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8/7/2019 Profile in Success: MMA
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Goals:To develop two business-criticalsystems that would:• Cover pre-sales, sales and
invoicing processes• Handle insurance claims• Include both client/server
workstations for back-office aswell as a web client for salesand agencies
• Run both on employee PCs(client/server) and as batchapplications on the server
• Integrate smoothly with othertechnologies (COBOL, Java, .Net,GraphTalk, etc.)
Challenge:To introduce systemparameterisation and easy-to-useGUI into MMA’s contract handlingand claims systems.
Cincom Solution:Cincom Smalltalk™ (CincomVisualWorks®) – an enterprise-classapplication development anddelivery platform.
Key Results:• The accessible development
environment in VisualWorks was
easy for programmers tocomprehend, enabling them toquickly become productive whileenjoying the system.
• Object-oriented architectureallowed the reuse of programelements, making developmentgo faster and more efficiently.
• Impressive performance satisfies11,300 simultaneous usersglobally, covering 690 productsand serving over 3 million
customers.• Heavy workloads of processingnew contracts, invoices, etc. at theend of the year are handledwithout problems.
Profile in Success: MMA
MMA’s Large Network NoProblem for Cincom Smalltalk™
Developed Solutions Serve 11,300 Global UsersSimultaneously
Founded in 1828, MMA is a French mutual insurance group with aclient base of more than 3 million individuals, professionals,businesses, communities and associations. Because of its dedicationto provide the very best service to its clients, in the 1990’s, MMAsought to develop two systems for handling sales and claims thatcould be easily upgraded as needed with new or improved functions.
In order to do so, MMA required a development platform thatallowed them to incorporate system parameterisation and an easy-to-use GUI. The previous system used a rules-based engine, but it didnot perform well, nor did it allow for the construction of a complexindustry model.
From left: Brigitte Costé de Bagneaux, Olivier Brunet and Stéphane Robine
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After studying Uniface, NS-DK/2 and PAQ CS, MMAchose a solution to be built with Cincom Smalltalk.Jérôme Bruneau, Head of Architecture and Technologiesfor MMA, was responsible for developing the concept of the new technology. He explained that the mostimportant criteria in the search was that the chosenenvironment be a stable platform well-established in themarket. He felt that Smalltalk was an equally mature andflexible development environment that allowed them to
attain their key goals.
Smalltalk also appealed to Jérôme Bruneau because of its abstraction level and its ability to build a meta modelthat permits the construction of a complex industry
model. Compared toother technologies,Smalltalk was alsomore accessibleallowing developersnew to the languageto get a quick start.The reuse of objects
plus the ease andcomfort thedevelopers felt whenusing Smalltalk werevery beneficial. In tests,Smalltalk also proved tobe the best-performingdevelopmentenvironment.
GoalsMMA’s developers wanted to build both the sales and theclaims handling applications on a framework that wouldenable them to reduce the amount of code required formaintenance and upgrades.
The SIGMMA application (Système d’Information duGroupe MMA) is the heart of MMA. It does the contracthandling as well as the management and tracking of pre-sales, sales and invoicing processes. SIGMMAneeded to run both on the back office’s client/serverworkstations and on a web client that the sales team andagencies could access.
The PAVS application (Plate-forme Après-Vente Sinistre)handles the claims end of the business; it requiredtelephony functionality.
Challenges
Although the main systems (SIGMMA and PAVS) are builtentirely in Smalltalk, MMA also runs other applicationswritten in other technologies such as Java, COBOL, .NETand GraphTalk A.I.A. Several of these need to have accessto the Smalltalk applications.
SIGMMA and PAVS also needed to be highly stable andable to handle 11,300 simultaneous users – both front-office and back-office roles. The applications had tosecurely and accurately access records for MMA’s morethan 3 million customers, spread across 320 servers.
Difficulties
Adopting the Smalltalk solution did require someadjustments. Although Jérôme Bruneau was familiar withSmalltalk, most of his developers were not.“Programmers searched for the program and couldn’tfind it as there was no program!” he joked. MMA’sdevelopers had to adapt to object orientation, which forthem was a brand new philosophy.
The language barrier was another issue. Smalltalk’snumerous classes were difficult for the Frenchdevelopers to understand since they were all in English.
Other issues that needed to be taken into accountincluded the following:
• A different treatment of both the client/server andbatch applications.
• The ability for the new applications to handle heavyloads during the end-of-the-year processing of newcontracts, invoices, etc.
• The need to develop a different architecture thatallowed for the parallel treatment of applications byusing different images.
Jérôme Bruneau, Head of Architecture and Technologiesfor MMA
PAVS: Tasks handling
PGS-DAS: Claims management – process set-up
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Development
SIGMMA, the pre-sales, sales and invoicing system, wasdeveloped first. Jérôme Bruneau's team started withthose business-to-business areas where the number of applications was limited and where the applicationswere hugely complex but had little risk of causingperformance issues. These areas (agricultural andcommercial insurance) were also areas that hadn’t yet
been automated much.Once those applications were running smoothly, theteam tackled larger products such as automobileinsurance for consumers. They then moved on to PAVS –the claims system.
Several previous applications had been set up by MMA’sIT department to support automobile and homeownerclaims as well as health insurance claims. These unique,homegrown systems had been developed over the yearsas required.
Today and Tomorrow
SIGMMA and PAVS currently handle MMA’s over 3 millioncustomers and 690 products that are all parameterised inthe Smalltalk systems. All different interfaces – includingto varied MMA-internal groups and external agencies –are parameterised, too. Over 11,300 users from aroundthe world are supported simultaneously on any given day,accessing more than 120 different applications. Forexample, one of the monthly batch processes treats120,000 contracts per hour.
Applications developed are constantly being updated.System modifications have allowed for increased speed,and a special tool was developed to quickly implementnew products.
Today, the new SIGMMA and PAVS systems are runningsmoothly so that the only required ongoing adjustmentsare due to e.g. legal aspects, mergers and acquisitionsor promotional campaigns. Since the current set of applications is highly accepted and performing so well,it was decided that developing a separate webapplication was not worthwhile.
Thanks to Smalltalk, MMA has two systems that canhandle the immense loads that they are required tohandle and can be easily upgraded when new featuresand functions are required.
SIGMMA: Contract handling – amendment of customer data
SIGMMA: Product management – creation panel
SIGMMA: Product management – additional features
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About Cincom Systems, Inc.
For over 40 years, Cincom has provided software andservice solutions for creating and managing customerrelationships throughout the enterprise. Cincom supportsthe Smalltalk developer community, with innovative toolsand environments. The Cincom Smalltalk roadmap is
driven forward by the desire to create leading edgedevelopment technologies and to support ourcustomers’ needs.
Visit www.cincomsmalltalk.com for further information.
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