Talisker Insurance Agency - Essay Example

 Talisker Insurance Agency Talisker Insurance Agency enjoys a favourable position in the market. Mr Smith has made a practical decision of consolidating the two work premises into one. However, in order to maintain its profitability in changed circumstances, the Agency will have to undergo major revamping of information flow and computing environment. The information technology in use is outdated and inadequate. The manual database management is haphazard, time consuming, and prone to error. Important information is vulnerable to pilferage and loss. There is no systemised information flow. As a result, there is loss of lot of man-hours in sorting and sifting of information. Query handling, making of proposals, and presentations is shoddy and leaves much to be desired. Talisker Insurance Agency has to move from a disorganised to a systemised work environment. The Agency suffers from serious administrative drawbacks both in operational methods and data storage and retrieval techniques. The consolidated office is in urgent need of modernisation. Consolidation of office has given Bill Smith an opportunity to bring about much needed changes in the work environment of the Agency. The issues to be addressed by Mr. Smith are listed below in order of their priority: a. The microcomputers have to be replaced and the staff to be provided with required number of PCs. Additionally, two laptops are required for agents making sales calls. b. The manual system of maintenance of files is to be replaced by a dynamic database of business information, sales, claims, and client servicing. c. A strong networking environment is to be created in the office in order to make efficient use of manpower and technology. d. The sales cycle of three parts is to be brought to one. The multiple trips between office and the client have to be reduced and brought to an ideal of 1. e. If a sales call does not fructify into sale of policy the data about the client should be systematically stored for future use. f. A domain name for the Agency is to be booked with a web hosting company. Talisker Insurance Agency has to develop a website and make beginning towards e-commerce. g. The Agency has to reinforce its sales strategy with presentations made on PowerPoint. h. A complete back up of all the information and database is to be maintained. Database storage and backup will be both application based and manual. The Plan As part of immediate modernisation, we have to purchase 13 PCs with latest available configuration. Two laptops will be used to do work at the clients’ end. A Local Area Network (LAN) has to be established. A leased line will be used for Internet connectivity. The website of Talisker Insurance Agency called the Taliskerinsurance.com has to be developed. The website besides enhancing the reach of Talisker Insurance Agency will also aid in bolstering its marketing and administrative functions. Mr. Smith has to be convinced on development of a website on counts enumerated below. First, no forward looking company with a vast client base can afford to not to have a web presence in the present times. Second, the cost of web development, maintenance, and hosting has reduced drastically over the past years. Third, with a state-of-the-art networking environment in the office premises, we are just a step short of a website. Fourth, the prospective clients in remote locations can access the website and see the policies on offer. Thus there will be increase in the generation of marketing leading resulting in more business. Due to low cost of developing and maintaining website, Mr. Smith needn’t worry about its financial viability. The investments into development of IT tools will soon result in increase in revenue by curtailing unnecessary costs and streamlining of business operations. The staff members are to be trained in the use of Internet, Networking, and IT tools. Introducing new IT tools will not only solve most of Mr. Smith’s current problems but also help him greatly to enhance his business operations, especially in the commercial sector, as desired by him. The Agency through use of Information Technology will be able to give more personalised service to his clientele. Question No.2 A computer network is to be established in the new office of Talisker Insurance Agency. A website for the Agency is to be created and hosted remotely. It can be tentatively called the Taliskerinsurance.com. The recommended solutions for the agency for its computing problems can be Linux and Windows based. The hardware to be bought will be compatible to both Windows and Linux operating systems. We will discuss below the network operating and information handling system for Talisker Insurance Agency’s office in detail. First we will take up the Windows based solution. Hardware Requirements All microcomputers will be discarded immediately and replaced with PCs of latest configuration models. A leased line for Internet is to be installed. At least two laptops and two cell phone connections are to be bought for the agents to work online at the client end. Website and Programming Taliskerinsurance.com. is a dynamically programmed website on ASP.net technology. The website has sections—Home, Policies, Clients, and Contact sections on viewers end. The public can browse some sections and require a ‘user id’ and ‘a password’ to access restricted sections. The Home Page carries details of Talisker Insurance Agency—its operations, quality policies, aims and objectives. It also carries information about the insurance carriers it works with. Policies—This section has a summary of all categories of policies—personal, business, cars, and medical insurance. A button requiring a ‘user id’ and ‘password’ enable us to access the further information and quotations of different insurance carriers. This section is to be used by Talikser staff members. Clients—This section will also require a ‘user id’ and a ‘password’. The section can be accessed by clients, agents, and office administrators to effect, manage and overlook changes made in client profile in relation to a particular policy. The clients register their insurance claims over here. Contact—This section will carry the address of the Agency along with telephone numbers. An info button will allow fresh policy seekers and old users to show interest in Agency’s business. Policy Sales Using IT Tools Operations at the Client’s End At this juncture we will address the key areas of our business concern: How to reduce trips and time in the sales cycle and carry out a sale in one client session. The agent arrives at the home/office of a client with a laptop and a cell phone. The cell phone connection is used to establish Internet connectivity with the Agency’s website. A client is given a brief about various policies available at Talisker. The agent can also give a Power Point demonstration on his laptop showing with the help of graphs, flow-charts and diagrams different policies available and their benefits. Then he seeks his personal information and requirements. The agent accesses the Policies section on the website. An Input Form is available in the Policy Section. The Input Form is displayed on the laptop screen. The Input Form carries common fields like name, age, sex, income, occupation, policy type--business, car, life insurance, etc. In the design of the Input Form it is ensured that it carries all the details required by all four insurance carriers. The Input Form is further submitted to a sub-section of the Website—Insurance Carriers. This section is connected runtime to the websites of all four insurance carriers. In case, Internet connection is not established at the client’s end, the agent comes back to his office, updates client’s information from his desktop and seeks the quotation of the insurance carrier. In this eventuality, the sale of policy can be made in two trips to the client. As the submission of the Input Form is made to say, insurance carrier A—only those fields required by it, stay on the screen, while others do not show. This is an inherent feature of the website. Likewise, the agent submits the form to B, C, and D insurance carriers as well. All four quotations are generated and the one best suiting to a client is offered. This programming will help the agent to reduce his call to one client session. Once the deal is clinched and a client buys a policy his ‘user id’ is created on the Clients section. The premium and unique details of his policy are listed here. Its limited access is given to the policyholder and the agent. In the office, access for this section is provided to the office administrators also for them to upgrade their records. Whenever any modification has to be made to the status of the file, a mail is automatically sent to the client, and Bill Smith. A copy of the financials involved is sent to the Accounts Section on the Website. In case of making a claim, a client can log on to the Clients and fill the Claims field. The claim can be further accessed by the Administrators and forwarded to the insurance carrier. Please refer to Figure 2 to see the logical working of this program. Back for Sales Call in case of Internet Failure When an agent makes a call on the client, he should also carry a Demonstration Kit. The Demonstration Kit consists of PowerPoint Presentation: Each kind of policy offered by the entire four insurance carriers is carried in the PowerPoint presentation. The Demonstration Kit is installed on the laptops or is recorded on a CD. In case the agent is unable to connect to the Internet with his cell phone, he should be able to give a PowerPoint Demonstration on the Laptop screen. In case of corporate and business client the agents should take the Digital SD Card Projector to the client’s office. The PowerPoint Demonstration is held in a large auditorium. Post-presentation time can be used by the sales agent to handle queries. Database The information of the ‘Input Form’ is stored in the SQl server of Taliskinsurance.com. Additionally, its back copy is also is also sent to the SQl Server of Bill Smith in the Talisker office. The access to database is provided only to Bill Smith. This serves as a unique and secret database of the Agency. For additional security and backup concerns the Data can be transferred to CD on weekly basis. The CDs can be stored in a Cabinet in Mr. Smith’s office. Networking The Networking of the local environment requires setting up of a Local Area Ethernet Network with a speed of 100Kbps. Such a network is based on three-tier architecture that care of the physical as well as software layers. There are 13 workstations and two printers on the cable that constitute the network. The network has Server-Client configuration. All the workstations are connected through a single cable that runs on the both the floors in a bus topology. Each workstation is unique and identifiable with the name of the employee. No employee will be allowed to use the workstation of the employee. To log in to the workstation an employee will have to use his ‘user id’ and ‘password’. The workstation of Mr. Smith is the Server and all other workstations on the LAN are its clients. The network has two Switches that can hold eight connections each. One Switch will be installed on the ground floor and the other on the first floor. The Switch helps to distribute data in the multi-user environment without affecting the quality of data transfer. Two Laser printers—one Colour and Black & White Laser can be installed on the network. The printers are directly connected to the hub on the ground floor. The printers can be housed on the ground floor in the Admin office. All workstations will be given necessary permission to give the Print Command. A leased Internet line of 512 Kbs feeds the network. The Internet is connected to the LAN through a modem. The Proxy Server will distribute the Internet connection in further workstations. All workstations have LAN cards to access the network. The Proxy Server and the Primary Domain Controller (PDC) will be located in the server of Mr. Smith. The network uses a Broadband coaxial cable. Please refer to Figure 1 for visualisation of Network Installation. Permissions and Security Security is one of the most important aspects of a business. The Windows networking gives all rights of sharing and access to the Network Administrator, which are held by Bill Smith. Mr Smith has given necessary permission to the Agents and Administrators to access the Home Page, Clients, and Policies Section on the Website. The Accounts Administrator too can access the Clients and Policies section to get the fiscal details. The permissions can be reviewed from time to time. There are certain functional aspects that come into notice when a network actually starts functioning. Such matters that come to notice after some time of working can be adjusted accordingly. Additionally, the users can be given permissions to access the local database from time to time. The local and remote databases are protected by Firewalls. Accounting One dedicated client workstation is to be assigned to accounts. All information regarding clients, their premium accruals will be available from the web server to the Accounts Departments. They can download such information and maintain their ledgers, folios, and books including the day-to-day expenses, pay rolls of the staff on the Tally software. The permissions to access the Accounts Sections database only rest with Administrator of Accounts section and Bill Smith. Human Resource Human Resource is the backbone of any business. Mr. Smith feels that present staff of 14 suffices for the consolidated office. Each staff member is to be given a personal workstation that will be identifiable by his or her name. Seven members of the staff including Mr Smith will be seated on the ground floor and seven will be seated on the first floor. The administrator will give back end support to the agents whose main job is to carry out policy sales and look after administrative functions and data arrangement. Bill Smith will have to initiate training programmes for the employees. These are to be onsite training modules that help the employees to adapt to changes in technology and work style. Recommended Hardware with configuration Server: Apache Version 1.3.33, Operating System Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional with Service Pack of 4.0, CPU 4 x 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon, RAM 2GB SDRAM, Hard Drive 3 x 18 GB SCSI, Ethernet Connection 100 Base T Perl 5.6.1 Asp.NET 4.3.10 w/Zend Optimizer v2.5.7, GCC egcs-2.96,Sendmail 8.12.9,MySQL MySQL 4.0.22 Personal Computers: Pentium 4  >2.0 Ghz, 133 MHZ Front Side Bus (FSB) or faster, ATA 66/100/133, 3 PCI ports, AGP video support, Universal Serial Ports (USB 2.0) support a minimum of 4 ports, Memory 512 MB, Hard Disk 40 GB or greater, Laptop · Intel® Core Duo T2400 Processor (1.83GHz) 1.0GB DDR2 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM, 1 DIMM 80GB Hard Drive, 9.5MM, 7200RPM 14.1 WXGA w/ integrated Intel GMA 950 video, 8X DVD+/-RW w/Roxio Digital Media & Power DVD Internal 56K Modem, Dell Wireless™ 1390 802.11g WLAN mini Card Gigabit Ethernet , Large Nylon Carrying Case, Windows 2000 Professional with Service Pack 4.o Modem Two Eight-Port Switches Network Card. Costing Available Finance: £ 40000 Tentative Expenditure One Time Investment Item/Cost Total Two Laptops for £440 apiece £ 880 12 PCs at £ 300 apiece £ 3600 Networking Installation Cost £ 1000 Web Development Charges £ 1000 Two Laser Printers at £ 100 apiece £ 200 Modem £ 20 Two Switches at £20 apiece £ 40 Domain Name Booking Charges £ 30 Windows 2000 Professionals license £ 1000. Total £ 5770 Recurring Charges Charges for 512 Kbps Internet leased line £ 20 per month Two Cell phones lines £ 20 per month Thus only a small amount of Finance available is used in bringing about revolutionary changes in Talikser office. This allays Bill Smith’s fear that Information Technology comes at a heavy price. Linux Based System The hardware configuration and web applications for the Linux system will be quite similar to the Windows based system. However, the website will be designed and developed in PHP than Asp.net. The Linux based network will also be in bus topology in a client-server environment. In case of Linux operating system a whole time network administrator is employed by Talisker to install and create network configuration. The Linux system is cheaper than the Windows. The network administrator will configure the IP address of the network. The administrator will further categorise the clients according to the IP address of the server and domain of Talisker office will come in existence. The network administrator will give all permissions to Mr Smith and restricted permissions to the office administrators and agents. The Proxy Server, as mentioned above, will manage the Internet connectivity. All web applications, network environment functions the same as mentioned in the Windows section. Linux vs Windows Cost: Although Linux operating system is comparatively cheaper than Windows but it entails heavy installation costs. Its configuration is difficult and an appointment of whole time Network Administrator is a necessity. User Friendly: Windows is a user-friendly platform. The switchover staff members, used to working on Windows 3.1 to Windows Professional is easy. However, Linux system will involve a lot of training of the staff members. Compatibility: Most PC manufacturers make products compatible with Microsoft systems. Windows platform is also more compatible to most of the devices like printers and laptops. But Linux operating system may often have compatibility problems with devices and peripherals. Database Backup: It is more difficult to create database backup with Linux than Windows. Small Environment Issues: Linux operating system is not the right choice for a small business environment. It is used in big business establishments or in Reseach and Development facilities where there is a dedicated team of computer and network professionals. Due to the aforesaid problems a clear case is made in favour of adoption of Windows 2000 operating system is the Talisker office. Section B From Section B, we are opting for Questions 3, 5, and 8. 3. Introduction of Local Area Network and creation of website and web application technology is fraught with points of failure. But cost effective steps can be taken to reduce the chances of failure. a. The single most prevalent threat to a LAN is from the Computer Viruses. Networks accessible to Internet are vulnerable to virus attacks. However, anti-virus packages and Firewall can be installed on the proxy server to pre-empt virus-induced breakdowns. Firewalls can be updated on monthly, weekly, or daily basis. Firewall package can be purchased once and got renewed on yearly basis. b. At times the remotely hosted website can become inaccessible due to Internet traffic problems. In such an eventuality, the local SQl server database comes in handy. c. Networks often develop physical snags. If the snag is it a critical point likes near or on the proxy server it can halt Internet access of all workstations in the LAN. A snag can also disrupt the local information sharing mechanism. Annual Maintenance Contract can be given to a local hardware agency to keep the Local Area Network in working order. d. Loss of data in hard disk crash can never be ruled out. However, we can physically create backup of the on CDs with no additional costs. e. There is threat perception of a website hacking. This may result in theft of important information. Firewalls have to be built around the website to protect its damage at the hands of hackers. f. LAN technology always has the fear of becoming obsolete. In such an eventuality new technology has to be made operational as soon as possible. g. One big disadvantage of establishing a Windows based system is that in case, in future, we find it incompatible to our work requirements; it becomes difficult to move to Linux operating system. Windows has a very static approach but Linux system is flexible and can meet any major expansion or change over requirements. Cost Factors for Maintenance of Network and Meeting security concerns Tentative Expenditure 1. Anti Virus Package for LAN £ 100 2. Firewall for the website £ 100 3. Annual Maintenance Contract (annual) £ 5000 4. Small Miscellaneous Items £ 100 Total cost £ 5300 Question No. 5 Information handling is the key to running a successful business enterprise. In our current set up we will be gathering a large database of prospective clients. No information in our database is redundant or superfluous. In fact, the importance of information doesn’t lie in its careful collection but it lies in its use for strategic enhancement of operations. The database can be used to make long term and short-term marketing policies. The software applications that can be developed to use this data for furtherance of the interests of Talisker are enumerated below. a. An application can be developed to keep in constant touch with the customers. For example, if a client shows interest in a medical policy today, he may need a car insurance policy tomorrow. The clients who do not opt for any of Talisker’s policy may like to do so in future. Talisker can send greetings to such clients. Fresh, lucrative incentives initiated by insurance carriers can be sent to the clients and such prospective clients from time to time. b. Another application can be developed to show trends in policy selling. The database can show which kind of policy is selling more and in which particular region. It will also show major trends relating to the age groups, and income group of clients. It can indicate thrust areas, drawbacks and loopholes in conduct of business. c. A reminder/ alert application can be generated in case of those clients who wish to defer buying of a particular policy. On the date specified by client that he has given to buy a policy, an alert is sent to Bill Smith/agent. The sale of policy can again be pursued by staff on that particular date. c. A software application can be created to generate statistical reports and hence make performance appraisals of employees. Conversion rates for policy selling can be calculated. Such statistical reports can strengthen human resource management. d. Talisker can also generate a monthly newsletter and send it to its clients on email to keep a constant touch with them.. It can also contain updates from the different insurance carriers. Question 8 Bill Smith’s approach towards Business Management is technology oriented. Talisker Insurance Agency has a Website and an efficient Windows 2000 based network in the office. The staff members work on latest computer configurations, peripherals, desktop publishing software, and graphics. The maintenance of database is efficient. This is the right time for Talisker to step out and seek clients in other cities. Taliskerinsurance.com can be expanded into an e-commerce portal. The web presence of Talisker can ensure web publicity without entailing any further costs. The Home Page of the portal can carry strip advertisements, banner advertisement and pop-ups of lucrative policies of Insurance Carriers. The website can also carry out online surveys to thus enhance it database of prospective clients. The prospective clients, who want an insurance policy through Talisker can register themselves online at Taliskerinsurance.com. Negotiations and quotations can be carried out online by the staff. A chat forum can be introduced along with the e-commerce section to handle queries and suggestions of clients. Client-Agent sessions can be held online. Sales of policies too can be closed online. Payments and premiums deposit can be done on the Internet. For online payments Talisker can use the service of a third party financial service provider. Queries and suggestions regarding the insurance carriers can be forwarded to them. For corporate, institutional clients, or large groups of clients in distant areas, Talisker can pitch its sales through online orientation sessions using web cams and chat messengers. Documents can be submitted online thus decreasing the courier and freight costs. The staff can support the online sales with physical sessions wherever they are necessary. Similarly claims can also be handled online. The claims can be forwarded to respective insurance carriers. An agent can make a productive long distance trip for make physical verification of claims and meet prospective clients on the same trip. The current changes introduced in Talisker’s Information Technology infrastructure will serve the grand prospect of promoting it locally as well as in other cities. The present technology set-up is the most cost effective launch pad and productive means for Talisker to launch countrywide operations make it competitive with larger insurance companies. Figure 1 ­ Figure 2 Bibliography Tanenbaum, Andrew S, 1999, Computer networks, Prentice Hall, New Jersey. Sunderic, D & Woodhead, T 2001, SQl Server 2000: Stored procedure programming, The McGraw Hill Companies, Inc. New York. Ivens, Kathy, 1998, Windows NT Troubleshooting, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Glenn, W & Chellis, James, 2001 MCSE server administration, Sybex Inc., USA Strebe, Matthew & Perkins, Charles 2001, Internet information server 4, Sybex Inc., USA. Carter, Alan R. 2003, Windows 2000 MCSE study system, Hungry Minds Inc, U.S Read More