Cloud-First Strategy: Microsoft Exchange to Office 365 Mig ...
On-premises Microsoft Exchange infrastructure migration to ...
Client background & business context
- Channel partner: metafinanz - Informationssysteme GmbH
- End client: one of the biggest insurance companies in the world. The client has a strong international presence covering more than 70 countries and serving 100M clients.
- Project: The client’s goal was to switch from the 5-year-old support team to a new team that would proactively suggest and implement improvements and optimizations to the platform.
Challenges
- Missing or incomplete documentation
- Initial knowledge transfer sessions were performed at very basic level
- Troublesome work shadowing due to delays in access setup
- Initial workload estimation for 20/5 Support team at 1 FTE/shift was not in tune with the actual needs
- Lots of toil (work not automatized, mails overhead, requests not tracked in ServiceNow)
Our approach
metafinanz contracted Accesa for operating the PEGA platform. The main tasks required are:
- monitoring the running system
- application deployments
- restoring the system in case of failure
- updating the system
- providing independent development of improvements for operating the platform.
After initial discussions with the client and our estimations carried out, a 3-month transition period was agreed upon, in which we subsequently held knowledge transfer sessions with the old team as well as requested all access to the systems, platform and documentation beforehand.
The PEGA platform includes several applications for the creation and modification of policies as well as the processing of claims.
Description of operational services:
- Monitoring
- Incident management - ServiceNow (SNOW) ticketing system is used for recording and processing faults
- Service Requests - include the import, testing and deployment of updates to the components of the system environment
- Documentation - review and continuously update the existing documentation for the entire IT system. Accesa ensures that all necessary information (e.g. about configurations, latest changes, elimination of known errors) is available and up to date
- Reporting and escalation
- Innovation and consulting
The IT system contains the following applications: PEGA platform, RedHat JBoss Enterprise Application platform, Linux, Apache Load Balancer, administration of Docker images in AWS Cloud, web service for sending and receiving data from the system of records.
The IT system consists of the following infrastructural environments: development, production and testing. The services are delivered exclusively remote from Romania and there are three types of SLAs in place.
Our approach in 5 steps has helped us ensure a client-centric experience and great impact:
- Step 1. Understand their needs and priorities
- Step 2. Solve problems, work error-free and with short response times right from the start
- Step 3. Secure results and maintain level of quality
- Step 4. Advise our customer on how to set up the system so that ongoing operation poses fewer errors or impede errors
- Step 5. Communicate and share
This translates into the team’s way of working, whereas communication and project management initiatives helped our teams to create a successful partnership with the client
- 1:1’s with the team members performed at regular intervals – currently, there are two weekly project meetings; at the beginning, there where daily stand-ups so we could bring the team to the required level
- Project team meetings in order to align on the priorities and plan the tasks
- Constant & effective communication with the customer and the team
- Honest feedback
Technologies
- PEGA Platform
- RedHat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
- Linux
- Apache Load Balancer
- AWS Cloud
- Docker
- SOR – System of Record
Results
- Major release – A major milestone in the project for the client and for us. The team managed to deliver without proper handover and documentation. No back-up from the old team was available as they were phased out before the release.
- Short ramp-up time: Managed to ramp up in 3 months the knowledge base of 5 years with poor or missing documentation
- Team reconfigured in order to cover the actual workload (the 4h critical time/day covered by 3 people) and a project lead was also allocated
- Successful service transition in 3 months from the old provider (active for 5 years up until transition)
- Process/Workflow improvements regarding monitoring, way of working, deployments and system performance
Say hello
München
c/o Design Offices, Mies-van-der-Rohe-Strasse 6
80807 München, Germany
Phone: +49 89 2154 851 15
Zürich
Wallisellen, Zwirnereistr. 22
8304 Zürich, Switzerland
Phone: +41 44 830 92 30
Cluj-Napoca
Constanta 12, Platinia
400158 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Phone: +40 364 115 115
Oradea
Cetatii Square 1, Oradea Plaza
410520 Oradea, Romania
Phone: +40 364 115 115
Whether you’re interested in our services or you would like to learn more about our company, we are happy to provide you with the information you need.