Case Study: Clarke Roxburgh Insurance Brokers Ltd

Clarke Roxburgh is one of the UK's top 10 independently owned provincial Brokers and the largest Community Broker in the UK.

The Challenge

In 2004 we were approached by Clarke Roxburgh to develop a web-based application to replace an existing in-office system. At the time insurance quotations and documents were being manually faxed and e-mailed between staff, agents and customers. This was creating a large amount of unnecessary workload as well as being prone to human error.

The second feature of the project was that the existing policy information existed in a large number of individual Lotus Approach databases that were both cumbersome and inappropriate for integrating with websites.

The Process

The first step was for us to develop an accurate specification to ensure:

• The website would maintain the flexibility of original system.
• Efficiency is vastly improved.
• Data is secure and backed up on a regular basis.

This was achieved in several ways. Firstly we replaced the Lotus database system with a Microsoft based solution that would not only work effectively via a website but would also be easy to tie into existing office software creating minimal disruption. Once the data format was in place the information was made available via the Internet through a secure website environment that provided access to not only staff but also customers and agents.

Results

The project was programmatically complicated and took around six months from initial consultation to completion. The website has now been live for several years and has created significant benefits for Clarke Roxburgh including:

• Quotations were now accurate, instant and automatically provided to agents.
• Many tasks that were previously done manually have now been automated or control has been passed directly to the customer via the website.
• Twice daily backups of the data are automated and stored in multiple locations.
• Reporting procedures are now automated and take hours, not weeks.

Work has since continued on this project and it has been greatly expanded beyond the original specification.