A single sign-on implementation
The Problem: A Labyrinth of Log-Ins
Because of the unique status of insurance sales agents within a firm, they found themselves in a challenging position within the IT system. In order to pull up information on a policy, agents had to work their way through a series of log-in steps that looked more like Arthur Murray dance instructions — first they had to connect to Citrix, then from there, log in to the VPN, and from there they had to launch a whole other program. Even if they got through the whole thing with no errors, the time it took to log in meant that by the time they’d reached the last step, sometimes the system had already timed them out at the first portal, meaning they had to start all over again. Very frustrating, and of course inefficient. But the agency wasn’t sure how to address the problem without compromising security.
The Analysis: Putting It All Together
It was a challenge to take all of these different systems and find a way to make them all work together. But that’s exactly the kind of challenge that SOA, or service-oriented architecture, was created to overcome. We needed to keep their existing systems in place, but weave them all together with the addition of a web-based service framework. The architecture had to be fairly complex, but simplicity would be key to the finished product.
The Solution: One Call and You’re In
We used our SOA methods to blueprint and develop a web-based framework that would allow agents to simply call into the system and access whichever option they needed. The addition of this new system maintained security while saving valuable time and energy for agents to do their jobs.