CGI's secret weapon to move beyond legacy systems

Challenge

Outdated technology with a high cost of maintenance

The original ARC platform was built to support a network of insurers and brokers' premium reconciliation processes. The system helped to improve efficiency by bringing credit control and reconciliation teams together into a single shared system.

Originally built on Oracle Forms, ARC was designed to handle insurance broker accounting processes established in the early 2000s. Ongoing system enhancement and maintenance were becoming increasingly expensive and time-consuming, making it challenging for CGI to keep up with its clients' evolving requirements.

Additionally, the legacy technology stack was approaching end of life, which would increase the effort required to ensure the system was appropriately patched and secured against cyber security threats.

To address these challenges, CGI decided to transition to OutSystems for the web application's front-end.

Solution

Refreshing an old app with a brand-new frontend

The new solution leverages OutSystems for front-end development and Microsoft Azure for the backend infrastructure, resulting in a dynamic and robust application.

The OutSystems platform enables CGI to design a responsive, modern, interactive user interface across various devices. From a development perspective, it allowed the company to develop the new solution in manageable sprints, promoting regular feedback and teamwork among developers, testers, and product owners, with client feedback driving a cycle of continuous improvement.

On the backend, Microsoft Azure offers a scalable, reliable data management and security services suite.

Secure REST APIs facilitate data exchange, optimizing performance and enabling real-time interactions. This architecture ensures a modern, responsive, and scalable application, meeting both user needs and data infrastructure requirements.

By developing the web application with OutSystems, CGI can adapt and innovate within the new system and provide an exceptional level of service to ensure that clients' needs are met in a timely and efficient manner.

In addition to a new look and feel, CGI Elements360 ARC-IBA—the new accounting reconciliation platform—also provides new and enhanced features, namely:

• Automated Workflow Assignment: For organizations with the required workflow setting enabled, a fully customizable rule builder allows statement and query items to be automatically assigned to users/teams within their organization. Directing work items to the users and making the required changes helps manage workloads more efficiently.

• Statement Detail screen: For each policy, insurers and brokers can navigate to a detailed collaborative view for each statement item. This view enables users to manage and communicate directly between organizations via messages, uploading documents, or assigning queries. It also provides a full audit history for all users.

• Statement Line screen: Broker organizations can view and reconcile all current policies per insurer to provide each item's reconciliation status. All updates made are real-time, giving insurers and brokers a shared view of the reconciliation progress throughout the month.

Results

New platform brings a 20-30% improvement in operating costs

The re-engineered CGI Elements360 ARC-IBA is a modern, highly flexible, scalable enterprise-class platform running as a fully managed service. The new system supports a growing network of brokers and insurers, improving their insurer-broker premium reconciliation.

Some of the benefits of ARC-IBA to insurers and brokers include:

• 20-30% improvement in operating costs.
• Improve cash flow by unlocking trapped cash.
• Reduction in issue resolution time.
• Improved matching rates.
• Handling issues at the point of creation.
• Credit term period used to resolve issues.
• A centralized audit of compliance.
• Reduction in E&O risk.
• Smaller teams and reduction in department costs.
• Improved retention (of IBA/Credit Control FTE).
• Improved relationship management (internal and external).

Combining the OutSystems platform with CGI's in-house technical and insurance expertise has been a game-changer for the re-development of CGI Elements360 ARC-IBA. It has empowered CGI to improve products more cost-effectively than traditional development approaches.

With a small team, CGI accomplished a full redesign from initial concept boards to first release in only six months—4x faster than if it were to use traditional development tools.