Problem definition
Various problems played a role within this fusion, which was also characterised by problems familiar to and recurrent in the whole financial sector. Operational efficiency demanded by shareholders and expensive investments necessitated by multichannel communication infrastructures led Delta Lloyd to decide to group all insurance companies under the new Delta Lloyd Life label. A number of challenges presented themselves:
One of the CGU Life mainframes had to be replaced as soon as possible, whilst at the same time documents with older print codes generated in legacy still had to be able to be printed on new state-of-the-art printers.
The different main and miniframe legacy systems were programmed for document layout with only one type of Xerox printer, the maintenance costs of which were too high considering the age of the printer. Then Delta Lloyd Life was still sending its print data to a Xerox printer via a Sun station. However, document layout had to become independent of the printers used and had to support e-mail and archiving. In order to introduce new state-of-the-art printers, also as backup, and make possible remote printing to the office and local agents.
Delta Lloyd Life was working with various main and miniframes, including AS/400 and IBM mainframe using OS/390 and a database based on a JAVA platform. These each generate different types of document output and styles per company. This output had to belaid out in a uniform manner according to the new Delta Lloyd Life housestyle and distributed over the different printers. Additionally the different documents had to be sorted automatically per customer, something done manually in the past.
This document creation and production solution had to meet the following demands:
- Output of the application is PS or PCL
- The output documents from various information resources, such as VIPP from AS/400 and mainframe, including front office MS Word, can be collated and sorted according to indexing parameters such as client and number of pages
- Documents which are the result of the layout and merging of variables must be able to deal with considerable variation and complex business rules
- Creation of documents using a WYSIWYG tool which can be handled by Delta Lloyd Life employees with sufficient IT knowledge
- Guidance and training of these employees, at an accelerated pace
- Sorting of the assembled outputs according to the number of pages, in order to continue to be able to use an existing enveloping machine
- The partner makes a consultant available for support of the implementation and creation of the documents. In the first instance the consultant will be responsible for the creation of all documents, as well as setting up the print queues, sending to the printers, instructions and setting up of data merges and complete assembly of the system
- Multifunctional solution to supply Delta Lloyd Life with their (decentralised) scanning, copying and printing needs
Océ solution and implementationOnly Océ could provide a total solution. Moreover, with Océ PRISMAsatellite and professional consultancy and support services Océ offered the very best solution. The implementation has been structured and tackled as a project according to the Océ Solution Delivery Process. Considering the complexity of the implementation requested on the data sources, 60 days consultancy for this project were initially agreed upon. This was also to guarantee the continuity and the completion of the application and to make optimal use of the knowhow of Océ consultants.
Advantages for Delta Lloyd Life
- Automatic creation of documents on a central basis in the appropriate house style
- Much simpler IT management
- Automatic assembly of document packages per customer, if needed in the language requested by the customer; no more manual additions of self-created and personalised
Word documents by customer support employees with risk of errors etc.
- Automatic merging of documents at customer level, including documents from different systems. Manpower and space are no longer needed for hand sorting documents
- Quicker adjustment and distribution of documents
- Complete integration of central and decentral office printers
- No expensive adjustments have to be made to many legacy scripts
- Immediate investment in a new enveloping machine is not necessary
- The desired growth path is guaranteed
Growth path
The solution offers a growth path to:
- Multichannel communication via remote printing, e-mail, fax and PDF. The idea is to have agents save their own clients' policies in PDF and to immediately have a new or amended policy created at the reception desk for a client. These possibilities are already available with Océ PRISMAsatellite
- Self-service systems via the Internet: certain amendment and application forms can be printed out and filled in and can be processed in an automatic workflow with the help of scanning and OCR. Océ possesses the appropriate scanning and OCR technologies to support these steps in the future.
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Solution at Delta Lloyd Life
