Secure Modernization of 20-Year-Old Aviation Insurance Software

Customer

The Customer is a global insurance organization headquartered in New York.

Challenge

The Customer wanted to re-implement and extend the functionality of its aviation insurance management application that served as a collaboration space for underwriters, their assistants, and intermediaries. The application was over 20 years old and relied on complex business logic. There was no up-to-date documentation on its architecture or functionality. 

To restore the lost information, plan the new app features, and ensure smooth evolution of the insurance software, the Customer was looking for a reliable IT partner with proficient business analysts experienced in the insurance industry.

Solution

ScienceSoft’s business analyst started with:

• Conducting a thorough analysis of the Customer’s business processes, internal regulations and systems.
• Interviewing employees from all the involved departments on the Customer’s side.
• Exploring the application’s use cases and existing workflows.
• Modeling the to-be processes and describing how the updated application should work.

Based on the analysis results, ScienceSoft’s expert elicited detailed requirements for the solution-to-be and prioritized them on behalf of the stakeholders. The updated app was to provide the following functionality depending on access levels:

Level 1 users (underwriters and their assistants) can:

• Add new submissions.
• Define the types of coverage.
• Create quotes.
• Set up payment plans.
• Bind risks.
• Process and issue policies.
• Maintain midterm activities.
• Manage renewal policies.
• Handle losses.
• Track aged receivables.
• Generate reports.

Level 2 users (insurance brokers) have limited rights defined by the Level 1 users. They can:

• Add new submissions.
• Select the type of coverages.
• Get quotes.
• Request binders.
• Autogenerate policies.
• Make online payments
• Manage renewals.

In addition, ScienceSoft’s team prepared new UI prototypes. Since the end users had worked with the legacy application for many years, our team made new user interfaces behave similarly to the old ones wherever possible to ease the adoption of the updated software.

Results

Thanks to ScienceSoft’s business analyst, the Customer’s development team received clearly defined and prioritized requirements for the solution-to-be. That significantly streamlined the development process, helped to add new features without disrupting the existing functionality, and simplified further maintenance of the modernized application. The end users quickly adopted the modernized application due to its familiar UI. 

The Customer expressed interest in further cooperation to develop similar solutions for its subsidiary.

Methodologies and Tools

Document analysis, interviews, prototyping, data analysis, root cause and opportunity analysis, current state assessment, brainstorming, facilitated workshops, observation, gap analysis, Kano analysis, modeling (business process model and notation, use case diagrams, entity relationship diagram).

Confluence, Atlassian Jira, Microsoft Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Teams, MockFlow, UXPressia, Lean Canvas, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Visio, Draw.io, Gliffy Diagrams, QuickDBD, SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).