Business Critical Broker Management Solution

Phillip Walter, Insurecom's CEO, talks through the agencyPlus story, explaining the challenges of creating the platform and how ThoughtWorks helped him overcome them, in this 5 minute video.

Who? What?

ThoughtWorks were brought in as consultants on the architecture for a new product, agencyPlus. So impressed with the team and the practices ThoughtWorks used, Insurecom decided to carry on the partnership to develop the product together. Over 2 years, with a team of up to 50 people in London and Bangalore, agencyPlus was built from scratch

Why?

Phillip Walter, CEO of Insurecom, had recognised a gap in the market, to provide a solution tailored to the new consolidated Broker's needs. The existing platforms were based on dated technology and couldn't keep up with market changes, regulation and the opportunities identified for growth.

How?

ThoughtWorks and Insurecom worked together in an intensive inception phase to establish the high level plan, user requirements and estimates.

Within a few short weeks working software was available for the Insurecom team to feedback on, and iterative development throughout the lifecycle of the project meant that the team's priorities, and so the solution, were able to flex and change in response to market and regulation changes.

Working between London and Bangalore, the team stayed in constant contact. At most times throughout the project members of the team from Insurecom were working in Bangalore and vice versa, to ensure complete cross pollination of ideas, and full understanding of all the challenges from all areas. A regular heartbeat of iteration planning sessions and showcases of the solution progress brought the key players together in addition to the daily collaboration across the team.

The Results?

agencyPlus is live, and into its second major release. The solution has taken the industry by storm, with sales at Insurecom the largest in their history. The tool is already in place in over 18% of the UK broker market seats, and plans are in progress to roll out in North America.

• Complex, mission critical Solution specified, planned, built and supported
• Flexible, scalable platform
• Large scale, distributed Agile programme complete
• Considerable changes to scope, features, priorities encompassed throughout the project lifespan
• In-house team enabled to support and develop the site
• Successful knowledge transfer and take up-of Agile and Lean practices.

"What I bought from ThoughtWorks was peace of mind and trust. Would I recommend ThoughtWorks? Absolutely." Phillip Walter, CEO, Insurecom Download the full case study here

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