Company: LIDP Consulting Services
Product: The Administrator
Web site: www.lidp.com
LIDP Consulting Services, a provider of software and services to the life, health, and annuity industries, has released the 2004 version of its real-time policy administration solution, The Administrator. The new release includes more than 40 enhancements covering life, annuity, health, and agency management.
Pekin Life Insurance has licensed The Administrator for all of the insurers products as a replacement for its existing legacy system.
The system being replaced does not offer real-time capabilities, says Ray Carroll, vice president, information systems, for Pekin, which means the company has to do batch processing. The batch system calls for Pekin to shut down the system at night and for a number of hours during the day. [The Administrator] is going to increase our production hours of availability, says Carroll. When you get into real-time work, you also are affecting your test time on the programming sidewhen you make changes, when you do new business, when youre doing a new plan. You can find out immediately how your new plan is goingwhat historical things are going to happen to that plan, what value it is going to have. That can all be done in real timea much faster cycle to get new products to market.
The new administration system will im-prove the work done by independent agencies that sell Pekin products, asserts Carroll. I believe we should be able to extend the system out to the agents offices easier than we do today, he says. We get some advantage by being able to extend the system out and maybe get the agent to do more of his work in a real-time environment.
Carroll is excited to be replacing an administration system that has been in use for more than 20 years. The new system is going to open up everything, he says. Its hard to say what impact its going to have, but I believe its going to be fairly significant.
The Administrator has been engineered to be independent of hardware, operating system, transaction processor, or database platform and is available on a variety of hardware platforms from personal computers and workstations up to the largest mainframes.
ANSI-standard SQL is used to access policy, client, product, and agent information, meaning virtually any world-class relational database package can be used. The Administrator performs all functions in online, real-time fashion. There is no batch cycle processing. Online transactions can be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, if desired. The portability of The Administrator across a variety of platforms and operational modes enables implementing technical strategies optimally suited to a companys needs and plans. It is possible to begin on a single workstation and migrate as needed to increasingly powerful servers (or multiple servers) with the same application system.
Interacting with The Administrator is ac- complished through Java Enabled Messag-ing (JEM), which was created through the use of object-oriented programming tools. With the TCP/IP communication protocol used between client and server, clients are free to create or enhance their own applications to interact with The Administrator. Additionally, this architecture has allowed LIDP to expand The Administrators functionality via Internet usage. LIDP is fully flexible to client design criteria, upgraded with each system release, and available to clients with no additional licensing.
The Administrator supports two types of multicompany processing within a single copy of the system. For independent financial reporting and administration, each company in an enterprise can establish its own unique product codes, clients, and agents. To reduce redundancy and the maintenance effort, the plan description database, interest rate, premium, and other common tables may be shared. Customers accessing the system can be restricted to only those policies and related data pertaining to their specific company or companies.
Enterprises that process multiple companies with common or integrated administrative units can share product descriptions, client information, and agent data across multiple companies. While sharing these resources, they optionally can produce separate or combined financial reporting for each company.
SHOPPINGCART
Company: Witness Systems
Product: eQuality Office
Web site: www.witness.com
Witness Systems, a provider of performance optimization software and services, announced a new initiative that extends its eQuality contact center application suite to back-office environments. The new eQuality Office helps organizations audit critical business functions to better understand the interdepartmental impact back-office functions have on customer service and satisfaction. eQuality Office also helps organizations address specific causes of customer contacts into the call center, enabling them to uncover data-entry errors, compliance issues, and ineffective processes that result in the breakdown of customer service.
The eQuality Office performance management initiative allows companies to extend their contact center recording, analysis, and e-learning investments to the entire enterprise. As a result, organizations can increase customer satisfaction, reduce costs, and pinpoint new revenue opportunities through firsthand business intelligence.
When companies identify the underlying motive for calls into the contact center, they frequently find processing delays causing customers to call for status checks, data-entry errors driving customer changes, as well as billing mistakes and unclear information creating customer frustration. Unnecessary repeat calls, due to inadequate back-office processing, often contribute heavily to call volumes.
The eQuality Office performance management initiative originates from the eQuality performance optimization software suite from Witness Systems, creating a distinct bundling of applications that work together to offer unique business drivers and financial benefits.
Company: Professional Data
Management Again
Product: LifePRO
Web site: www.pdmagain.com
Professional Data Management Again, Inc. (PDMA), has released Version 12 of the LifePRO life, health, and annuity administration system. The new version offers significant business enhancements. It utilizes Microsoft SQL Server as its operational database to offer increased ease of data access across the insurance enterprise and includes an active warehousing capability enabling flexible solutions to database administration and data store maintenance.
With LifePRO Version 12, PDMA introduces WebLifePRO, an XML- and browser-based interface providing flexibility in deploying the application across the spectrum of home-office and remote-system users. Access by external applications to LifePRO business functions has been enhanced with the availability of Microsoft .NET-based application programming interfaces. Reporting functions also have been expanded to allow for publishing and disseminating reports and documents in standard PDF files. Major business functionality enhancements are available, as well, in-cluding support for the 2001 CSO Mortality Table. Other major areas offering greater functionality involve health claims administration and agent compensation support.
Company: Fiserv
Product: eFreedom Investment Management
Web site: www.fiserv.com
Fiserv, Inc., has introduced eFreedom Investment Management, an integrated portfolio management and investment accounting solution that supports each step of the trading processfrom order processing through trade execution, accounting, international settlement support, and regulatory reporting. As trading practices become increasingly complex and global, more and more organizations need multi-currency, multibasis investment-accounting capabilities to track business activity.
eFreedom Investment Management supports accounting bases and closing dates to meet the requirements of a companys portfolio. It also manages an array of financial instruments, including debt instruments, mortgage-backed securities, asset-backed securities, collateralized mortgage obligations, equities, and derivatives. Should users discover a transaction that needs to be reversed, a cancel/replace engine automatically unwinds and rebuilds all related transactions.
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