customer success
Electric Insurance
Company
business problem:
Seamlessly move
existing COBOL
applications from the
mainframe and
deploy on a different
platform — the Web.
"For any company attempting to expand
through technology and continue to use
COBOL as its primary development language,
Micro Focus offers the solution to get you
there. It allows you to break new
technological ground with existing
resources."
[Ken Wolff, Manager of Web & Marketing Systems, Electric Insurance Company]
Electric Insurance Company
Insuring the Value of Legacy
Micro Focus Insures the Build of Online Infrastructure to Improve
Overall Efficiency and Customer Support
Business Issue
To improve service and reduce costs,
Electric Insurance used technology to
create innovative solutions that
allow its customers to receive realtime insurance quotes and purchase
policies online. By utilizing Micro
Focus’ Net Express product, EIC has
increased its web site traffic,
providing thousands of policy quotes
to current and prospective
customers.
Insuring the value
of legacy:
Realizing the Internet’s potential as a
sales channel, the Electric Insurance
Company’s (EIC) web application
development team was tasked with
building an online infrastructure to
improve the overall efficiency of its
operations and customer support.
“...efficiently take existing
information to new
environments, without
additional resources,"
"The number one requirement was
the ability to seamlessly move
existing COBOL applications from the
mainframe and deploy on a different
platform — the Web. We needed a
solution that would efficiently take
existing information to new
environments, without additional
resources," said Ken Wolff, manager
of Web and Marketing Systems,
Electric Insurance Company.
"To create the online infrastructure,
we had to migrate our existing
100,000 lines of auto rating code
from the mainframe, replace VSAM
files access with database queries,
and provide connectivity to our Web
site. Most importantly, we needed
the code to communicate with
numerous database platforms and
Web environments, ultimately
making it available to potential
customers," said Wolff.
“...providing an alternative
for consumers to
conveniently shop for the
most competitive policy."
"It was our goal to migrate our
insurance rating applications from
the mainframe to the PC via webbased environments," said Wolff.
"Net Express did that and allowed
Electric Insurance to pursue solutions
that make our existing information
more accessible, providing an
alternative for consumers to
conveniently shop for the most
competitive policy."
EIC’s resulting online quoting system
provides customers the opportunity
to receive immediate automotive
insurance quotes. Customers submit
information and the system processes
the request and provides users with a
quote in about 20 seconds. If
interested in the policy, customers
contact a sales representative via
phone or email.
Net Express was used to migrate the
auto rating applications from the
mainframe, debug and route the
applications to the PC, and develop
embedded SQL calls into a Sybase
database.
"Net Express is the heart and soul of
generating quotes for our online
system," said Wolff. "Net Express
provided a technical solution that
allowed us to leverage our in-house
COBOL resources instead of
redeveloping in a new language.
Net Express was the cornerstone for
Electric Insurance to accomplish our
goal."
Electric Insurance and Quicken
InsureMarket partnered to provide
customers the opportunity to
purchase the most competitive auto
insurance premium, choosing from
several insurance companies directly
from the Quicken InsureMarket Web
site. Net Express was used to
develop the COBOL interface
program that accepts data from
Quicken InsureMarket, and transfers
data to the Electric Insurance
database. A second Net Express
program was developed to read the
data and generate a quote back to
the Quicken InsureMarket —
reformatted and downloaded to the
user’s machine in about 30 seconds.
"With Net Express, we efficiently
exchange the information from
Quicken InsureMarket systems which
communicate to and from the
potential customer with a quote for
their review," said Wolff.
company overview
“reduce call center
support time to purchase
a policy by 75 percent
per customer.”
Net Express assisted Electric Insurance
in accomplishing its objectives by
providing potential customers with an
avenue to shop for auto insurance 24
hours a day, seven days a week.
The ease of use of Micro Focus’
Net Express reduced web project
development time by 75 percent.
In addition, by creating the efficient
web application, EIC was able to
reduce call center support time to
purchase a policy by 75 percent per
customer.
"We now provide potential customers
the ability to get automated quotes
in a matter of seconds," said Wolff.
"Quicken InsureMarket automates
the entire process. In the short time
since we went live, we have already
seen a dramatic increase in web site
activity and a significant number of
policies originate from the Web.
We now have the ability to process
more quotes without having to
increase the sales staff. Rather than
re-invent the wheel and re-write
100,000 lines of code in a new
language, Net Express gave us the
ability to leverage existing code,"
explained Wolff. "Without Net
Express, we would still be writing
code and the projects would have
been a year or two effort instead of
six months," concluded Wolff.
Electric Insurance Company (EIC),
established in 1966, is a direct writer
of private passenger automobile and
homeowner’s insurance and has been
a GE benefit provider for over
35 years.
Rated "excellent/A-" by A.M. Best
and "strong/A" by Standard & Poor’s,
EIC has been ranked as one of the
top insurance carriers on the Internet
by Gomez Advisors and has won the
USA Today/RIT Quality Cup Award for
its easy-to-navigate, customerfocused web site.
EIC is one of the Web’s foremost
online insurance companies and is an
aggressive and innovative
e-commerce leader. With low
direct-to-customer rates, more than
125,000 policyholders, and a
ferocious commitment to customer
service, Electric Insurance Company is
dedicated to being recognized as the
best insurance company on the
Internet.
Electric Insurance developed two
online service offerings, both
presently available to residents in
Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut,
Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri,
New York, Ohio, Virginia,
Washington and Wisconsin.
The first system, an online insurance
quoting system
(www.electricinsurance.com),
provides instant auto insurance
coverage pricing via the Web.
The second, a relationship with
Quicken InsureMarket
(www.insuremarket.com), is an
insurance web site that provides
comparative insurance quotes and
the ability to purchase policies online.
Micro Focus Worldwide
Australia . . . . . . . . . . 1800 632 626
Austria . . . . . . . . . . . . 0800 293 535
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Canada
Ontario . . . . . . . . 1 905 824 7397
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Other Countries . . . +44 1635 32646
Micro Focus is the fastest, most effective way to migrate, extend, develop and deploy enterprise applications. As the industry standard
for COBOL, Micro Focus bridges business-critical legacy assets with Web services, J2EE, XML and .NET, enabling organizations to
reduce costs, increase agility and minimize risk for accelerated business success. The company’s software products for COBOL are
among the most widely used in the industry with an estimated 130,000 COBOL developers producing applications used by more than
3,000,000 people around the world. Founded in 1976, Micro Focus is a global company with principal offices in the United Kingdom,
United States and Japan. For more information, visit www.microfocus.com.
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