This article is written by Mr. Kushima, a Principal Solution Consultant of DXC Technology. DXC Technology offers a broad range of IT services globally, and provides business solutions that run on IBM i. The content of the article is the contributor's own view, and does not necessarily represent IBM's position, strategy, or opinion.
1. Background
DXC Technology (NYSE: DXC) was established in 2017 by the global merger of the Enterprise Services division of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and CSC, which develops IT services widely in Japan and overseas.
In this paper, I would like to take up the topics of policy administration system for insurance companies and digital transformation (DX) where DXC has extensive experience. In 2011, I transferred from a major IT company in Japan to DXC. I am mainly engaged in consulting and sales support to drive DX for the insurance and financial service companies.
2. DX in the enterprise's mission-critical system
Since the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced the “DX Report” in 2018, DX has become an urgent issue in the insurance industry, and many companies perceive the "wall of 2025" issue as a major business barrier. However, DX is not a magic technique that solves every problem. In order to realize the primary business goal of a company - which is to expand profits and to commit to social responsibilities – I believe that the important point is to understand the specific challenges and to create a feasible roadmap.
DXC captures the characteristics of companies that are leading and successful in digitalization as follows:
- Understands market trends and practices for new technologies
- Has a strategy to build and maintain positions in the market in a timely manner in the era of digitalization
- Seeks for "Outside-in" approaches, such as leveraging the advantages to collaborate with external partners
- Rethinks the portfolio of products and services to take advantage of digital technology
- Builds agile business processes that will allow the company to capture opportunities while quickly responding to threats
- Is focused on the value and potential risks that are produced, not just in the course of doing simple business.
Furthermore, we believe that the ideal state of an organization that has succeeded in digital transformation is as follows:
- Shares information efficiently and performs accurate decision making among a wide range of departments, based on information and data
- All parties can easily access information from anywhere, anytime, without choosing a device
- Understands and exploits the benefits of automation, robotics, linear, and seamless processes
- Accelerates collaboration while providing convenience based on the user’s individual situation.
- Shifts to products and services that are selected and could be controlled by the customer
- Always focuses on differentiation, and embrace innovation as an important part of culture
When you look at these characteristics and ideal conditions, the key IT elements in DX are aggregated into the five listed below. To achieve efficiency in the creation of new businesses, transformation of services, and transformation from legacy IT to the business goal of each company, we believe that it is important to set priorities and drive DX, incorporating each of these five factors.
- Application
Improve your customizations while leveraging your agile applications and digital convenience
- Cloud
Provide flexibility, speed, and more convenience for your situation by operating in the cloud
- Workplace
Activate communication and accelerate collaboration with stakeholders
- Analytics
Information essential for business is thoroughly distributed, enabling more accurate business decisions
- Security
Manage various risks that continue to grow in business operations
3. The benefits gained by operating DXC’s insurance policy administration system on the IBM Power Systems Virtual Server
In the insurance industry, it is true that many companies are considering continuous use of the mainframe and midrange servers since they have a relatively large system scale and a high-performance demand level and the need to securely manage customer and contract information in a very long span. For example, many domestic and foreign clients which currently use the policy administration packages provided by DXC, Integral Classic (formerly Life, Polisy), continue to use the IBM i platform.
Based on requests from several clients, DXC has already set up Integral Classic on the IBM Power Systems Virtual Server (Power Virtual Server) which is provided in the Tokyo Region and has been testing this with the global team. (Figure 1: The screen shots of Integral Classic running in the Tokyo Region) As this is a pay-as-you service provided by IBM - the manufacturer of IBM i - it has shown good test results in terms of safety, efficiency, robustness, agility, and elasticity.
Following the start of the Power Virtual Server service for IBM i in the Tokyo Region in the first half of 2020, the same service is now also available in the Osaka Region, and the cloud environment required for full-scale operational services is already in place.
Figure 1: Integral Classic, which runs on the Power Virtual Server provided in the Tokyo Region.
I would also like to touch on the benefits of combining IBM's technology with DXC services.
In DXC, we are working on a DX approach, including a response to the "wall of 2025" issue, from two pillars - Innovation and Modernization. (Reference 2) Innovation is the creation of a new service using the latest technologies, and Modernization is primarily meant to update the legacy system. Both are important themes for the insurance industry, so it is necessary to create a roadmap for IT while connecting these two themes organically.
And we believe that the combination of IBM's technology and the DXC application service is one of the best combinations for customers to enjoy the benefits.
First, IBM has a range of capabilities that enable the rapid and flexible deployment of cutting-edge technologies such as AI and IoT, which are necessary for new business creation and service transformation, as well as mainframes and IBM Power. Since assets such as mainframe and IBM Power can be used over a long period in a hybrid cloud environment with security and robustness, it could be said that the IBM technology has a good compatibility with the insurance systems, which needs both new technology introduction and also legacy updates in parallel.
Figure 2: Solution Strategy for DXC
The second reason is that insurance companies are able to enjoy the following benefits from an operation perspective, by the services provided from the two companies.
The image of the operational service is as shown in Figure 3 (the advantage of combining DXC and IBM). DXC uses the IaaS layer via IBM Cloud and provides managed services for applications and infrastructure. IBM's technology and DXC application services and operational services have the following integration effects:
- Simplification of operations and management flows, and mitigation of IT division’s burden (“defense”)
By leveraging IBM technology, DXC is able to provide integrated operation (Releases Client's workload related to infrastructure management)
- Organizing, documenting, and standardizing the client’s current business
- Organizing, documenting, standardizing work with other vendors, and redefining them
- Operations based on SLAs, SLO and defined WBS
- DXC’s Operational services accelerates troubleshooting
- Standardized and documented troubleshooting
- Centralize all information collection, instructions, and reports through clients to DXC
- Faster response by 24/365 monitoring and close technical teams
- Unified proposals for Integral Classic applications and infrastructure (Offense)
- Proposal for Enhancement of Infrastructure Technology along with Insurance Business Innovation Proposal
- Partner Relations from “Work Request Type” to proactive information provision and “Proposal Type”
Figure 3: Merit of combining DXC with IBM
The third reason is that DXC’s insurance policy administration solution is structured to align with the concept of digitalization, such as the Digital Insurance Platform for DXC (Figure 4), and the IBM i version of the solution can also be easily digitalized. For example, the core business logic of the policy administration system on IBM i can be released with REST Full API to link with the front-end sales support system, and the data needed for the analysis infrastructure such as AI can be flexibly retrieved at the required timing. As such, this accelerates the connection with the various new technologies that are deployed on the cloud.
Figure 4: Digital insurance platform for DXC
The above are the key reasons that IBM and DXC is one of the best technology combinations for an insurance company.
4. In Summary
Lastly, I would like to share with you the development roadmap for Integral Classic, DXC’s policy administration system which runs on IBM i in Figure 5 (DXC Integral Classic Roadmap). In addition to the ongoing modernization of APIs, the UI/UX, Workflow, and AI-virtual agents and machine learning linkage are scheduled to be released sequentially between 2021 and 2023. By combining the safety, efficiency, robustness, agility, and elasticity of IBM i - which are all presented in the roadmap until 2032 - with DXC’s industry application knowledge and services, we hope to contribute to the further acceleration of the DX of insurance companies.
Figure 5. DXC Integral Classic Roadmap
If you are interested in using our services, please contact us below.
https://dxc.com/jp/ja/contact-us
Author
Makoto Kushima, DXC Technology, Insurance Business Division, Principal Solution Consultant
IBM i ISVs Contributed articles