Summary
The client, Fiji National Provident Fund is a social security savings scheme jointly supported by employees, employers and government. It was set up in 1966 to provide financial security for workers when they retire at the age of 55. It also provides two other main contingencies prior to retirement when the member is incapacitated and is not able to work, and for the financial support of survivors in the unfortunate event of Death of a Member. Over the years the Fund has evolved into a comprehensive scheme that provides a number of pre-retirement withdrawals to members for home ownership (Housing Assistance), healthcare (Medical Assistance), and Education assistance.
Business Challenge
The insurance industry demands a lot of regulations and transparency in addition to extensive documentation. Resource management, financial and human resources functions have their own information management requirements apart from key functions like sales and marketing. All of these created a need for a strong enterprise wide system that could aggregate, store, disseminate and secure information at the click of a button. They had the business processes documented but needed a system to place them in action. Due to the non-existence of the system business growth was impacted.
Project Highlights
C Ahead set up a project team comprising of domain and technical specialists to analyse the business logic and create an Enterprise architecture roadmap. We chose TOGAF, which creates the model and taxonomy of generic platform, services a model for business applications and infrastructure applications, specifically aimed to support the vision of boundary less Information flow. Based on an iterative method, a set of architecture views were created to ensure that a complex set of requirements are adequately addressed with each phase including an objective, approach, input, steps and output.
Benefits
- In just 3 months after the implementation of the EA recommended, the business showed 40% improvement in business cycles like claims processing, report filings, statutory legislative work
- Employees felt at ease with the processes adopted through the EA programme leading to higher employee satisfaction
- Marketing became simpler and reach was expanded into demanding markets
- New product offering creation was faster and time to market was quicker
- New employees in the system quickly came up to speed due to access to online info
Learnings – These are some important lessons
- Using leading edge technology helps in measuring results effectively and reduces time waste
- Software tools should also include the right hardware as well as design, programming and test productivity aids
- Plan B for contingency situations must be discussed with the end customer for tackling eventualities