When the company was formed X depended for many of its main systems upon the mainframes of the local operating companies. These systems were generally reliable but hard to adapt to X's complex case based uderwriting (00188) and made it impossible to get an overall picture of the business (00151, 00829). Systems were lacking to consolidate data to support such activities as underwriting control, customer reporting and management control (00212, 00165, 00151, 00211). X also felt that it needed to assume more direct control over its own IT direction (00151) and that new systems would give it significant competitive advantage and help to avoid potentially important mistakes (00213, 00229, 00297).In Multinational the UK mainframe systems were used for handling financial transactions and UK claims. Different mainframe systems were used by X in each of the other countries where it operated (00829, 00002). Underwriting, underwriting administration, overseas claims and client reporting in the UK were handled via home built PC systems which often duplicated existing mainframe systems and had dubious data quality (00188, 00165, 00829). These systems were developed in response to the timescales and difficulties involved in getting appropriate mainframe systems but conventional system disciplines were not necessarily used (00189).
The lack of control over PC developments was well illustrated by the description of the building of the Q&A system (00889, 00890) but this system was in use for well over three years and was not overly criticised by its users (the main criticisms being the lack of management reporting information) although it was clearly limited by its technical architecture (00511).
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© Clare Tagg 2000