The Engagement

The Risk Management team for a large retail company identified a need for a modernized insurance certification compliance process that covered all of its suppliers and vendors. An ironclad method of retrieving certificates and enforcing compliance would reduce costs, reduce risk, and ultimately provide protection to its corporate brand.

Based on many years of working on various innovative technology projects with Primitive Logic, this large retail company called on us to develop the system that would reliably automate its insurance certification process.

The Primitive Logic Approach

Working closely with the IT team and the Risk Management group, Primitive Logic determined the system would have three main components:

1. A scanning system to support the easy capture of vital data on paper-based insurance certificates via OCR technology. The images of the documents and associated scanned metadata are to be stored in IBM DB2 Content Manager.
2. A user interface operating off of IBM Websphere technology on AIX to provide intuitive and flexible search capabilities to locate, retrieve, and print vendor certificates of insurance and contracts.
3. Asynchronous application components based on JMS and IBM MQ Series to automate the tracking and compliance management/enforcement functions for all vendor insurance certificates and contracts.

The solution was to automate the communication process between the retail company and its insurance certificate holders, to include a service-driven notification process where certificate holders would automatically be notified should their insurance status expire or fall out of compliance.

The project was based on the company’s proprietary version of RUP (Rational Unified Process) methodology, with Primitive Logic providing additional design artifacts for completeness. Primitive Logic helped build consensus among key stakeholders, which in turn helped drive a smooth and cohesive solution development and launch.

The Outcome

Risk management's return on investment is based on what doesn't impact the company. The solution installed by Primitive Logic protects against insurance-related litigation and significant costs-both in resources and dollars associated therewith.