AXA Canada

AXA Canada chooses CGI to migrate its PeopleSoft application to an Oracle/Unix platform

“This good relationship was made possible through the wide range of PeopleSoft specialists at CGI and the dynamism of the project team. The performance of the application has improved significantly, and we are pleased to report that in the 24 months since this migration, there has been no interruption to our services.”

Johanne Cassis, Senior Vice-President, Planning-Budgets-Results and Corporate Project Office, AXA Canada

With a volume of $1.06 billion in premiums, assets of $2.2 billion and 1,939 employees working for 2,600 brokers, AXA Canada is one of the country’s leading damage insurance companies.

The Challenge
When PeopleSoft decided that as of December 31, 2000, it would no longer support the AS400 platform, AXA Canada found itself facing two problems. “On the one hand, we had to change platforms,” explained Johanne Cassis, Senior Vice-President, Planning-Budgets-Results and Corporate Project Office at AXA Canada. “On the other hand, we did not have sufficient manpower to provide solid technical support. We therefore decided to have a service supplier take charge of this application, and CGI was the company we chose.”

All of the PeopleSoft financial modules used by AXA Canada had been functioning on an IBM AS400 platform. Moreover, PeopleSoft’s timing of the decision left very little time (three and a half months) for CGI’s specialists to evaluate the components that would support AXA’s PeopleSoft modules.

The Strategy
CGI began by studying the costs and benefits of the various available platforms and also conducted an evaluation of material and software needs.

Once AXA Canada decided to implement its PeopleSoft application on the Oracle/Unix platform (60% of PeopleSoft implementations are done on Oracle/Unix), CGI put together a team comprised of its top experts. This multidisciplinary team, unique in the company at the time, was able to offer services such as consultation, applications support, technology management and systems operation and hosting.

A group of 10 people, including three AXA Canada employees (mainly accounting experts who had become financial systems specialists), undertook to migrate the system to the new platform. The transition began with the conversion of the DB2 database from the AS400 platform to an Oracle database installed on SUN servers equipped with Unix operating systems. Next, the team assigned to the project focused on optimizing the performance of the newly migrated application. Logistical and physical improvements were then made to the system.

Transparent communication between CGI and AXA Canada not only allowed the client to clearly define its objectives, but also ensured it remained up to date on issues related to the project delivery.

The Technology

• Oracle database
• Sun/Unix servers

The Results
Thanks to the close collaboration between the AXA Canada and CGI teams, the new system was implemented on schedule in June 2000. All of the work involved in the project was carried out on time and on budget.

“This good relationship was made possible through the wide range of PeopleSoft specialists at CGI and the dynamism of the project team,” concluded Ms. Cassis. “The performance of the application has improved significantly, and we are pleased to report that in the 24 months since this migration, there has been no interruption to our services.”