Replacement of twelve legacy systems with FiANTEC in just 13 months
“To implement such a project, as we did with FiANTEC, you need powerful, reliable and, above all, flexible partners.”
– Manfred Strauch, Head IT for Finance/Corporate Shared Services Swiss Life Schweiz
Project summary
Speed and flexibility were required for the implementation of FiANTEC for provisioning and sales master data at Swiss Life Switzerland. Within only 13 months, various legacy systems had to be replaced by a standard system. Today, more than 14 sales channels with more than 20 product factories are mapped in FiANTEC. In the process, several mutation types, commission types and commission variants, etc. must be correctly taken into account in the remuneration.
A showcase project with pilot character
Speed and flexibility were required for the implementation of FiANTEC for provisioning and sales master data at Swiss Life. Under time pressure, legacy systems had to be replaced by a standard system.
The challenges facing companies like Swiss Life, which thrive on successful sales, are manifold. IT has to load and analyze the large volumes of data and make it available to employees in a targeted manner.
The various sales channels must be linked and customers must receive high-quality and rapid support. Furthermore, it is imperative to make provisioning as error-free and flexible as possible. These high demands require change processes from the management as well as from the employees.
Swiss Life, as a modern-thinking company, reacted quickly to this change and recognized that only effective and innovative IT systems can meet these demands.
Innovation thrives on flexibility
Projects such as the replacement of historically grown legacy systems with FiANTEC standard software at Swiss Life Switzerland make it clear how important it is for customers and service providers to cooperate in a spirit of partnership, and why flexibility and pragmatism in particular enable the successful implementation of innovative IT projects.
Among other things, IT is the “assistant” of sales and, with its service, a guarantor for motivated agents and satisfied customers. The entire financial services industry thrives on functioning IT and will have to overcome major challenges with its help in the future.
Management must constantly question the existing systems and, as at Swiss Life, allow for optimization in order to meet the changing requirements. The system optimization with FiANTEC at Swiss Life was carried out under a tight time window. The implementation time for the sales master data area, from the first analysis workshop to going live, was just eleven months and for provisioning 13 months.
Despite the time pressure, the advantages of the FIANTEC software were integrated smoothly into the existing system landscape. The focus of the order for the software experts was on two main points. In the Sales Master Data project, the information of the agents with the contact and personal data as well as the contracts was taken over and migrated centrally into FiANTEC.
The challenge was then to transfer the associated customer information and all customer care information from the various legacy systems. Today, this can be accessed quickly and in a user-friendly manner by Swiss Life employees, which greatly accelerates the individual business processes.
Data exchange with cooperation partners of Swiss Life Switzerland was also continued with automatic interfaces. In addition, the provisioning and mapping of the remuneration system was addressed in a second project. For this purpose, the necessary data was pulled from the system, enabling employees to perform automated billing. Data and information are the heart of sales and, especially for a company like Swiss Life, the basis for successful business.
If data inventories are not up to date or if there are irregularities in commission or even complications in the further processing of customer applications, revenue losses are inevitable.
Optimized datasets
Optimizing data quality was therefore one of the crucial tasks for FiANTEC during the implementation of the Swiss Life project. When loading data from the legacy systems into the new system, all business rules were already taken into account, resulting in a significant improvement in data quality. As Swiss Life has different sales channels and is supported by a strong sales force, it benefits from the powerful FiANTEC system for sales standards. Here, the large volume of data is mapped by region, team and branch office and stored in the system.
Furthermore, regional information up to the customer’s house number is made available to the field service in order to be able to work efficiently. It was precisely these features of FiANTEC that convinced Swiss Life Switzerland: “The ability to react quickly, efficiently and within one’s own area to changing market conditions is a decisive advantage,” says Manfred Strauch. A major challenge when implementing new systems is always the integration into the existing system landscape and the resulting need to set up interfaces.
Among other things, FIANTEC has web services with which information can be exchanged with the surrounding systems in order to comply with customer protection agreements, for example. Furthermore, the system is already integrated into the quotation process. When business is generated from the CRM, the quotation software or the portal, the subsequent process is handled fully automatically, without the need for an office staff member to enter data into the system by hand.
