CASE STUDY
There was anxiety on both sides leading into the weekend. What was the critical piece of data or a key sign that, by Saturday afternoon, made you confident the migration was going well?
There was a detailed, prioritised run-sheet for how the migration and cut-over needed to proceed. The migration started on the Friday evening and by the Saturday afternoon we had been tracking very well according to the plan; we had systems that were up and running and testing results were positive. As all the prioritised items on the run-sheet had been met, we therefore no longer needed to consider a rollback. With that behind us, the team was still fired up, and with some good wins already achieved our confidence levels had increased remarkably.
The migration happened over a single weekend with core operations back up by Monday. What was the business impact of this tight timeline, and how did it influence your decision-making process?
The majority of our core business systems were offline during this process, which impacted quote requests and put nightly processing on hold until the migration could be completed. With a single weekend to complete the migration, and a hard deadline looming in amongst other core business activities, there was a lot of pressure to ensure the plans and execution of the cut-over were rock-solid. contingency planning should a roll-back have been necessary. We also considered all the pre-cut-over work we could achieve and ensured those were completed and bedded down before the migration started, reducing as much as possible any additional work during the cut-over period. This helped to reduce some of the complexity during the cut-over, but moving a data centre over a single weekend is always a challenging exercise, and the teams involved all rose to the occasion.
Can you elaborate on what this strategic partnership looks like in practice, particularly regarding decision-making and project ownership?
After spending many months working together on the project, the teams were at ease with each other, and were both focused on ensuring a successful outcome. Practicality often over-rode strict processes, allowing the project to flow rather than being held up, and it was this practical, outcome focused approach that led to a successful solution. Decision making was collaborative, with both teams being open about their views, the risks, the technology impacts and the impacts decisions might have on timelines. It was this open and collaborative environment that allowed us to find the right path through.
The insurance industry is known for being slow when it comes to digitalisation – do you think this trend is now on a downward slope?
The planning was meticulous and detailed to ensure it ran well, tempered by realistic timeframes and
If you look across the general insurance industry, there has been an immense amount of change occurring over the last several years, with legacy and on-premises systems being replaced by newer, cloud-based solutions. These are large and complex projects with impacts that can affect a large portion of the Australian population, so it makes sense that they are tackled carefully and with diligence. There is experimentation happening with newer tools and technologies, and where successful, these can trickle down.
There is also a large cohort of dedicated and professional technologists that continue to enter the workforce and drive innovation, and there are tech start-ups looking to see how they can change insurance – be it through improvements to claims processing, the use of AI to automate and accelerate decision making, or ways to simplify the quote and bind process. Overall, I’ m quite positive about the technological outlook for the industry and believe the pace of change will only continue to accelerate. p
16 INTELLIGENTCIO APAC www. intelligentcio. com