case 1 modernization of ntuc income 2

Modernization of NTUC Income CASE 2.1

CASE STUDY 2.1

MODERNIZATION OF NTUC INCOME

a) What were the problems faced by Income in this case? How were the problems solved by the new digital system?Incomes insurance processes were very tedious and paper-based. This resulted to humongous Income also experienced frequent breakdown of the HP 3000 mainframe which hosted the core insurance applications and the accounting and management information systems. In addition to this, HP 3000 back-up system only allowed restoration to the previous day’s back-up data. Hardware failures caused six days of complete downtime. COBOL programs also encountered frequent breakdowns that halted the systems and caused temporary interruptions. At the same time, development of new products using the COBOL is quite cumbersome and took weeks, even months, to accomplish. They also lost opportunities to cross-sell because transaction processing for policy underwriting was still a batch process and information is not available to agents and advisors in real-time. Through the new digital systems, these problems were addressed. The paper-based insurance processes were replaced by a paperless platform. Under the new system, all documents are scanned and stored on ´trustedµ storage devices. Frequent breakdowns were addressed by the high-availability platform. Multiple servers are hosted and connected to more communication lines that are ´load balancedµ. The new system also addressed downtimes due to breakdowns by its hot back-up disaster-recovery centers. The new digital system also addressed the slow development of new products by COBOL through the straight through processing workflow capabilities of the new system.

1 MBA_Batch2_UMK_Kch/M7/GST5803/Information System and E-Commerce/P14D397P


b) 2) What types of information systems and business processes were used by Income before migrating to the fully digital system?The insurance process of Income was very manual and paper intensive. Filled up application forms of clients were sent by agents through courier. Their collection schedule causes delays of two to three days. The Official Services log, sort and send documents to underwriting. Proposals were allocated to staff randomly. There was no system for proper assignment tasks per staff. Voluminous document are manually sorted and stored and store by a number of staff at their warehouse. Since there was no clear document management systems, retrieval of documents take days to accomplish. Income also made use of HP 3000 mainframes which were very unreliable due to frequent breakdowns that resulted to downtime, decreased productivity and wasted manpower hours. COBOL programs were also used which also encountered technical failures. At the same time COBOL programs were very slow in developing new products for company resulting to lost sale opportunities.

c) Describe the Information Systems and IT infrastructure at income after migrating to the fully digital system?The new information system comprised 3 sub-system which are Policy Administration, Sales Management and Supplementary Resources that fulfilled that company requirement. This system contain:

1. Customer Centric Design2. Seamless integration with Imaging3. Barcode Technology

The software runs on multiple high-availability servers which connected to multiple communication lines for load balancing to minimized down-time. Entire IT infrastructures were replaced with robust, scalable architecture for example faster LAN cables with a fiber-optic backbone and wireless capability. A real-time hot backup disaster-recovery center implemented. All paper records were digitalize by scanning and storing into a reliable storage devices.

d) What benefits did Income reap from the new system?The system can be access by all their staff and insurance advisors anytime and anywhere. Faster access to information and improved customer services. Cut policy processing time and cost by half and reduce the time to design and launch new product.

e) How well is Income prepared for the future? Are the problems described in the case likely to be repeated?NTUC Income has created a new dimension of system since they overcome they problem and weakness through the execution of eBao technology and they are prepare enough for their future.Before switched and implement to the java based eBao life system, NTUC income faced lots of difficulty in term of insurance application, accounting and management information system. But after implemented eBao Life System to eBay technology



income has restore its IT infrastructure by upgrading their system through increasing PC RAM size, installing scanner and etc. which help them store more data. They also implement hot back up disaster recovery center so that all the data cannot be lost easily and remain storage and they do not need to depend on restoration of previous day data. Under the new system all document stored as well on “trusted” storage device.For IT infrastructure NTUC Income need to replaced or upgrade from time to time due to technology change are faster from day to day. If they didn’t prepare for the future, it possible that the same problem will occurs.


case 1 modernization of ntuc income 2

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