CASE STUDY: Modernization of NTUC Income?

1.)

What were the problems faced by Income in this case? How were the problems
solved by thenew digital system?
Incomes insurance processes were very tedious and paper-based. This resulted
to humongousIncome also experienced frequent breakdown of the HP 3000
mainframe which hosted the coreinsurance applications and the accounting and
management information systems. In addition tothis, HP 3000 back-up system
only allowed restoration to the previous days back-up data.Hardware failures
caused six days of complete downtime. COBOL programs also
encounteredfrequent breakdowns that halted the systems and caused temporary
interruptions. At the sametime, development of new products using the COBOL is
quite cumbersome and took weeks, evenmonths, to accomplish. They also lost
opportunities to cross-sell because transaction processingfor policy underwriting
was still a batch process and information is not available to agents andadvisors
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, alldocuments are scanned and stored on trusted
storage devices. Frequent breakdowns wereaddressed by the high-availability
platform. Multiple servers are hosted and connected to morecommunication lines
that are load balanced. The new system also addressed downtimes dueto
breakdowns by its hot back-up disaster-recovery centers. The new digital system
alsoaddressed the slow development of new products by COBOL through the
straight throughprocessing workflow capabilities of the new system.
2
.)

What types of information systems and business processes were used by Income
before migratingto the fully digital system?
The insurance process of Income was very manual and paper/file intensive.
Filled-up application forms of clients were sent by agents through courier. Their
collection schedule causes delays oftwo to three days. The Office Services log,
sort, and send documents to underwriting. Proposals were allocated to staff
randomly. No system was in place for proper assignment of tasks per staff.
Voluminous documents are manually sorted and stored by a number of staff at
their warehouse. Since there was no clear document management system,
retrieval of documents take days toaccomplish. 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 sametime, COBOL programs were very slow in developing new products for
the company resulting tolost sale opportunities.

3
.)

Describe the Information systems and IT infrastructure at Income after migrating

to the fully digitalsystem.
According to James Kang, CIO of Income, the Java based eBao LifeSystem from
eBaoTechnology is very customer-centric. It provided seamless integration with
imaging and bar code technology. It also contains a product definition module
that supports new products, new channels and changes in business process.
Data migration of Incomes individual and group businesses was successfully
implemented and customized. The new system was operational on high-quality
platform with multiple servers and communication lines. The new system also
revamped business continuity and the companys disaster recovery plan. A realtime hot back-up disaster recovery center was implemented. Business processes
went from paper intensive to