Sovereign - Agile Development Methods

Agile development methods delivers a pinpoint solution for Sovereign’s data management issues.

“In the space of 14 weeks Fronde created a bespoke administration system (on time and budget) that was clean, automated, efficient and accurate. It reduced our error rates and increased our turn around times considerably. Long term this will reduce administration costs and increase customer satisfaction.”

Tim Deane, Head of Workplace Business and project sponsor, Sovereign

Client

Sovereign is one of New Zealand’s leading financial services providers, offering a comprehensive range of insurance, home loan and investment products. It asked Fronde to develop a software solution that consolidated existing data stores and facilitated the effective management of policy information.

Challenge

Sovereign’s Workplace Business team was being crippled by a cumbersome data management system, costing the company time and money, and impacting productivity
Policy information was spread across hundreds of complicated, difficult to navigate spreadsheets
Since the policies were not linked to a central database, information was widely duplicated, making processing labour intensive.

Solution

The Agile development methodology that Fronde utilised (DSDM framework) provided Sovereign with the security of a fixed cost and timeframe, whilst also accommodating a constantly evolving project scope.
Agile development methods enabled Sovereign stakeholders to drive the direction of the final solution by prioritising key deliverables.
The iterative development approach ensured the most important components of the solution were deployed first, engendering client confidence and increasing the likelihood of project success.
Using Microsoft technologies, the Liberty solution consolidated hundreds of existing spreadsheets containing complex calculations into one streamlined database engine.

Business benefits

Sovereign’s case managers can now easily access scheme and member policy information, improving efficiency, and customer service.
The solution also provided the workplace solutions group with the functionality to review insurance and benefit schemes quickly and accurately.

To read full detail, download Sovereign Agile Develoment Methods (pdf 81kb)