Background
Amazon Underwriting, a prominent underwriting company, enlisted our help to complete and improve their partially completed application. The partially developed application had completely missed the brief. Intergy took over and redeveloped the whole application, significantly improving the administration features, streamlining operations, and augmenting the experience for end users.
The Problem
The primary challenges was a lack of functionality in the HomeBiz Insurance application. Additionally, the absence of user-specific permissions and logging restricted access to critical database functionalities. The new system needed to facilitate legal documentation, quoting, policy binding, endorsement, renewal, secure payment processing, and a review/rating system – whilst ensuring scalability and customisation.
Objective
The objective was to complete the development of the application with a modern, cloud-based solution hosted on Microsoft Azure, enhancing functionality, and improving user access control. The new system also aimed to streamline processes for brokers and underwriters, enabling efficient client management and policy administration.
The Solution
Intergy proposed developing the application in Microsoft Azure and redeveloping it as a cloud-based platform using the Laravel and PHP framework. Leveraging HTML5, JavaScript, jQuery, CSS3, and other technologies, Intergy re-developed HomeBiz Insurance from scratch to meet Amazon Underwriting’s requirements. The application was designed to deliver a seamless user experience, with features for Communication Management, Broker Management, Renewal, Flood Mapping through Finity integration, Customised Triggers, Database-driven questions and responses, as well as managing quotes, policies, and client interactions.
Technology Stack
Front End
HTML5, JavaScript, jQuery, CSS3: Integrated for frontend development, enhancing user interface and interactivity.
Back End
Laravel and PHP Framework: Used for development, ensuring robustness, and flexibility.
Cloud
Microsoft Azure: Provided a secure, scalable cloud infrastructure for hosting the application.
Architecture
The new application architecture on Azure offered improved performance, reliability, and security. Leveraging Azure's advanced security features, the HomeBiz Insurance application ensures greater data confidentiality and compliance with regulatory standards. The streamlined architecture eliminated the need for staff to work across multiple systems, enhancing efficiency and productivity.
Integration
Integrating secure payment gateways facilitated seamless payment processing, enhancing the selling capabilities of HomeBiz Insurance. Additionally, self-management features enabled brokers to efficiently manage their clients, further streamlining operations. Finity integration further enabled Flood Mapping capabilities, which was a key requirement of the project.
Implementation Process
The implementation involved meticulous planning and collaboration between Intergy and Amazon Underwriting. Challenges such as data migration complexities were addressed iteratively, ensuring a smooth transition to the new platform.In detail, this included:
Analysis and Design
An initial audit of the existing application was undertaken to determine its usability, security, and specific technical weaknesses. From here, we were able to work alongside Amazon Underwriting and design the new architecture for the Azure-based application, once we had fully understood their needs and the augmentations, we could provide based on our own expertise.
Development
After the initial design was accepted, our dedicated team of software engineers began work on the project, and this took approximately six months to complete.
Testing
Once the development phase was completed, we moved on to user acceptance testing, and worked with Amazon Underwriting to find any bugs or hindrances, rectify them – and complete the technical side of the project.
Deployment
From here, we were able to swiftly deploy the project, with minimal time lags due to Azure’s high availability. Deployment was smooth and both Intergy and our client were satisfied with the release of the project.
DevOps
We are still continuously developing and integrating solutions for HomeBiz Insurance, optimising the application, and ensuring that the latest security and maintenance features are applied, leading to consistent positive outcomes for the organisation.
Monitoring
Our development team is constantly monitoring this managed Azure service and we have provided additional access to the backend for Amazon Underwriting to monitor the application’s performance.
Why Azure Modernisation and Migration was Chosen
Azure was selected for its scalability, security, and reliability, offering a modern cloud infrastructure to support Amazon Underwriting's evolving needs. The decision to rebuild the application from scratch in Laravel ensured a customisable and scalable solution tailored to HomeBiz Insurance requirements.
Conclusion and Future Plans
The successful implementation of HomeBiz Insurance marks a significant milestone for Amazon Underwriting, enabling them to streamline insurance management processes and enhance customer experience. Moving forward, HomeBiz Insurance plans to leverage the solution to drive business growth and further improve operational efficiency.
The Significance of Modernising Applications and Migrating to Azure
