CGI France provides jalmaNet with the first tool for the design and marketing of healthcare insurance contracts on the Internet

“We primarily chose CGI because of its knowledge of the insurance sector, its understanding of our needs, its accurate timetable estimates…the methodology proposed and the excellent climate of trust that prevailed throughout the negotiations.”

Hélène Ruggeri, Co-founder, jalmaNET

Created in 1997, French company Jalma has become the benchmark among consultants of health and personal insurance companies. In 2000, the company launched jalmaNET, a firm that specializes in the creation and exploration of transactional solutions and content to encompass all aspects of the customer relationship on the Internet in the health insurance domain. The new company planned to extend its activities to the contingency fund and savings domain in 2002.

The Challenge
Attentive to its clients’ concerns, jalmaNET sought to offer all healthcare managers upgradable, independent and easily accessible Internet transaction tools within a secure environment. It also wanted one of these tools, assur_services, to incorporate all of the processes associated with the design and marketing of insurance contracts on the Internet, while offering other services that included product creation, rating, evaluation and on-line underwriting. It was also necessary that assur_services allow for expansion to contingency funds.

The database would have to support 50,000 policy holders in the underwriting bases, 5,000 insurance and human resources professionals, and thousands of transactions daily, with as many as 1,000 of these occuring sumultaneously.

JalmaNET entrusted CGI with the development of assur_services. “We primarily chose CGI because of its knowledge of the insurance sector, its understanding of our needs, its accurate timetable estimates, its experience with this type of architecture, the methodology proposed and the excellent climate of trust that prevailed throughout the negotiations,” explained Hélène Ruggeri, Co-founder of jalmaNET and Project Director.

CGI’s main challenges included very tight project deadlines, a workload that was still in the definition stages and a complex, industry-specific project.

The Strategy
CGI initially played a consulting and analyzing role as the project work specifications were established. It also coordinated the integration and transition to production with the site hosting supplier. CGI’s iterative approach and use of the Edifice methodology allowed jalmaNET to develop its application and define its specifications as the project evolved.

The rating of individual and collective health insurance products is calculated on an actuarial basis and is highly dependent on complete, regularly updated data.

The evaluation was conducted according to the quality test and in comparison with other products on the market. The underwriting application would allow the appropriate product to be found, an estimate to be calculated, redemptions to be simulated and the subscription registered in less than 10 minutes. The creation of products would generate contractual and peripheral documents for individual health products. The structure of these documents was standardized and their content made configurable. The rating, evaluation and subscription services were launched on October 15, 2001. The product creation service followed on December 1, 2001. All of these services were delivered as turnkey solutions.

“The 1000 person-day project lasted one year,” explained Hélène. “The teams worked very closely together and daily discussions were held to promote this collaboration. The consulting role, particularly that played by CGI during the development of detailed specifications, was very much appreciated by the jalmaNET teams.”

The Technology

• HTML and Java
• CGI component-based system
• Apache under UNIX, JSP Tomcat with SSL protocol, Oracle 8i

The Results
Throughout the project, CGI demonstrated enormous flexibility and responsiveness. The involvement of its teams allowed jalmaNET to gain, on time and on budget, an application that responds to all of its requirements.

Its leading-edge technological environment has made this project a key benchmark in the healthcare sector. Assur_services offers four specific, original services to insurance professionals a well as a customized administration service that allows jalmaNET to manage user profiles and support organizations. Highly satisfied with CGI’s services, jalmaNET is currently marketing the assur_services application and plans to develop other modules over the medium term, such as on-line subscription to contingency funds and a data administration application.

“CGI contributed to the creation of the only on-line healthcare actuarial and subscription tools specifically developed on the Internet,” concluded Hélène. “Some of these tools, such as those for contract creation or evaluation, are unique on the healthcare insurance market.”