based on seamless access to business information and operational data across all areas of the organization. Similarly, the company wanted to reduce its cost base and improve time to market. All these objectives required a strong bridge between the business and the technology supporting it. The customers IT management team decided to strengthen this linkage by aligning the group's business and technology more closely. While each of the customers business pisions was closely aligned to the business units it served, they were well-positioned to support end-to-end processes or solutions, with human intervention being required to share data across pisions. The company engaged Fulcrum to help it define an enterprise architecture across all of its technology pisions, enabling it to drive greater re-use, better integrate its systems and enjoy shorter timescales for technology delivery.

Solution: Working with Fulcrum, the joint team started constructed an SOA Plan. In the first phase, the team examined and assessed the current technology systems across key operations. The main findings pointed to the need to fully exploit existing IT assets and different application technologies, and therefore an enterprise-level standards-based approach was required. Phase two involved building a clear picture of key business and technology drivers. The joint team then set out clearly how these could be reflected in the "to-be" future technology architecture. Because integration and process orchestration were key enablers for the new architecture, the team proposed that a service-oriented architecture should be used to integrate the business and technology systems in a way that would put the road map into effect while minimizing the need for investment in systems replacement. The team conducted a proof of concept n two phases, Technical and Functional. At relevant points in the process, Fulcrum utilized SOA specialists from across its national network to provide input and expertise. The Fulcrum team also worked with third parties chosen by the customer to validate the technology standards set out in the initial enterprise architecture work, and to demonstrate the concept and value of SOA to the business.

Results: As a result of the effort, the customer has revised its IT direction and road maps for the key strategic technology areas it needs to build over the next few years. These road maps include an SOA-based technology architecture that will enable it to realize the full benefits of its evolving strategy, while also driving greater flexibility, end-to-end integration and informed decision making. Over time, SOA will shorten time-to-market and reduce operating expenditure by driving standardization across the business and improving re-use of existing technology components and services.