Case Studies

Based in US, this is a software company that sells Claims Management System as a SAAS product designed for the needs of Adjusters. It mainly services clients in US, UK and Canada. Recently it was also ranked as one of the leading CMS application in the industry. Although the client has their own team for support, Rheal is their primary software development partner.

• As with many products that have organically evolved over an extended period of time the CMS solution was beginning to show its age and the overhead associated with modifying the legacy code base was becoming troublesome. Inefficiency, instability and an extended development and testing cycle requirements for even the most basic enhancements pushed release cycles out, increased internal costs and was causing the product to fall behind its competitors in the market.
• The client has a large customer base and many customizations for the customers were done directly at the code level. Due to this the code maintenance or enhancing the same was becoming a nightmare and required full time developers just to manage this process alone.
• The site was very susceptible to SQL injection attacks as the existing code did not employ stored procedures leaving itself very vulnerable to these SQL injection attacks.
• Adjusters, while visiting catastrophe sites after storms and hurricanes, were not able to access the system due to non-availability of the internet hence were not able to update the claims information in real time.
• Data from thousands of claims were entered manually every day even though the data was available in an electronic format. This was a very tedious method of entering claims involving more time and resources. It took take at least a minute to manually enter each claim into the system.
• Over 5,000 claims related documents and pictures were uploaded daily by around 100+ users which consumed around 3GB of disk space adding to the server cost.
• Whenever the users had to upload claim related documents and pictures from the catastrophe site, they used to email it to the data entry operator at their office, who would then save the documents locally on a PC, login to CMS and then upload the documents. This was a time consuming process for them as they had to do it for every single user working on the various catastrophe sites related to every single claim.

• Rheal redeveloped the code from ASP to latest version of .NET using an n tier architecture. The rewritten code is was properly structured and eliminated the chances of SQL injection.
• We devised a new methodology for implementing and providing client customizations/enhancements through access levels stored in the database. An interface was further designed control the access level for every customization all customers. This eliminated the need for customer based exceptional code which led to higher maintainability of the code.
• Rheal also developed a desktop based application which would allowed the adjuster to download all the claim information on his or her PC before even visiting the catastrophe site. While at the catastrophe site, the adjusters were now able to work on all aspects of the claim without having the need of any internet connectivity. Upon returning to the office, the adjusters were able to be sync the saved data back into CMS web application. This led to the adjusters saving a lot of time maintaining and entering the same claim information twice.
• We also designed and developed another tool to fetch, parse and insert the data available in the electronic form which was earlier being entered manually. This completely eliminated all the manual entry of claims data thereby saving the client substantial costs pertaining to manual data entry.
• We also developed a Windows service which was installed on the application server that archived the documents and pictures related to the infrequently used old claims to the cloud .This cloud based solution led to savings of over 50% compared to existing one.
• Rheal also developed a customized plugin for MS Outlook which helped the users to directly upload the documents from within Outlook into the CMS without having the need to log into the CMS separately. This solution again led to a reduction in manual data entry work and a substantial saving for the client.

Rheal helped the client to redevelop their product and made it robust, scalable and impervious to DDoS attacks. The new architecture has allowed for greater flexibility in providing custom features to clients based on access levels rather than hard coded functionality. We have automated a myriad of processes and simplified the complex workflow thereby eliminated all the manual or redundant data entry work. As a result, the client has been able to widen his customer base while at the same time decrease their costs.