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A Newsletter for Unisys EAE and Agile Business Suite Clients | December 2017

Insurer Takes Development to the Next Level with TFS Implementation

This is what it looks like when an insurance company is viewed as a leader in its space: A combined portfolio of property, casualty, and life insurance spanning more than 40 states. And representation from well over 2,000 independent agents.

Unisys has helped the organization maintain and expand this reach for well over three decades. It’s a partnership that has seen both companies work together to create innovative solutions designed to meet the evolving needs of the organization and its agencies and customers.

But, given the competitive nature of the insurance market, the company must always be on the lookout for new ways to differentiate itself and respond faster and more effectively to emerging agent and consumer demands. The trouble is, the traditional waterfall development approach it followed for years was quickly proving too inefficient and time consuming for today’s environment.

It became even less sustainable when the organization adopted a new initiative to run projects concurrently in order to increase the speed with which it brings new capabilities to market. Given the pressures brought upon by external market forces and internal strategies, the time had clearly come for a new approach.

To get there, the insurer turned to Unisys to help it bring the source-control capabilities available in Microsoft® Team Foundation Server (TFS) into its Agile Business Suite (AB Suite®) environment.

A Fully Guided Implementation

The process began with a formal, four-day AB Suite Version Control Workshop. During the workshop, Unisys consultants worked with the company’s IT team to make sure they were well acquainted with all of the source-control functions TFS offers for the AB Suite environment.

Then came the time to implement TFS. Unisys guided the process every step of the way, focusing the early stages of the project on defining and refining the insurer’s new TFS-aided development process. An experienced Unisys subject-matter expert stayed onsite throughout the implementation, supporting every phase of the project and helping to make sure the business-critical AB Suite applications stayed up, running, and available as they put TFS in place.

The implementation project lasted nine weeks.

Development, Accelerated

Working closely with Unisys consultants throughout the TFS implementation gave the insurer’s team access to the experience and expertise – not to mention confidence – they needed to complete the project in a successful, timely manner.

With TFS in place, the company has seen a marked increase in the efficiency and agility with which it develops applications. Accelerating development in this manner also made it easier to comply with the internal initiative to run concurrent development projects. Not only has the organization’s IT team met this directive, they’ve also been able to get new capabilities to market faster.

And by relying on the combination of AB Suite and TFS to accelerate its development and release timelines, the insurer has found a vital new means of sustaining – and extending – the differentiation that has for years set the company apart from its competitors.

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