Be Consistent

Web services has been described as a lifesaver for businesses looking to integrate disparate systems, and Kansas City Life Insurance Co. felt adopting a Web services product would fulfill the carrier's basic requirements. "We needed to make functionality available for the distributed side, and we needed to maintain and encapsulate much of the mainframe application code that existed from the distributed side," says Les Freund, former CTO of Kansas City Life and currently an executive consultant for the carrier. "We needed both directions, and DataDirect was one of the few companies we looked at that provided this."

In business terms, Kansas City Life believed it was necessary to provide agents and other sales reps with a consistent view of the carrier's policy information, states Freund.

"That was the initial implementation that drove us into Web services," he says.

"I view Web services and SOA as a decoupled client/server, in a way. We get the advantages of having two different platforms, but we don't have to worry about all the intricacies. It's an efficient way for us to extend legacy functionality and our legacy applications."

Part of the initial problem Kansas City Life had to address was differing terminology. In Freund's experience, procedural programmers and distributed programmers don't always have good relations. "This [system] allowed us to get those two groups together in a meaningful way," he says. The groups in the middle are the architecture and infrastructure people who essentially had to do the implementation. "We had a few problems initially before we got the implementation problems worked out, but since then, we've had no major problems," he reports.

The carrier also made a strategic move to enter into sales agreements with some property/casualty companies. "That since has become a niche for us basically to become the life company for multiple property/casualty carriers in the Midwest," he says. This initiative entailed finding a way to create a view for agents and customers of Kansas City Life as part of the P&C carriers' businesses without Kansas City Life actually being part of the systems. "That meant having a consistent view across [the P&C carriers'] hierarchy," says Freund. "Those two drivers got us into Web services."

The first process to be implemented was from the distributed side to the mainframe. "At that point in time, the primary need was the consolidated view of the customer," he explains. What the carrier was looking for were ways to consume easily the functionality that existed on the mainframe without running a lot of specialized code, says Freund.

Kansas City Life evaluated four providers over a period of about three months in 2004, and Freund indicates the eventual decision to turn to DataDirect was a simple one.

The implementation was smooth and efficient, according to Freund. "The first implementation was quite a bit under both time and budget," he says. After that, Freund continues, the carrier began partnering with the vendor for other needs. "When we decided to get into the P&C market, [DataDirect's] Web services function gave us an efficient way to insert that functionality and those capabilities into the mainframe applications," he says.

Kansas City Life today has multiple agreements with property/casualty companies. "I think we've performed better than expected, and yet [the P&C partners] don't have to become life experts in any meaningful way," asserts Freund. "We're not property/casualty experts, and they're not life experts. Neither side has to build that knowledge base on the other type of insurance into its business core. It allows us to do what we do best and them to do what they do best, and we become a profitable way for them to extend their offerings."

The ROI for Kansas City Life has been very good, claims Freund, and as the carrier's needs have changed, DataDirect has worked with the carrier. "I think mainly DataDirect has products and capabilities that fit our needs," he says. "When we need additional help, DataDirect is right there for us. It's been a good partnership."