project management LEADERSHIP award
Builders Mutual Insurance Company
Workers’ Comp and Commercial Lines Implementations on POINT IN C.0
This past year has been very busy for Builders Mutual Insurance Company (BMIC). In just a short period of time, BMIC is going where very few customers have gone. BMIC has embarked on major technology upgrades and systems consolidations all at once. Working with a core group of eight project managers (four at BMIC and four at CSC), joint implementation teams have had six projects running concurrently this year – all while growing BMIC’s business and continuing to provide outstanding service to its policyholders.
So far this year, they have implemented Workers Compensation on POINT IN C.0, including Media Management and Document Solutions. The implementation also included integration of the Advanced Claims and Agency Link products. With the availability of Agency Link’s real-time quoting and policy issuance to its agent force, Upload Capabilities with Agency Vendor systems are targeted for the next delivery.
BMIC also engaged in a full migration of its existing commercial lines POINT 9.0 systems (OTC ... Other than Comp) to the POINT IN C.0 platform, including Media Management and Document Solutions. As with Workers’ Comp, Advanced Claims and Agency Link will also be implemented along with the migration. BMIC will be taking advantage of ISO ClaimSearch and NCCI reporting functionality within the Advanced Claims product.
BMIC’s management team has continued to bring process improvements and enhance CSC’s customized systems with their innovative ideas. By always pushing the envelope, having an “all hands on deck “ approach,  communicating openly and fluidly at all levels, and accepting only the very best, BMIC has outdone itself with the project management teams assigned to its CSC implementation activities. CSC and BMIC are proud of their accomplishments and the growth of their collaborative work this past year. Many of their process improvements and methodologies can be adopted as standard practices for future projects.Â
Chubb Services Corporation
RISKMASTER Innovation Community/Custom Development
Chubb is implementing numerous custom and Innovation Community development projects to maintain state and federal compliance, to fit Chubb user community workflow and enhance RISKMASTER X. The project manager plays a key role to ensure success of this development. Some of the many tasks the project manager has implemented to ensure success are:
1. Ensure requirement documentation clearly states the Chubb objectives before approval.
2. Actively monitor the project burn rate to the percent complete along with target date.
3. Establish a chain of communication with escalation procedures in place.
4. Perform in-depth UAT testing on new development pieces/base application with a test plan prepared ahead of time and an issue log generated and tracked with client severity specified for proper resolution before roll out into production.
5. Work with CSC to ensure a CSC resource is available for assistance with installation and issue resolution if needed during first 48-hour period.
6. Develop a go-live plan for all production updates with an issue reporting procedure and user community training plan.
7. Actively participate with CSC project manager in regularly scheduled weekly meetings, along with many additional checkpoints as needed during the week. This plays a vital role in early identification of possible problem areas and allows them to be addressed early on.
Erie Insurance Company
Straight-Through Processing Technology Upgrade
Like many CSC customers, Erie Insurance has processed its profitable book of business for decades on a highly customized Series II batch system that has served this time-honored company very well in the marketplace. In 2009, Erie made the strategic decision to take the next logical step to ensure its Series II system was second-to-none in technology and business capability. That next-logical-step was to transform the batch administrative system into a fully functional real-time system via the implementation of CSC’s celebrated Straight-Through Processing technology upgrade. Straight-Through Processing, which is the foundation and cornerstone of the Series II Extend, Enhance and Evolve strategy, will enable Erie to preserve many years of investment. It will allow Erie to reduce the time required to test new system enhancements by eliminating the need to wait on a batch cycle to complete. In addition, transactions that have historically taken many days to process can now be processed error-free in a matter of seconds. To leverage efficiencies, the implementation is a joint effort supported by a blended team consisting of both Erie and CSC associates. This implementation has remained on-time and under budget, and Phase 1, which will allow single transaction processing, is on schedule to be live in production before the end of 2010.
Indiana Farm Bureau
Exceed Auto Migration Offshore Development
Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance (IFBI) believes there are four secrets for successful offshore project management: requirements, process, partner and discipline. Offshore development is attractive and a very real challenge all at the same time. IFBI was faced with implementing its very large (greater than 100,000 hours) Exceed Auto program quickly, reliably and with high quality. With a prior excellent offshore development experience, IFBI decided to again offshore a portion of the work. The company analyzed its prior experience, determining what worked and why. Identifying weaknesses, IFBI improved the process. The outcome was the discovery of the four secrets. First Secret – Requirements. Without complete, validated and well-communicated requirements, all the other secrets lose their strength. IFBI employed a UML approach to gathering and documenting requirements. Critical functions were also designed and documented. Truly knowing and communicating precisely what the company wanted built the confidence of its offshore partner. The offshore estimate of the work closely matched IFBI’s internal estimate, increasing its confidence. Second Secret – Process. IFBI relied on project management best practices – a project plan focused on verifiable deliverables, change control, weekly steering calls and on-site partners. New to the mix were: dashboard tracking of functions, pairing of IFBI and CSC staff, strict deliverable reviews by IFBI, unit test plan deliverables before design, unit test results deliverables, and a follow-the-sun approach to issue resolution. Third Secret – Partner. IFBI found this to be a key! You must select a technology provider that agrees with your process and follows it faithfully. IFBI found such a disciplined partner in CSC Global Resourcing. Fourth Secret – Discipline. Both IFBI and CSC followed a defined process, despite it being a lot of work. The end result of employing the Four Secrets has been an on-time, on-budget and high quality code delivery.
Kingsway Financial Services, Inc.
Legal Solutions Suite Implementation
Kingsway identified a company need to monitor legal expense and wanted a solution that could be implemented in a very simple and expedited manner. Kingsway contracted with CSC to implement Legal Solutions Suite. CSC helped Kingsway install Legal Solutions Suite, train more than 300 law firms and train a core group of Kingsway users in under 30 days. Kingsway was able to drive a very successful implementation and start receiving benefits from Legal Solutions Suite quicker than any previous customer.
Lititz Mutual Insurance Group
POINT IN C.0 Suite Implementation
Managing one of the largest POINT IN Suite implementations is not without its challenges. Lititz Mutual Insurance Company has met these challenges head-on by adopting the approach of building a solid foundation utilizing strong project management methodologies. A full POINT IN Suite C.0 implementation including Agency Link, Advanced Claims, 18 lines of business, four companies and two reporting bureaus, all encompassed into four concurrent development phases, required innovative approaches for requirements gathering, development/customizations and a fully integrated product testing process. As an example, with the full support of an engaged steering committee and project team, Lititz Mutual redesigned the requirements-gathering process by bringing together all aspects of a line of business, such as rating, declaration and forms generation, and screen design into one requirements session, and creating one standardized requirements document for all products. This methodology allowed for comprehensive requirements in which all aspects of development were considered together, greatly reducing the amount of rework and providing a global view of the line of business to the project team responsible for its development.
One of the greatest project management accomplishments so far in the project has been the results of the CSC Delivery Assurance Management Assessment. Nearing the delivery of the Phase 1 portion of the implementation, the project underwent a DA Management Assessment, with the goal of reviewing all aspects of the project from the initial kick-off through the current Integrated system testing phase. Areas such as communication, project team satisfaction, milestone accomplishments and budget were all scrutinized. All documentation produced throughout the project – requirement study documents, project change requests, steering committee presentations, and status reports – were also reviewed. The result of this overall project assessment was that the Lititz Mutual POINT IN Suite implementation was the first Midrange Delivery project to receive an all-green status in every category. Many of the project management processes introduced during this project have been incorporated into other POINT IN implementations as a model of success. For a project of such complexity, this achievement serves as a testament to the focus and implementation of a successful project management methodology.
Mutual of Enumclaw Insurance Company
Commercial Lines Implementation
Paving the way to become a C.0 pioneer, Mutual of Enumclaw (MOE) has successfully implemented commercial lines business for CPP and Umbrella, and will be rolling out Business Owners in August 2010.These projects have included the conversion of policies from the legacy infrastructure to POINT IN. MOE’s foundation for success has been built around rigid testing practices. Due to this, MOE was able to go live without any major issues. MOE has taken full advantage of the POINT IN suite of products, and efforts are underway to implement all of the released CDR’s so that MOE will be on the leading edge for the latest and greatest offerings from CSC. MOE continues to move forward, actively implementing Farm and Personal Lines.
Ramsey County
OSHA Smart Forms
Ramsey County, Minnesota, has implemented Web Forms, smart forms that capture all relevant information using as little free-form text as possible. The forms remind employees and/or supervisors of the need to provide law enforcement or medical personnel with additional paperwork to comply with OSHA regulations for cases involving blood exposure.
With a new claims system and new incident reporting forms in place, Ramsey County, which employs more than 4,000 people in 26 different departments, can now track potential perils such as missing road signs, faulty equipment or unsafe practices — before they become incidents and potential claims against the county. This approach helps organizations like Ramsey County tightly integrate risk management and safety programs and move from a reactive mode to a preventative one.
Safeway, Inc.
Safeway RISKMASTER X Implementation Project
Safeway and CSC partnered in November 2007 to implement RISKMASTER X, and took the system live on February 16, 2010. The implementation included conversion of more than 74 million records from Safeway’s legacy system. Also included in the Safeway project were 27 custom and Innovation Community solutions with 13 external and internal system interfaces.
Safeway’s organizational structure has more than 2,000 locations with 12 claims processing offices for three lines of business, a national call center, a scan center and more than 300 system users. The RISKMASTER X project is the first project in the memory of Safeway executives to successfully take all divisions and end users live at the same time.
The Safeway-CSC project management team philosophy blends the time, talents and treasures of all team members toward a single goal that not only enriches participants, but all who come in contact with the organization. The synergy created from channeling the thoughts of all exponentially exceeds the sum of the organizations’ individual parts. By recognizing, mining and fusing the value of people, materials, relationships, resources and ideas in one place, the Safeway-CSC project management leadership team created the perfect project environment. Not only has it been successful in its own right, it has become an example for other project groups and industry companions everywhere. Without clear-sighted project management, the successful rollout of such a large project would not have been possible.
