The Inter Access professionals constructively cooperated on building a system that is the basis for all our activities.
Worldwide ReMark organises more than 500 Direct Marketing campaigns per year for various insurance products. These printing, call centre and web campaigns are completely aligned with specific products and customers. Support of the complete business process, from creative and actuary support and execution, up to and including the administrative handling of policies, requires an integrated information system. This system has been developed and implemented by Inter Access and is based on the Oracle e-Business Suite and on the Oracle 10g database technology. Moreover, the hardware, software and the network are hosted, managed and maintained from the Inter Access IT utility data centre.
ReMark International BV is an originally Dutch company that is active in 32 countries by now. The company bundles creativity with in-depth knowledge of insurance products in its DM campaigns and works for large global banks and insurance companies. The campaigns are primarily aimed at insurance products that can be sold to customers without intervention by advisors. The size of the target group for these activities varies from several tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of addresses per action. Apart from the campaigns, the company also takes care of the administrative handling of the sold policies.
Maarten Susan, Managing Director of ReMark: “Although the specifics of our campaigns vary per product or per customer, we go through a number of set proces steps. In the past, we did not have an integrated system to fully support this way of working. The systems we used worked separately from each other, as a result of which data was entered manually several times. The steps in the process that were not automated were supported by spreadsheets. Another limitation was the lack of consolidated management information. Connecting data was usually done manually and did not provide the required insights. As a result, we were also too dependent on employees’ individual knowledge. We felt the need for an integrated system with one reliable source of information.”
Besides the need for technological support of core processes, the realisation that the financial application did no longer meet the requirements arose almost simultaneously. However, considering the importance of this application, a solution was needed fast. The general demand that ReMark had was speed to start with. The new financial application had to be live within three months and this required a choice for reliable, proven technology. Furthermore, the application had to be scalable enough to support the growth of the enterprise in the long term as well. The choice was made for the Oracle Financials module from the Oracle e-Business Suite, which was implemented by Inter Access within the set time. Due to the implementation of the financial application and the planned development activities for the primary processes, the network and the hardware also had to be renewed. That project was also realised with Inter Access. Mainly due to the worldwide character of ReMark’s activities, this was a challenge. All offices are now connected by a WAN.
The development of the company system, project name Dragon, started with workshops for mapping all process steps and roles and subsequently translating these into software. Susan: “The workshops were a cause for organisational reorientation. Although we aim at standardisation of processes as much as possible, we have to keep business and cultural differences between our different sites in mind. As far as software was concerned, standard software was an important demand and the Oracle e-Business Suite mostly met this demand. For support of specific aspects of our business activities we developed the appropriate software together with Inter Access. In addition, we also developed a customer module and a module to accommodate our contracts and forms of contracts.”
The implementation of the system has been completed by now and it functions according to expectations. Susan: “The roll out in the various offices worldwide has been realised and the primary process is currently supported completely. Thereby, we keep developing and tuning according to the principle of ‘growing insight’. As far as the improvement of the scope and the quality of the management information are concerned, the fact that we use a central database plays an important role. From that basis, we can manage data properly and generate various management reports. At the moment, these are still mainly standard reports, but we are considering the procurement of a more specialised tool for the future.”
Susan: “Inter Access and the Oracle On-Demand-offer match our vision on ICT well. The focus for our organisation is on functionality, not on the underlying technology. The Inter Access professionals constructively cooperated on building a system that is the basis for all our activities. Because they know our organisation and activities inside out, they translated an entity that is complex in itself, to a properly functioning and stable enterprise system. Moreover, we do not have to maintain an extensive ICT department ourselves, because they carry out complete operational support, excluding desktop support. Apart from the fact that this ensures us of a properly functioning system, we have the flexibility to constantly change and streamline sub processes, as required by our business demands.”