Fortune 100 Insurer Leverages PilotFish to Achieve Enterprise Integration on a Massive Scale

With their vast IT infrastructure, international companies face massive data integration challenges. In this case study, learn how one Fortune 100 insurance company has met this challenge head-on by implementing PilotFish’s Integration Engine solution. PilotFish’s eiPlatform was leveraged to support the transformation of internal and external data feeds to and from industry-standard formats such as DTCC, EDI and ACORD TXLife as they traverse the organization’s vast infrastructure. PilotFish was implemented as a gateway to provide access to its data lake and the other IT assets throughout this sprawling organization.

THE CLIENT

One of the largest insurance companies in the world, the client has operations in nearly 100 countries and jurisdictions. Its diverse range of insurance products span the gamut – serving organizations, businesses and private individuals. These include life insurance, property & casualty products and a wide range of financial services such as annuities, mutual funds, structured settlements and home loans. All of the client’s products serve one common purpose – to help its clients better manage risk in every area and cycle of life.

THE CHALLENGE

With a client base and product line as diverse as theirs, the clients’ integration requirements are massive in scope. The need to normalize data to support the transformation of the multitudes of industry-specific data feeds as they traverse the organization’s sprawling IT infrastructure, was growing exponentially. In addition to meet increasing demands on real-time data and analysis, the client needed to facilitate rapid and flexible access to IT assets throughout its entire organization. The client needed an enterprise solution that would expedite the process of both parsing and generating formats as well as one that could act as the gateway to a data lake for central access for the organization.

THE SOLUTION

PilotFish, a long-time member of ACORD and participant in its annual conferences and user groups, was a known entity to the client. The client, as a member of the ACORD standards organization, had taken advantage of the free PilotFish eiConsole for ACORD license that is available to each of its members (one concurrent use license per member company, a $10,000 retail value). After utilizing PilotFish’s Online Resource Center, a free training and education platform offering Quick Start and Getting Started tutorials to get familiar with the product, the client’s interest was piqued. The client reached out and engaged PilotFish in an onsite live product demonstration and mini proof of concept. 

Over the course of 3 days, a team of 2 PilotFish Solutions Architects put the PilotFish Integration Engine solution to the test. The team was able to demonstrate the product’s broad-based flexibility to deal with the client’s different data formats to prove out that it could support all of the client’s industry-specific data feeds. This included ACORD-specific formats and demonstrating the ACORD-specific features that have been built into the PilotFish product. The features demonstrated were comprised of an ACORD XML Validation Facility, ACORD XSD Management and ACORD Schema Slicing.

The PilotFish team demonstrated how PilotFish’s eiConsole adeptly handled parsing and data transformation with the product’s exclusive three-pane drag & drop data mapper. Here too, the product’s ACORD-specific features shined with built-in support for ACORD type codes and codelists as well as the ability to read in the ACORD Schema and ACORD MetaData Files (whether it be LAH, PCS or RLC). From its routing abilities to interacting with databases to end-to-end testing, PilotFish was put through its paces and validated its suitability to meet all of the client’s requirements. The result? The client proceeded with licensing the PilotFish integration Engine solution consisting of the eiPlatform Java runtime and additional licenses of the eiConsole for ACORD. 

THE BENEFITS

The client, by engaging PilotFish for onsite training spanning 4 days, was able to get its team productive right out of the gate. By implementing the PilotFish eiPlatform and eiConsole Integration Engine, the client has been able to support the transformation of all of its industry-specific data feeds. The PilotFish eiConsole for ACORD IDE is being leveraged to dramatically expedite the process of parsing and generating formats such as DTCC EDI (including commissions – COM) and ACORD (including New Business – 103 and Requirement Ordering – 121). PilotFish is also being used to not only mediate between various internal and external systems but to also act as the gateway to a data lake that facilitates the rapid and flexible access to the IT assets existing throughout the organization. 

Through the implementation of PilotFish, the client has been able to standardize its integration process. They have been able to take advantage and realize the benefits of implementing the ACORD standard. The efficiencies made possible with PilotFish’s product’s robust ACORD-specific support, have helped reduce implementation times and maintenance overhead. PilotFish has greatly facilitated data exchange across the client’s vast global infrastructure, thus supporting its ever-growing products and service offerings along with its mission to help its customers manage risk.