The client is a home, auto, and business insurance provider located primarily in the US Midwest. Founded on principles of responsibility and integrity, the client has served its state and local communities for more than 125 years. 

The client was an early adopter of web-based technologies, developing their first agent and employee portals in the early 2000’s. Though the application had been enhanced over the years, the architecture and hosting platforms were significantly outdated. This forced agents, employees, and clients to switch between Internet Explorer (IE) and modern web browsers to complete their tasks, including but not limited to: 

Examples of day-to-day tasks

• Checking policy status. Initiating a new claim.
• Checking status of a claim
• Payout of a claim for a loss or loss of wages in the case of worker’s comp. 
• Quote/create new policies
• Assigning/tracking tasks related to the above tasks 

Key Challenges

This workaround was incredibly cumbersome and inefficient. Moreover, Microsoft had recently announced it was ending support for IE, compounding the issue. This convergence of difficulties highlighted several pressing concerns for the client, namely the need to move users away from IE, and continued application security. More specifically, the application was hosted on servers ranging from Windows Server 2008 to Windows Server 2016 and contained hundreds of code repositories. In addition, there was little documentation available, hardly any internal application knowledge, and no built-in test automation functionality.

The client determined they would need the assistance of a consulting partner to modernize their systems for modern browsers, to improve user experience, and align their application with continuous security updates. 

Solution

The client turned to Planet Technology to modernize this application in a phased approach by providing the browser compatibility updates along with automated testing implementations initially and moving all applications on legacy servers to Windows Server 2019 hosted in Azure to provide the additional security offerings of TLS 1.2. 

Results

Planet Technology worked with the client’s numerous business units and information technology teams to achieve an overall understanding of the applications and perform the modernization over the course 18 months. During the process more than 90 code repositories were updated to support the modernization efforts. 

Key Features

• Modern Browser Support: Agents and employees are no longer forced to switch between Internet Explorer and Edge, Chrome, or Firefox 
• Automated Testing: The end-user facing applications now have built-in automated testing on release to the various environments
• 3^rd Party Tools: Updates to code bases and licensing removed the need for many of the 3^rd party tools and the ones that remained were upgraded to the latest/greatest versions and documented for future developers
• Modernized Infrastructure/Security: Application code now sits in Azure on Windows Server 2019 and all sites and services support SSL and TLS 1.2  
• Overall Understanding of Application: Documentation was created to provide an overall understanding of the application from an IT standpoint that was previously unavailable to ensure future developers were onboarded to work on the application in a timelier manner  
• Deployment Integration Updates: Solutions were integrated into or updated in West Bends automated deployment process. Several solutions had not yet been integrated into the current deployment process and had to be ported over from legacy source control.

As a result of this engagement, the client now has a secure, modern browser supported agent and employee portal to facilitate daily operations.

Photo Credit: Canva