Implementing a modern core insurance system results in a profound positive impact on the Carrier.   Achieving maximum benefits of implementing and supporting an insurance system, such as Duck Creek Technologies Policy, Billing, Claims, Reinsurance, Distribution Management, and Insights, requires a significant effort from the Carrier and System Integrator (SI).  CIS Insurance Services focuses on most complex and inefficient areas of such implementations.

CIS Insurance Services developed best-in-class tools and processes to make Duck Creek Technologies implementations successful.  We partner with Carriers and System Integrators to simplify the most complex areas of the implementation: performance testing and stabilization activities.  Whether you are just starting the implementation and need to manage performance risks or your implementation is in production and is experiencing slow or unexpected system behavior, using tools and processes from CIS Insurance Services will provide a path to success.

Performance

CIS Insurance Services has built CIS Performance Testing Platform as the only performance testing solution on the market that specifically targets Duck Creek Technologies implementations.

Carriers and System Integrators will work with CIS Insurance Services to implement performance testing for their Duck Creek system using some or all of the following:

1. Review and update performance test strategy for the project.
2. Review and update performance test scenarios with service level expectations.
3. Review and update performance test plan. We will confirm that commonly missed scenarios are included and that test mix and load are appropriate for the type and volume of business transactions expected in production.
4. Automate test scenarios using either Excel or Test Automation Center (TAC) script format. Script creation takes just minutes per screen using features of the CIS Performance Testing Platform.
5. Upload test scripts and supporting files to the CIS Performance Testing Platform for execution.
6. Review performance results from test runs in the CIS Performance Testing Platform.
7. Research any errors that were encountered during test run. Collect details of each error that include the timestamp, error message, and the step that each script session was performing at the time of the error.
8. Summarize the results to compare them with prior test runs.
9. Perform root cause analysis of the performance issues. Based on our expertise in troubleshooting numerous SaaS and On-premises implementations we have created CIS Trace Tools to help with the analysis.
10. Based on the results of the test runs recommend additional solutions, such as API based tests or integration stubs/mocks.

Each implementation needs are different and can range from leveraging the CIS Performance Testing Platform to revamping complete performance test strategy. CIS will guide the selection of the approach for the performance testing of your implementation to ensure that performance risks are mitigated appropriately.

Stabilization

The CIS team’s industry-leading stabilization experience focuses on resolving issues that threaten implementations after they have gone live.

Stabilization efforts are often needed because of unanticipated interactions between system components.

Carrier and System Integrators stabilize their Duck Creek implementation using the following approaches based on the tools and expertise of CIS Insurance Services:

1. Ensuring that user experience monitoring and logging is configured.
2. Using the information from monitoring and logging to identify user activities at the time of unexpected system behavior.
3. Automating identified user activities using the CIS Performance Testing Platform
4. Executing combination of user activities using the CIS Performance Testing Platform until unexpected behavior is duplicated.
5. Collecting traces of the user activities once the unexpected behavior is duplicated.
6. Performing root cause analysis of the issues and creating a mitigation plan. CIS Insurance Services will assist Carrier and System Integrator by leveraging our expertise in troubleshooting numerous SaaS and On-premises implementations.  We have created CIS Trace Tools to help analyze performance and other complex issues.
7. Recommending additional solutions, including API based tests or integration stubs/mocks.

Our past experience has shown that most stabilization issues are caused by the items listed below and the approaches above help identify these:

• Interactions between components that were not anticipated by developers
• Not mitigating integration impact on platform functionality
• Not aligning to best practices for configuration
• Overly complex configuration
• Not optimizing infrastructure

ManuScript Unit Testing

One of the frustrating parts of ManuScript configuration is the amount of unit testing that has to be done manually.  Repeated unit testing is a highly mundane task and it is often the first to be foregone when time pressure arises. In order to change ManuScript unit testing from a chore to an integral and effective part of the configuration process,  CIS Insurance Services has created ManuScript Power Data Tester.

Carriers and System Integrators that use ManuScript Power Data Tester will benefit from:

• Improved configuration quality
• Improved configuration efficiency via user friendly UI for unit testing
• Automated test result evaluation
• Sharing of unit tests between developers
• Execution of ManuScript unit tests in DevOps pipelines

This solution is specifically designed for ManuScript configurators. CIS experts will guide your team in its journey towards unit test automation to ensure its success.

Architecture and Design

In our experience, many performance and stabilization issues could have been mitigated early in the project lifecycle and with substantially reduced effort.

CIS Insurance Services offers review of key architecture and design artifacts to help Carriers and System Integrators manage performance and stabilization risks as early as possible in the project lifecycle.  The reviews are performed using a partnership approach with project success as the main goal.

Some of the artifacts that are reviewed include:

• Project blueprints
• ManuScript inheritance design
• Design for every functional area

We also review architecture and design of existing implementations. Whether you need to understand what it would take for a migration from on-premises to the Duck Creek On-Demand service or want to ensure that project artifacts are up-to-date, CIS Insurance Services will work with current resources to review and update the artifacts.