CASESTUDY
Real-world business technology
stories from the INN files
Policy Admin System Revamp
After an award-winning multi-year project, Farmers Alliance Mutual
Insurance is revamping its core policy processing system for its
commercial, general liability and homeowners’ lines. By Carrie Burns
As the VP of IT with McPherson, Kan.-based Farmers Alliance Mutual Insurance Co. (FAMI), Andy Edwardson knows
a few things about successful system
overhauls.
In the past few years, Edwardson has
overseen a complete overhaul of FAMI’s
core systems, in which he employed a
variety of approaches. (See “Project
Timeline Year Milestones,” right.)
To replace FAMI’s policy administration system, Edwardson used a phased
approach by line of business and state.
This was in contrast to the big-bang approach taken earlier with other core
systems.
For Edwardson, the insight derived
from the sea-change strategy to overhaul several core systems at once caused
him to focus on how execution of this
strategy would impact all stakeholders.
As a result, his team created the “iFAMI”
approach, which won the insurer the
2009 Celent Model Carrier designation.
That large project, which the insurer named iFAMI, involved a number of pieces. “Initially, with iFAMI
we were going through the modernization initiative—we refreshed the
billing system, the claim systems and
the policy admin systems. Through
this, we took off down a path with
respect to policy admin, but after
