In the insurance industry, downtime is not an option. Systems must be up-to-date, secure, and functional to maintain customer trust. We assisted WMC in complex system migration, overcoming challenges like the lack of initial documentation and thousands of unique in-app use cases.
WMC IT Solutions
WMC is a Swiss company that specializes in IT services. Founded in 1981, it focuses on open-source business software and mainly serves the insurance brokerage sector and small—to medium-sized enterprises.
The company’s flagship product is BrokerStar – an advanced platform for insurance brokers to manage their clients’ insurance portfolios.
Staying relevant in the challenging industry
As a product essential for the operations of many insurers (WMC sells it on a licensing basis to over 100 companies), WMC needs to constantly update BrokerStar to ensure the highest service standards for their clients.
When Guido, the company’s CEO, approached us, the application was based on the outdated Symfony 1.8 version. The update to the then-latest version, 2.4, was driven by several factors:
Security: The outdated system was nearing the end of its support period for security updates, presenting a significant threat to data integrity and system functionality.
Legal Compliance and Reputation: Maintaining compliance with the insurance industry’s prevailing laws and security standards was crucial for preserving client trust and the company’s reputation.
Development and Scalability: BrokerStar, with a long history of use (8-10 years), needed modernization to keep up with the growing market demands and to ensure the possibility of further development and scaling of services.
Guido and his team had the business know-how and needed a reliable technological partner for the migration.
Recreating Complex Insurance Processes
Due to the specifics of the insurance industry, the system was very complex.
- Brokers managed an elaborate system of commissions, referrals, and client retention.
- The billing mechanism, invoicing, and commission calculations were multidimensional, encompassing various methods and types of transactions.
- Each action, such as creating a task, had multiple contexts – from the user, through billing, to the calendar of meetings and leads of potential clients.
- The access to the API was equally complicated, which required precise management of user data access, considering family relationships and individual insurance policies.
- Each client had unique access keys, and the system had to verify and manage complex data structures and policies.
- Additionally, the app wasn’t well documented at that stage of development, and the entire system was written in German.
Thus, despite a relatively simple back-end technological stack, the system’s functional scope was impressive, and migration was very difficult.
A task just right for us!
A fully functional application available in 4 languages.
WMC received a new system version, rewritten on the most recent Symfony framework.
We managed the entire project from start to finish, successfully retaining all features of the old version and adding new modules.
We introduced a new translation system. Now, the application operates in four languages, including English.
We changed how the system manages data. Everything is now better organized and easier to use.
We also improved the permissions system. It’s now more detailed and operates faster.
The Maintenance and Development phase
Eventually, we became WMC’s technological partner – the company makes strategic decisions, and we implement them on the technology front.
We respond promptly to customer needs, fix errors, implement updates, and add new features.
Since the app interacts with numerous external insurance, road, and brokerage systems, we continuously maintain these systems’ standards and keep up with their technological advancements.
We ensure high performance, data security, and memory and disk space efficiency.
In addition, we created and expanded the technical documentation and the app’s unit/functional tests.
Whenever Guido needs our support, we are ready to work!
