HED Moves Towards SOA With LANSA CRM Solution

Hayhurst Elias Dudek (HED) is one of the largest independently-owned insurance brokers in Canada. They specialize in unique and cost-effective insurance and risk management solutions since 1982. The biggest challenge for HED was the multitude of legacy files and code. This required then to move to a relational database structure using modular design techniques with reusable components and an SOA approach. HED turned to LANSA. Their new LANSA-based Insurance Management System and Customer Relationship Management (IMS-CRM) system keeps track of all prospect and customer activity. The solution helps manage HED's accounts and provides easy communication within departments. Any communication is saved as an activity for an account and the IMS-CRM tightly ties together all of HED's business solutions. HED uses LANSA Integrator SOAP Web services to interface between its System i CRM and insurance systems, the .NET/SQL Server web site, and the TotalGuard quoting engine. They used an SOA approach and modular design techniques while trying to maximize the reusable components of the Visual LANSA Framework environment. HED is now moving to a relational corporate data model with all rules and attributes defined in the LANSA Repository. This is a massive undertaking that requires data conversion at multiple departments and levels. But by using a phased implementation, they can now perfectly get a handle on the corporate data model and SOA architecture.