CCC Information Services Inc. Transforms IT Infrastructure to Support Growth in Evolving Insurance Claims Industry
 
 

CCC Information Services Inc. Transforms IT Infrastructure to Support Growth in Evolving Insurance Claims Industry

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CCC Information Services Inc. is a leading provider of automobile physical-damage-claims solutions in the United States, working with more than 350 insurance companies, 21,000 repair facilities, and 3,500 parts suppliers.

To manage its operations more efficiently, and support company growth and expansion into new markets, CCC launched a business transformation initiative in 2007. The company wanted to eliminate its dependency on mainframe applications, which required overhauling the underlying technology platform for its business-critical systems, such as applications that connect insurance companies to repair facilities or connect CCC to its insurance and repair customers and vendors. CCC chose Oracle as a strategic partner and deployed Oracle Fusion Middleware, specifically, Oracle WebLogic Server, to serve as the backbone behind its network, which processes approximately 1 million business events each day. CCC also uses Oracle SOA Suite to more tightly integrate with external parties, including customers and vendors, such as salvage yards and parts suppliers. The new technology infrastructure has delivered three important benefits: improved availability and performance, greater agility to meet changing needs, and streamlined system management.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from CCC Information Services Inc.

  • “CCC Information Services, which has been doing cloud computing for nearly 20 years, is a leader in delivering cloud-based solutions for auto insurance claims. Oracle helps us remain at the forefront of our industry by offering a single source for essential software and, now, hardware with the introduction of Oracle Exadata.” – Chetan Ghai, Senior Vice President Global Marketing and Product Strategy, CCC Information Services Inc.

  • Facilitate a businesswide IT transformation by migrating the company’s underlying technology platform for mission-critical applications from a mainframe system to a modern IT infrastructure
  • Support more than 1 million business events daily
  • Enable complex and unique workflows and business rules that are required to work with industry participants that range from insurance companies to auto repair shops and parts suppliers
  • Meet customer and vendor demand for highly available business applications
  • Support continued innovation, such as the launch of next-generation predictive solutions and mobile applications
  • Provide a flexible IT foundation to support front-end application changes, such as the introduction of mobile applications

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Migrated the technology platform for CCC’s business-critical applications to Oracle Fusion Middleware, improving performance while reducing overall total cost of ownership (TCO)
  • Implemented Oracle WebLogic Server as the backbone for the system that processes application workflows, facilitating more efficient business processes between CCC, its repair facility, and insurance company customers, while reducing system management burden
  • Increased agility, enabling the company to react more quickly to changing vendor and customer needs
  • Simplified workflow and business rules management with Oracle SOA Suite, which provides greater visibility into how applications are configured, making it easier to monitor and improve performance
  • Reduced development time, since Oracle SOA Suite enables users to configure workflows without writing new code for each one
  • Gained the ability to support increasingly mobile end users, thanks to Oracle SOA Suite and its ability to reuse back-end services, which has, for example, enabled the company to make client claim folders available on a smart phone or a tablet without redesigning the IT infrastructure
  • Improved system availability thanks to the flexibility Oracle Coherence provides in managing the entire technology stack and enabling the company to use session management and cache refresh tools to bring infrastructure components down for maintenance without interrupting service
  • Deployed Oracle Exadata to reduce single points of failure in the database environment and provide 24/7 availability, which will be critical going forward as the company introduces next-generation products. including predictive solutions
  • Expected to significantly improve performance and cost-effectively increase storage capacity 10-fold with Oracle Exadata
  • Simplified data management with Oracle Exadata, which has helped reduce resource requirements for infrastructure management, ultimately lowering TCO
  • Enabled single sign-on across applications with Oracle Identity Management, which has simplified access for end users, including insurance appraisers and adjusters, because they can access multiple applications using a single log in
  • Expected to achieve full return on investment in three years

Why Oracle

CCC Information Services chose Oracle because, across all of the technology areas it looked to improve, Oracle by far had the greatest breadth and depth of solutions. The IT team was also pleased with the executive relationship and the sponsorship it received from various levels within Oracle.

“CCC Information Services is powering the automobile physical-damage-claims industry, and Oracle Fusion Middleware is our strategic choice to enable our industry-leading claims platform,” said Chetan Ghai, senior vice president, global marketing and product strategy, CCC Information Services Inc.

Going forward, CCC is working with Oracle to identify and support its next-generation tools. For example, CCC plans to build its next generation of predictive solutions on Oracle Exadata. With Oracle Exadata, CCC has seen how having a single provider for software and hardware has helped to simplify its tactical environment and reduce costs.

Implementation Process

CCC’s IT platform transformation project was very complex and involved support for multiple workflows. A five-person team worked more than 24 months to fully deploy the solution while minimizing the impact to CCC’s customer base. The team also scaled the system to handle up to 17,000 concurrent users, each completing an average of 15 transactions per session.