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Organisational context: Existing Multinational computer systems

' ... Well I originally joined X-Group as graduate so I've been with X-Group 15 years and I've spent the last 7 or 8 years in this Multinational Operations Department doing international underwriting. ... So I've seen various attempts at implementing computer type systems and this has been the biggest and the one where the biggest resources had been allocated to it. There have been two or three stages before this one. ...

When I joined the department about 8 years ago, ... there was no real database at all, when they gave me my list of cases it was written down on a piece of paper ... The problem was that we were a one-off department and still are, well a one-off company now, but then we were a one-off department sitting in London with a responsibility for international underwriting where everywhere else in XUK was simply domestic ... [and] all of the commercial and household stuff was locked into a nice IBM mainframe but we had nothing ...

And the problem was that the people who in a sense was then the North of England, didn't say to themselves we must sort something out for what was then known as ISD (International Service Division) in terms of what we need. A related problem was that the two senior members of the management ... who ran ISD, had no inclination or awareness of the needs of having a computer system at all. And therein lies the problem that nobody, but nobody, could see the need at management level for a computer system, and here we were dealing with data of all sorts and descriptions on huge accounts, huge premiums and nothing being captured. In the end it was an underwriter, ... because we were all pulling our hair out, because as ever it was an under-resourced department, rushing around doing a million and one things, who designed a computer system simply to capture the underwriting side not the accounts or the claims ... It was he that designed, you know, a system based on Lotus 1-2-3 and it was basically a four screen process which ... just captured underwriting data and could generate therefore reports which went to accounts. ...

So that was the first stage of computers in the department, and then it was refined a little bit and all of that was transferred down onto a Q&A system, because the chap left and went to another company and somebody else ... again an underwriter [Keith] with the inclination ... picked up the reins and no-one at this stage you see was calling in people in either XUK or Group to say come down here with your resources and sort this out please, no-one was doing it because no-one seemed to be really perceiving the need at management level.'

X059 page 001.02 (tape 03.2.08) Donald Notes/Tape 24/08/94

Social influence: Organisation: Culture
Technical influence: IT environment: Existing systems


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