Decerto

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a manager of IT projects supporting sales and service of insurance sales networks

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Decerto, and what were your goals?

Our task was to prepare and implement a new on-line application responsible for the sale of insurance packages in accordance with the latest UX trends. An additional task was to streamline and digitize service processes.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Decerto is known on the market thanks to numerous implementations of applications supporting sales in the insurance sector.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

The project began with the design of functional screens of individual places of the application. After the mock-ups were approved, the process analysis phase began. In parallel, an integration analysis phase was carried out. The project is conducted in an agile methodology. 2 week sprints ended with tests and acceptances. The whole project was carried out remotely.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

There were more than 10 people on the main team including a project manager, technology leader, administrator and tester.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Thanks to the supplier's experience in the insurance sector, the implementation of the platform was perfect. The supplier advised on process optimization.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

They had exemplary project management. All elements of the agile methodology have been preserved. Meeting deadlines, escalating problems.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Project management, flexible approach to the client, agile work conduct.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

There are no such areas

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

COO, Board Member. Responsible for IT Software, IT Infrastructure, PMO, Security and Digitalization.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Decerto?

In case of company acquisition: Migrate insurance products, business processes and legacy data from one company architecture to the other. The legacy data was of insufficient quality and it had to be repaired. The business transaction balance should be in line.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Many years of cooperation and experience in similar projects. High knowledge of life insurance systems.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

Initially, legacy and target business processes and data had to be analyzed to find the way of migrating products, processes and customer and policy data. Then a migration project had to be prepared. In general idea and in details also. Each process and object has been analyzed field by field. There was developed dedicated custom tool for data migration, which: Import legacy data Validate legacy data Fix legacy data Transform it to the target model Export data to target system Prepare a migration raport There was several dozen test and trial migration run.

There was long technical and business tests of the migrated data. Finally the final migration into production environment was done. On every stage of the project there was cooperation between Decerto team and Generali team. Many technical and business decisions had to be made. Many business plans and goals depended on the success of this project. It was very important to keep the balance sheet of financial transactions of the migrated data.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

• Senior project manager
• Junior project manager analyst
• analyst
• tech-lead
• 5 developers.

Cooperation with Generali internal development team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Migration was done on time within one weekend. There was no serious errors and missing. All business processes began to be handled without difficulty in the normal scheduled mode. We did not lost any data and most of it get higher quality and consistency. The balance sheet of financial transactions was kept in line.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The Decerto team worked in our office and we have been working in daily cooperation mode. Even though it was two teams, we worked as if it were one team. Both at the management and development level. Communication and mutual understanding was a fundamental factor of success.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Decerto coped with a very difficult project. Consultants performed his duties conscientiously. They knew the details of data and processes very thoroughly. They understood our business processes and the specifics of our company very well. They made it on time without a single day shift.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

They should collect new experiences in the big data migration area.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm a Head of Motor Business within insurance company in Poland, part of VIG group. We have c.a. 2,5% of market share in the motor insurance, with appetite to grow.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Decerto, and what were your goals?

We have hired Decerto to implement modern and elastic tariff engine. Our goal was to have a tool that will allow for the elastic tariff management, including: addition of new tariff parameters, updates of multipiers, inclusion of advanced functions.

SOLUTION

How did you select Decerto and what were the deciding factors?

We have made wide market check (USA, PL, Europe) - both in terms of box sollutions and sel-made items. Hyperon - box sollution of Decerto had very good references from the market, additionally we knew that we can adopt it easily towards our individual requirments. Value for money was also attractive. As time of implementation was important - Hyperon was best fit.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Integration of tariff engine, adaptation towards our needs (stucture of parameters, external databases), advise on sollution scope and timing

How many people from the Decerto team worked with you, and what were their positions?

at least 4 employees: Board Member, Tech. analitics, developers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We improved time to market for tariff changes, no IT is needed for implementation of new functions / discounts / parameters.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We communicated through online / Teams & Webex mostly, plus tasks in JIRA. Cooperation was very smooth, Decerto was always good at analyzing the potential impact, suggesting risks and improvement areas for the platform. Out of 4 vendors only 2 met deadlines - Decerto among them.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

High level of advise; close to consultancy,; solid experience in our (insurance) industry - what strongly and positively influenced cooperation; high quality of employees (proactive, engaged, experienced, eager to help).

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I could imagine development of Decerto towards architecture & business related advisory, with consultancy on target models.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm IT Director in SeaChange responsible for global delivery of IT systems, infrastructure, and services. We have 250 employees worldwide, our HQ is in Watham, US and we have IT hub located in Warsaw, Poland. I was personally responsible for this project in our organization.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Decerto?

To manage, develop and optimize our solution based on Atlassian systems - JIRA and Confluence. Both systems are key resources for our work management and project management in our company.

What were your goals for this project?

Get whole Atlassian environment to the next level - make it stable, resilient, and fast. Integrate all Atlassian's system together to build efficient working environment to support our software development process.

SOLUTION

How did you select Decerto?

By recommendation from employee.

Describe the project in detail.

Cleaning up after sloppy migration of DCC Labs Jira to main SeaChange Jira. Migration prepared by outsource consultants Improve stability and performance Fix recurring problems with Jira Portfolio and Tempo Timesheets plugins Design time tracking and worklog approval process Prepare and implement solution to provide secure access to Jira and Confluence without struggling with VPN Migrate small public Jira instance (used by customers) to main SeaChange Jira – profit: developers don’t have to work in two Jiras, some tickets don’t need to be synchronized, savings on additional license and server Consolidation of several Jira and Confluence instances into one, central system.

That was part of bigger consolidation of IT systems after merge with ‘Xstream’ Migration of Jira and Confluence from Windows Server, MS SQL (Azure) to Ubuntu, Postgress (AWS) environment – profit: better performance and stability, savings on OS and database licenses Design and implementation of Customers management (Atlassian Crowd used) – profit: separation of internal and external accounts, full control on Customer accounts by Technical Support Team, savings on licenses, Knowledge Base for customers in separated Confluence Space Continual improvements on performance, permissions and integrity and direct end user support

What was the team composition?

System Administrator, Jira Consultant and business manager

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We achieved our initial goals and significantly enhanced this solution. Atlassian stack is now a backbone of our software development process and internal communication. During this time, we defined many additional small goals and targets, and Decerto team achieved all of them.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Very effective and direct communication, without any unnecessary hassle.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Subject matter expert knowledge. Their good understanding of our business goals and ability to transform them into technical actions is impressive. Proactive approach - self-managed, goal oriented with "can do attitude"

Are there any areas for improvement?

Not really. Maybe only to continue involvement into Atlassian related projects, in order to keep this knowledge up to date with newest systems, for example OpsGenie.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm CIO in NOTUS Finanse S.A. Our company is one of the TOP 3 mortgage broker in Poland. We hire over 1500 people and have offices across whole country.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Decerto, and what were your goals?

We aggregate offers from different banks. This offers frequently changes, usually with short notice, so we has to respond very quickly with changes in an offer but also sales process. During preparation to project we dedcided to hire highly-qualified experts from Decerto to take a part in development of new tool supporting us in that everyday work.

SOLUTION

How did you select Decerto and what were the deciding factors?

We cosidered Decerto along with 6 other vendors. Our goal was to find highly-qualified specialist with differnt skill to developers team. Decerto presented a lot of well fitted person in competitive price. In additional Decerto presented Hyperon studio, which could be applied to manage offers definitions.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

As a methodology SCRUM was chosen to ensure tight cooperation between business and developers. We started with discovery workshop to prepare analysis and interface mockups. After preparation step development started concurrent with environment definition. In middle-time we took decision about use Hyperon Studio from Decerto instead Camunda or Drools.

After 6 months the software was ready for first public release, following 3 months team was focused on delivering the rest of planned functionalities but also quickly responding to real users’ feedback on how a system should work.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

There were 5 people in the core team, including teach lead with back-end skills, 2 other back-end developers, dev ops and automatic tester. Other resources were delivered by other vendors. Product Owner and Scrum Master were chosen directly from NOTUS resources.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The final project result is a system that:

• Can be configured by the sales manager on the customer side
• Have elastic configuration range
• Is intergarted with other used in company systems like CRM,
• Have REST API which could be used in future intergrations,
• Clients data is provided only once to fill in several bank applications
• Have client portal,
• Allows sending required documents online in GPDR compliant way
• And from business scope: significant drop in time to service one customer

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

The project management was a challenge. At the beginning we had members from different vendors who didn't know so many about mortgages. Work was organized in 2-week sprints and team worked in our office. To communcate we used Slack and GitLab. There was many issues which complicated our jobs, including COVID-19.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Communication between Decerto members and care around them by their Company was impressive. Their technical prowess was confirmed during the work and it reminded us why we chose them in the first place.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Not every goal was achieved during project, i.e. complete documentation or full CI/CD implementation. Few deliverables was removed from primary scope due to delays in the exceution of tasks without significant impact to final product.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the operational director in the Sales Support Department responsible for the Warta sales platform. One of the leaders on the insurance market.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Decerto, and what were your goals?

Our sales path was almost complete digital, but in the end, we needed a customer signature. Due to COVID-19, we quickly needed the ability to conduct all sales digitally. The goal was to create an additional step in our sales to ensure that the customer was who he claimed to be and got acquainted with the insurance scope and terms & conditions.

SOLUTION

How did you select Decerto and what were the deciding factors?

Decerto is our constant IT supplier. We had a good track record of past successful projects. Time was critical here, but we couldn't compromise on quality. I was sure that Decerto would deliver both time and quality.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

The first step was a joint analysis of our law department and the Decerto specialist of technical possibilities and law requirements. We agreed on the business process that then Decerto has implemented. The main deliverable was a new customer portal. The client logs in to that Portal using data delivered to him via email, checks insurance scope, terms & conditions, accepts the new agreement and then is forwarded to fast digital payment. The Portal track each customer step for future evidence purposes.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

1 Project Manager, 1 Architect, 1 Business Analyst, 4 Developers, 1 Tester

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The solution was very well received. 90% of users rate it good or very good and would recommend it to their friends. Every day we finalize several thousand transactions through the customer portal.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

It was a difficult and intense time. The cooperation was smooth and efficient. We communicated mostly using Zoom and Slack. Project documentation was kept in JIRA and Confluence.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Flexible approach to problem-solving under challenging conditions.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

none

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am working for Nationale Nederlanden. It is leading polish insurance company responsible for individual life, GI, group, pension insurance. I am head of software development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Decerto?

We needed an experienced company to deliver software from scratch. We were not interested in buying one of software 'from the shelf' as we have seen compativie advantage to have one prepared exactly for our needs.

We had internal development capabilities but we needed the knowledge about best trends in group insurance sales process and vendor who is already experienced in launching such applications

What were your goals for this project?

BR: Perfect UX, and process easy to use in every day work. User Acess Management, easy configuration of products, complex configuration of underwriting

Tech spec: java / react/ hyperion as configuration engine, integration with core policy system

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

RFP, where 3-6 companies were considered. Deciding factors were connected with insurance experience, group business experience, price, readiness to transfer code rights

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Projects was delicered in scrum methodology. Decerto delivered the software from scratch but agreed to have also our programmers in the team (to let us more effective knowledge transfer).

Our people were responsible for integration part. Decerto was responsible for business reqs specification, building effective sales process, coding, having modern UX, testing, documentation

What was the team composition?

There were up to 12 people onboard - mainly programmers, supported by analytic/testers and experienced insurance expert in main analytic role. Size of the team has changed over time because Decerto was very commited to delivery date and wanted to speed up software delivery

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Software built by Decerto is curently the most open for configuration Group Sales platform in polish market. Although at the beginning our sales force received system as complicated - after few improvements it was accepted and is used every day. GOP system gave us opportunity to switch from difficult to maintain and change offline caluclators to very modern online system which is main tool in group insurances

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Both parties tried to work according to Agile agreeement which promoted timely delivery. As in all scrum projects - scope of the project was briefly described on a high level. Both parties tried to manage details to:

1. achieve main goal (MBP)
2. include critical changes apeeared while project delivery
3. deliver on time and in cost

What did you find most impressive about this company?

In my opinion the most impressive in Decerto is their flexibility and customer focus. They were focused not only on the deadline and scope but also on building something they would be proud of.

Are there any areas for improvement?

In all complex software delivery projects there are areas for improvement. In my opinion in GOP project there were lack of medium term delivery date perspective monitoring while project as both vendor and our team were focused mainly on nearest 2-3 sprints

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We provide software that helps companies connect their enterprise software systems and monitor and mange those integrations. I am a product manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Decerto?

The Decerto team built digital assets that help our customers to connect to different software systems more easily.

What were your goals for this project?

Produce content that enables our users to accomplish their use cases quickly and easily.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Another team at my company had worked with Decerto. We interviewed the team prior to starting.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Part 1 was to develop integration projects using our software. For this, the team carefully reviewed 3rd party API documentation and used our tools to build, test, and document their integration projects.

Part 2 was to develop robust unit tests and integration tests to onboard their work into our deployment pipeline.

Part 3 was to develop custom Java-based connectors for connecting with third party APIs. The team built support for multiple authentication mechanisms, reconnection and timeout parameters, and data validation.

What was the team composition?

1 project manager + 3 Java developers at a time. We ultimately worked with 5 developers, but only 3 at a time.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The templates that Decerto produced have led to multiple customer deals. They also significantly reduce the time required for users to accomplish their use case.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The team provided daily updates and tracked their work carefully. The project manager regularly offered helpful advice on how to communicate more effectively using Jira, Slack, and other communication tools.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Since the team was pioneering a new type of content that connected many different types of software systems, it was hard to predict at the beginning of the project what kind of technical obstacles would be encountered.

The team did a good job of communicating those obstacles as they arose and problem-solving them with us. We appreciated their continuous enthusiasm. The team collaborated not just on the development but on the planning of the work. They participated in writing specs for each of the content pieces, and these specs were helpful for us to define the value of the work and the automated testing required.

Are there any areas for improvement?

_

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Life insurance company Aegon TU na Życie S.A. IT Director

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Decerto?

System development and support

What were your goals for this project?

One common tool for digital sales process

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

tender process

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

New sales digital front-end for life agents covering end-to-end sales process starting from needs analysis of a client through offer proposal ending in policy creation and electronic payment

What was the team composition?

• 1 project manager
•  3 analyst
• 1 UIX designer
• 10 developers
• 1 tester

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

one common sales proces for tied agents channel

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

waterfall methodology

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their insurance market know-how was impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement?

planning