Phase C: Information Systems Architectures (Application)

Since the merger, the three divisions have adopted a common web portal, contact center software suite, and document management system. Also, the company has selected a strategic CRM solution and implemented it for both Home & Away and PRO-FIT. However, due to management’s focus on minimizing post-merger risks while continually improving the day-to-day performance of each division, core business application rationalization has not begun. Now that ArchiSurance has met post-merger performance expectations, investors expect substantial IT cost savings through the adoption of a common set of product and customer-focused applications. Therefore, a number of challenges remain. Home & Away still uses its pre-merger policy administration and financial application packages, while PRO-FIT and Legally Yours still use their own pre-merger custom monolithic applications.

Application Cooperation

The ArchiMate language defines an Application Cooperation viewpoint to show an overview of the application landscape and the dependencies between the applications:

The Application Cooperation viewpoint describes the relationships between application components in terms of the information flows between them, or in terms of the services they offer and use. This viewpoint is typically used to create an overview of the application landscape of an organization. This viewpoint is also used to express the (internal) co-operation or orchestration of services that together support the execution of a business process.

The TOGAF counterpart of this viewpoint is the Application Communication diagram.

Figure 22 shows the main applications of ArchiSurance and the main data flows between them.

Figure 22: Application Cooperation View (Baseline)

The Application Cooperation view in Figure 23 shows the proposed target situation for the application landscape.

Figure 23: Application Cooperation View (Target)

This comprises the following application components, that together realize the Rationalization scenario:

An integrated back-office suite for functions such as policy administration and financial transactions; the suite consists of:
- AUTO-U, an automated underwriting system that generates proposals and policies
- P-ADMIN, a packaged policy administration system that integrates with the automated underwriting system to issue, modify, and renew policies; this system also handles customer accounting and billing for all lines of business, replacing the policy administration functionality of the Home & Away, Auto, and Legal Expense legacy systems
- VERSA-CLAIM, a packaged claims system with screens and workflow that can be configured to support the three lines of business of ArchiSurance, replacing the claims processing functionality of the Home & Away, Auto, and Legal Expense legacy systems
- P-CONFIG, a product configurator management system used to define all insurance products, and expose these definitions to AUTO-U, P-ADMIN, and VERSA-CLAIM through web services
- BRIMS, a Business Rule Management System (BRMS) consisting of a rules repository, a processing engine, a rule development environment, and an authoring tool providing a user interface for conducting rule management tasks. The business rule engine exposes rule execution capabilities to AUTO-U, P-ADMIN, VERSA-CLAIM, and P-CONFIG through web services
A general CRM system, to be used by the entire organization

Business-Application Alignment

The TOGAF Standard does not define diagrams for business-application alignment. However, it does specify matrices to show the links between the Business and the Application Architecture; e.g., an Application/Organization matrix and an Application/Function matrix.

The relationships between application components can also be modeled graphically. The ArchiMate language defines the Application Usage viewpoint:

The Application Usage viewpoint describes how applications are used to support one or more business processes, and how they are used by other applications. This viewpoint can be useful when designing an application, as it can identify the services such an application must provide to the business processes it will eventually support, or to other applications. Similarly, this viewpoint can also be useful when analyzing business processes, and optimize them by making an efficient use of those application services. Furthermore, since this viewpoint depicts dependencies of business processes upon applications, it may prove to be a compelling tool for operations managers responsible for running those processes. The Application Service concept plays a central role in this viewpoint. Figure 24 shows a subset of the services offered by the applications used by the Home & Away division of ArchiSurance, and which of the sub-processes of the claim handling process make use of which of these services.

Figure 24: Application Usage View (Baseline)

Application Behavior

The behavior of the data warehousing solution, in the context of data acquisition on the one hand and the business processes and functions on the other, is shown in Figure 25. The insurance premium of individual customers is based in part on the data they acquire from different devices. This data is processed to create customer-specific profiles that are input to the calculation of their insurance premiums. At an aggregated level, this data is also used to develop new kinds of insurance products and to assess and adjust the overall risk exposure of the company.

Figure 25: Application Behavior View (Target)

Application Gap Analysis

The results of a global gap analysis for the Application Architecture are visualized in Figure 26. Several application components that exist in the Baseline Architecture are no longer present in the Target Architecture: the separate back-office applications and the separate Legal Expense insurance CRM system. The CRM functionality for Legal Expense insurance customers is taken over by the general CRM system; therefore, this does not require new components (although it may be necessary to adapt or reconfigure the existing general CRM system, this is not shown in the gap analysis). In addition, a completely new back-office application suite and new data warehousing solution are introduced.

Figure 26: Application Architecture: Gap Analysis