Over 4 kilometers of cable, 622 network connections, six hours of hair raising pressure = 1 fantastic new system!

A paperless insurance industry is now a possibility after two KTP projects with Acturis, a major provider of IT solutions to big-name insurers.

"Just a few years ago the insurance industry was still acting in an inefficient, paper-guzzling way with un-structured data flying all over the place," says David McDonald, CEO of Acturis. The company's client data was hosted by third-party servers and the senior management team saw the obvious advantages of bringing the network infrastructure and control under internal ownership. This slow and out of date business practice was quickly rejected by Acturis who pounced on the opportunity to work with LSBUs top IT academics. A KTP project that involved developing a brand new software system to improve client data transfers and the integration of new tools to provide an interactive system linking brokers and insurers was implemented with KTP Associate Peter Makin at the helm. The project meant increased visibility of networking issues allowing more efficient responses to change requests, increased speed of fault mitigation and the reduction of external payments by around £50,000 per annum.

Peter's experience as a Network Engineer meant a cost effective and time efficient changeover from a hosted to an in-house system. "We completed the changeover without any problems. Over 4 kilometers of cable were re-wired and there was two and a half weeks of solid preparation time, all for a hair raising six-hour period of changeover of which there was no turning back," said Peter. "If it didn't work, the only option was to re-plug 622 network connections again on Monday morning."

Luckily for Peter the changeover went smoothly and as such Acturis took on a second KTP Associate, Colin Thurgood. Colin's IT experience was paramount for building a monitoring system for the new in-house network that has helped the company predict network problems before they affect the company's clients. "We don't want to wait for brokers to call the helpdesk and tell us that they can't connect or access their information - we should be able to solve these issues before they even know there is a problem," commented Shay Bhatia, company supervisor.

The academic expertise at London South Bank University has helped the company tremendously through a period of rapid change. "We are seeing network solutions in the real world where there are financial, physical and time constraints, it is showing us our theory and putting it into practice," reports Allen Long, academic supervisor of the project.

The evolution of this new system has meant Acturis has also increased the accuracy, efficiency and bottom line of their business. The number of paper forms that need to be handled by a multitude of different people has been dramatically reduced, saving insurers both time and money and a steady increase in sales has been achieved.

"We had a period of standing back and seeing if it would work, but now it's all hands to the pumps - it's staggering how quickly the system has been adopted," said David.