Conference 35.181::insurance

38.0. "REAL TIME/DIGITAL" by WAV12::GARNER () Thu Jun 09 1988 16:13

The following are presentations "HELPFUL HINTS FOR GENERAL INSURANCE MARKET"
written by Jim Schlote - V.P. Sales & Marketing at Real Time and 
"REAL TIME/DIGITAL" written by Jim Davison - Digital Account Manager

HELPFUL HINTS FOR THE GENERAL INSURANCE MARKET

- Useful hints to assist the Digital Field Sales force position Real Time in the 
  general Insurance Market

****** GENERAL INSURANCE COMPANIES BACKGROUND ******

Types of Insurance:

Typically, they write personal auto, commercial auto, (i.e. fleet), personal 
property, commercial property and commercial bonds.

Real Time has applications software to suit all of these business areas as well 
as a complete accounting and statistical back end system,  a brokers 
reconciliation system, a decision support system and a full financial (G/L) 
system.  Further, Real Time also has application software to support insurance 
brokers and agents.  Sample of our product information follow.  


NOTE:  We do NOT have LIFE Insurance products.

GENERAL INSURANCE PROSPECTING

What to look for:

First of all, you need a data base which tells you how a company is doing.

I would recommend the Canadian Insurance Statistical Issue which comes out in 
June.  All statistical data for Insurance companies writing in Canada is 
displayed in this issue.  (Alternatively, your reps could write the companies 
they are interested in for annual reports.)

What to look for:

GENERAL EXPENSE RATIO higher than average, i.e., > 32%.

POOR OPERATING RATIO, i.e., losses greater than income, or much higher than 
        industry average.  In 1986 108% was average.

A change in management.

A user who is:  a bit of a renegade, will buck the system, a champion, an 
        internal salesman.

AVOID trying to work through the data processing dept., especially in large IBM 
        Shops.

Try to find out what % their data processing expense is represented as a 
percentage of their GROSS written premium.  Industry average is 1.7%.  Anything 
above is a good prospect.

A typical Real Time customer is under 1%, thereby providing a good cost/benefit.

Other key things to find out:

Who is the decision maker?  Is he off-shore?

Do they have a policy dictated from a head office somewhere?  Where?  What is 
the policy?

Are the users frustrated by D.P.'s lack of understanding or delivery?  Why?  
What is the track record of D.P.?

A company will want to look at Real Time for a number of reasons depending on 
the perspective of who you're talking to.  Here is a brief summary:

        CEO             -  Expense Control, $ opportunity

                        -  Eliminate D.P.

        User Executive  -  Application functionality

                        -  Productivity

        Data Processing -  if an IBM shop, they will be threatened (avoid if you 
                           can)

The best prospects are driven by the CEO's and User Executives.  The poorest are 
driven by D.P. Executives.  We sell cost effective solutions which bring 
application level functionality and productivity to the insurance user.  We do 
best in medium sized companies, i.e., in the 30 million to 200 million range.

If you run across a company that fits into our idea prospect category, please 
contact us immediately and we will jointly plan a strategy.

GENERAL INSURANCE COMPANY - PROSPECT QUESTIONNAIRE

Assumption:  The prospect writes General Insurance.

  1.    Are you interested in replacing your existing system?

  2.    Are you interested in enhancing your existing system?

  3.    If "yes" to 1:

        a) What is your present system - Hardware    Software

        b) What lines of business do you write:  Check "  "

           - Auto Insurance
           - Personal Property
           - Commercial Property
           - Bonds
           - other

        c) Do you have/or are you interested in:

           - Billing System
           - Statistical & Accounting System
           - Management Reporting System
           - Ad Hoc Reporting System

  4.    If "yes" to 2:  What particular enhancements are you interested in?

  5.    Would these enhancements be "stand-alone" applications?

  6.    If "yes" to 5:  What interfaces to other systems would be required?

  7.    If "no" to 5:  In what way are these enhancements integrated, into 
        what other system(s)?

  8.    What is your premium volume by line of business?

                Auto            $
                Property        $
                Commercial      $
                Other

  9.    What is your present Data Processing cost (as a percentage of 
        Written Premium)?

******* REAL TIME/DIGITAL POSITIONING ******

In June 1987, Real Time (Div. of Memotec Data) became the first SCMP authorized 
by Digital Equipment of Canada.  Real Time focuses on the General Insurance 
Market (i.e. not Life Insurance) and has for many years.  Real Time is a 
strategic selling partner with Digital in the Insurance space due to their 
recognized strengths in applications, support, and their demonstrated tack 
record over the last seventy years.  We believe the synergy between Real Time 
and Digital will result in dramatically increased sales for both partners.

What follows is a description of what it is to be an SCMP for Digital and how 
    Real Time fills the bill.  There are several important features of the
    Real  Time Insurance solution described in what follows.  Please READ
    THE NOTES that follow the general descriptions -- they contain
    IMPORTANT INFORMATION.

To become an SCMP, Real Time (and any other partner) must satisfy the following 
criteria:

1.  Must have multiple millions of dollars of annual sales volume with Digital.

2.  Must be able to provide clear evidence of financial stability.

3.  Must have good working relationship with Digital.

4.  Must offer for sale high-quality, leadership applications of unique design 
    over which they hold proprietary rights.

5.  Must have a history of customer satisfactions as evidenced by such items as:

        o  Testimonial letters from customers who have used the candidates
           application solution

        o  Low level of end-user complaints to Digital

6.  Must offer this application solution for sale in combination with a Digital
    system which does the following:

        o  runs a standard Digital operating system at a currently supported
           revision level.

        o  is able to run Digital layered software products

        o  is able to communicate to other Digital systems via DECnet.

        o  is able to operate as a node on a VAXcluster

Along with the base level criteria, are application specific criteria which are 
established by the sponsoring industry group.  In a nutshell, the solution must 
enhance the strategic goals of Digital's plans for the industry as well as meet 
a high standard of quality.

WHERE DOES REAL TIME FIT INTO ALL OF THIS?

Real Time satisfies criteria 1-6 with flying colors; however, criteria 6 
(generally considered the architectural conformance clause) is a bigger deeper 
challenge than it appears.  It is in this area that we must understand what
    Real Time brings to the table.

Real Time's General Insurance applications are written for an on-line 
Transaction Processing environment (OLTP); something that Digital  is not noted 
for today.  OLTP systems are characterized as highly reliable, with fail-safe 
file recovery capabilities:  these were the principal design goals in the 
development of Real Time's applications.

o  Real Time develops and sells their insurance solutions on any VAX.
   using standard VMS.

o  Beneath VMS, Real Time uses a proprietary language called ZUG, in which
    their OLTP applications are written. ZUG is considered as a
    development tool for OLTP applications, much like Powerhouse or Oracle
    are considered development tools for more traditional DP applications.
      See NOTE 1 for more about ZUG.

o  Standard Digital and 3rd party applications may be layered on the same VAX
   as the Real Time Insurance applications BUT due to the high-performance    
   nature of Real Time's OLTP applications, this practice should be approached
   cautiously.  If there are lots of other layered packages to be used, Real 
   Time will often recommend that they be installed on another node in the  
   cluster.

o  Real Times uses DECnet and VAX PSI on all of their systems in order to 
   provide access to their applications from terminals across the country.  The 
   combination of Real Time's OLTP AND X.25 communications will allow Real 
   Time to offer a dramatically higher number of simultaneous terminals 
   connected to the VAX than Digital would ever achieve.  In addition to VMS, 
   DECnet and PSI, Real Time makes use of a supplied terminal controller to
   off-load character by character interrupts from the VAX host (this is key to
   Real Time's high transaction rates, and higher terminal connectivity). See 
   Note 2 for more details on terminal connection.

o  Real Time makes use of VAXclusters.  As previously stated, Real Time may
   often recommend that layered software other than the Real Time supplied 
   General Insurance applications reside on a separate mode of a VAXcluster, due
   to performance considerations.  The key is to find out early, all of the 
   applications the customer wants to use, and Real Time will configure the 
   system accordingly.

Real Time's applications operate best on a single CPU:  The do not foresee 
splitting their applications (those using the same set of files) over multiple 
nodes in a cluster.  However, Real Time will take full advantage of our SMP 
software/hardware.  See NOTE 3 for more details.

There remains one area where Real Time's product is limited, but will be 
enhanced in the near future:  The file system.  Due to the high performance 
nature of Real Time's applications, they designed their applications around a 
central file system that is highly reliable, and uniquely structured.  The 
unique file structure doe not (today) allow for non-Real Time applications to 
access the information stored in those files.  Real Time is currently designing 
a process that will allow data stored by their applications to be conveniently 
extracted by a Real Time applied batch process to a format that can be directly 
processed by applications written in any standard Digital language via RMS or 
Rdb.  See NOTE 4 for more details.

Real Time's Insurance solutions have been available on VAX since October 1987.  
Real Time has committed to bring their products closer to Digital's 
architectures in order that we can address a larger segment of the market.  The 
large IBM oriented insurance companies are committed to standards, and in some 
cases, they are willing to pay a premium for standards, and sacrifice some 
performance.  The Real Time/Digital General Insurance solutions is available 
today; it will be enhanced and become even closer to Digital's architectures 
over time.  Feel free to call the Sales and marketing representatives at Real 
Time, or Digital's Account Manager for Real Time if you wish to receive more 
information.

                NOTE 1:     ZUG

   o    Real Time's proprietary development tool 

   o    A 3rd generation language, layered under VMS specifically engineered
        for on-line Transaction Processing (OLTP) applications

   o    A mature product, in its sixth release since 1978

   o    Highly reliable, with fail safe file recovery as a principal design goal

   o    Very flexible development tool considerably faster than a COBOL
        development or execution environment

   o    The corner stone of Real Time's high performance OLTP environment

   o    Not a pretty name, but everything has gotta have a name. Right?

   o    Seriously, ZUG is a development tool specifically designed for OLTP,
        by Real Time.  It is fully featured, easy to use, and should be 
        considered as a special development product or OLTP applications, just 
        like we consider ORACLE, INGRES of POWERHOUSE as special development
        languages for the more traditional data processing environments.

                NOTE 2:         TERMINAL CONNECTION

In order for a high-performance OLTP environment to operate effectively,
    it must be able to accept transactions and deal with them quickly. IBM
    uses block-mode terminals and semi-intelligent communication
    controllers to provide this functionality.  Digital does not use
    block-mode but character terminals; also Digital doesn't typically use
    front-ends to off-load the character interrupt from the CPU -- the
    result is, Digital  is not considered to be in the OLTP business.

Real Time's applications are OLTP and they do it very wells using many standard 
DEC products and some special ones in addition.

Real Time's communications networks my be configured as follows:

A)      o  Digital CSS customized VT320 Terminal (to give it both a standard
           VT320 "personality" and a block-moded like "personality".)   


        o  Real Time supplied cluster controller (up to 48 devices per 
           controller) that communicates to the VAX using standard X.25 protocol

        o  Public S.25 network or leased lines

        o  DEC synchronous interface on a VAX using PSI and DECnet

        0  Real Time supplied X.25 switches can share one synchronous interface
           among many X.25 lines

In the near future, Real Time will be able to down-load their communications 
front-end functionality into a standard Micro VAX II:  This would be  installed 
in the remote office where the terminals are located. This method will
    allow an additional level of network flexibility to the insurance customers.


B)      Real Time is able to offer a network based on standard (un-modified) 
        VT320 terminals using standard DECnet.  This will be of interest to 
        those customers who already have a population of VT200 or VT300 
        terminals, or those customers willing to trade off lower
        performance for a more standard solution.

        Real Time would prefer to sell the higher performance A solutions 
        whenever possible.  Please consult with them for specific sales 
        situations.


        NOTE 3:         CLUSTERS

Real Time applications may reside in a standard VAXcluster configuration.  
However, due to the nature of Real Time's application, it is necessary for all 
Real Time applications using a common set of files (disks) to reside on a 
     single CPU.  Although this would seem to limit the size of company the
     Real Time would sell to, it really does not .  Real Time can serve up
     to 800 terminals simultaneously on a VAX 8550 CPU, appropriately
     configured.  With the upcoming announcement of Digital's
     multiprocessors, and SMP support from VMS, Real Time 
     will be able to serve even the largest insurance companies.

Real Time can add other layered applications on the OLTP node, if requested.
Similarly, a large Bank could run a spreadsheet processor on the mainframe 
controlling the on-line ATM network; they can do it, but they usually done.  
They don't do it because the OLTP application makes money for them when it is 
operating at its fastest, so only the important applications are run on it.  In 
short, if it makes sense, any/all applications my be run on the OLTP node.
        

        NOTE 4:         FILE ACCESS

Real Time built their ZUG development tool around a file system with unique
    data structures.  they didn't design their data structures just to be
    unique, they built them for high performance; a typical OLTP
    application will bottleneck on I/O.  By designing a file system
    optimized for OLTP (RMS is designed for a general commercial
    application) they can optimize performance, and serve large 
    numbers of users from a smaller than expected CPU.

Although Real Time provides many standard reports with their insurance 
    applications, there has been a general request from many Real Time/DEC 
    prospects for an ad hoc reporting facility.  Real Time will be able to
    provide the data for this facility through a batch processor.  
    
    The information requested will be extracted from the Real Time file and
    placed in an RMS or Rdb format, allowing standard DEC access to the
    insurance files for reporting, or any other use.