eiConsole for DTCC vs General Integration Tools
Use this chart to see how your integration solution stacks up to the award-winning eiConsole for Insurance
| eiConsole | Non-Insurance Specific Tools (NIT) | Impact |
| Ability to read in ACORD XSD and Metadata with a few mouse clicks. | Many NIT cannot read the ACORD XSD and none of them can read the MetaData file eliminating critical documentation necessary to map fields to the ACORD schema. | Thousands of hours |
| Ability to import DTCC IPS XLS spreadsheets including documentation and the ACORD Standard DTCC TXLife message formats and associated metadata with a few mouse clicks | NIT cannot read the DTCC IPS spreadsheets which then requires the manual re-keying of the thousands of fields, tabular values and field annotations. | Thousands of hours |
| Ability to transform DTCC IPS flat file formats to and from XML representations for simple mapping. | Custom transformations would need to be built to support DTCC-specific requirements. | Hundreds of hours |
| Ability to import proprietary Source and Target XML formats as templates into the Data Mapper with a few mouse clicks. | Not available with NIT. The XSLT has to be manually created. | Thousands of hours |
| Ability to search the ACORD and DTCC element descriptions and definitions from within the eiConsole Data Mapper. | With NIT, you are forced to leave the development environment and use other sources (implementation guides, documentation, help screens) to identify correct fields or tabular values to be mapped and then, once the appropriate matching field is found, manually input the data. | Thousands of hours |
| Built-in support for Typecodes (ACORD and DTCC) and Tabular Values (DTCC IPS). | NIT cannot read the ACORD MetaData or DTCC IPS XLS documentation and therefore cannot pre-populate the thousands of tabular values contained in the standards. | Thousands of hours |
| Message templates for all ACORD and DTCC messages. | Limited or no templates are available. | Thousands of hours |
| Special mapping support for mapping recursive elements such as multiple Parties differentiated by Role (Owner, Payer, Beneficiary, etc.). | NIT typically will only allow one-to-one relationships between Source and Target data, which is usually accomplished by drawing connecting lines. ACORD and DTCC/ACORD models require repeating elements such as Party defined by Role Code. | Thousands of hours |
| Ability to extend and save the ACORD schema using the ACORD prescribed approach. | NIT can’t read the MetaData file, therefore all of the Typecodes have to be input manually. There are thousands of them. | Thousands of hours |
| Ability to extend and save the ACORD Schema by automating the ACORD prescribed approach. | This is a manual process with NIT. Failure to comply with the ACORD prescribed approach makes retrofitting extensions to new releases of ACORD difficult or impossible. | Hundreds of hours |
| Ability to slice any schemas including ACORD and DTCC to create subschemas. | Unavailable from NIT. ACORD has licensed the eiConsole and uses this feature to create subschemas. | Hundreds of hours |
| Ability to transform a DTCC IPS flat file format to an XSD, save it and reuse it. | Unavailable from NIT. | Hundreds of hours |
| Simple upgrades from one release of ACORD or DTCC to another release. | Extremely difficult with NIT. | Thousands of hours |
| Built-in extensible Validation Engine supports ACORD and DTCC message formats. Automatically evaluates rules documented in the respective messaging standards. | Not available with NIT. | Thousands of hours |
| A growing library of pre-configured interfaces to and from major industry trading partners. | Very few or no pre-configured interfaces are available. | Thousands of hours |
| Includes a comprehensive list of Listeners and Transports to connect any system to any other system. Special support is provided for DTCC-specific SOAP wrap and unwrap processes and the specialized DTCC Web Service Transport. | Usually a limited number of Listeners and Transports are included with NIT. Most charge separately for the connectors. None of them support the specialized DTCC Web Service Transport or SOAP wrap/unwrap process. | Thousands of hours |
| Built-in support for ACORD’s attachment (MTOM) mechanism in use by ACORD and DTCC. | Not available with NIT. | Thousands of hours |
| Support from industry experts. PilotFish has accomplished hundreds of successful interface implementations in the Life and Annuity industry. PilotFish is a member of ACORD and ACORD is also a customer. | With many NIT providers, Insurance is just one of many lines of business. Generalized tools typically are supported with generalized knowledge. | Thousands of hours |
| General Capabilities | ||
| All output of the eiConsole is non-proprietary W3C-compliant XML and XSLT and can be maintained without the eiConsole. | Data mapping typically uses proprietary languages and requires the use of the proprietary tools to maintain the interfaces. | The cost of being locked into a vendor. |
| Infrastructure agnostic – Platform, operating system, database, communication protocol and application server independent. | Often infrastructure dependent. | Depends on infrastructure. |
| Ability to import into the Data Mapper any Source and Target formats: ACORD, DTCC IPS, DTCC/ACORD, XSD, XML, COBOL copybooks, NAILBA, DDL etc. | Usually very limited with NIT and cannot import the ACORD MetaData or DTCC IPS XLS spreadsheets. | Thousands of hours. |
| Ability to manage (find, filter, sort) all of the interfaces for the enterprise from a single screen. | Not available. | Hundreds of hours |