Government

Business challenge The Insolvency Service ran a suite of unintegrated case management systems that hindered business processes and its ability to deliver constituent services quickly and efficiently.

Transformation The Insolvency Service is an agency with a mission: it helps people in debt make a fresh start. So when it decided to update its case processing systems, it engaged IBM® Services™ to build a modern cloud platform based on Microsoft Dynamics™ 365 Customer Engagement software, and now processes straightforward claims up to four times faster.

Results “The IBM Services project The Insolvency Service team worked tirelessly to Up to 4x the number of basic develop and deliver the claims processed daily new Microsoft Dynamics- using automated checks, data selection Processing claims up to 4x based case management and bulk processing capabilities system and worked well faster with IBM Services and with our in-house Will harmonize 5 systems and delivery team.” integrate 7 applications Microsoft technologies on a single platform with Microsoft —Sharon Lewis, Deputy Chief Dynamics technology Headquartered in Stratford, London, The Insolvency Service is an executive Operating Officer, The Insolvency agency of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy for the Service Delivers unprecedented government of the UK. Among its many objectives and responsibilities are flexibility and business agility supporting businesses and individuals in financial distress, investigating financial by using cloud-based Microsoft tools misconduct and wrongdoing, maximizing returns for creditors, administering and technologies and other activities. The agency operates in 22 locations across Great Britain and employs roughly 1,500 people. Share this Keeping up with a “There are new forms of debt relief restricting companywide visibility. Migrating to a and new methods of dealing with Plus, there were specific sets of rules changing insolvency being developed,” says to follow. modern platform Sharon Lewis, Deputy Chief In May 2018, The Insolvency Service landscape Unless the agency took action, there Operating Officer at The Insolvency engaged IBM Services to help it start For tens of thousands of financially was a risk that the limitations of its Service. “So our ability to adapt and replacing its five case management distressed citizens in the UK, The IT systems could negatively develop our IT systems in line with applications with a single, modern Insolvency Service offers a beacon affect customers. that is really important.” platform based on Microsoft of hope. Dynamics 365 Customer The agency’s key IT systems Recently, The Insolvency Service Engagement software running on the The government agency offers debt included five disparate case launched its Target Operating Model, Microsoft Azure cloud. solutions and services to individuals management applications that all of One Service. Ultimately aimed at and employees of insolvent providing rapid and high-quality the business units relied on for During a thorough procurement companies, and helps creditors get operations. The lack of connectivity process, which began in February paid in cases of and resulted in data duplication and no 2017, the agency examined multiple . Just how many people the single view of claimants or platforms and delivery partners. organization has supported is companies, making it difficult for “Microsoft Dynamics is so reflected in the numbers: in 2018, it case officers to glean actionable powerful and configurable. We were “IBM Services was the highest issued its 250,000th debt relief order information. The IT infrastructure also scoring supplier against the tender very keen on moving to and returned over GBP 61.3 million in included a host of back-end business evaluation criteria,” recalls Lydia dividends to creditors. And in the last systems for finance, documents, the cloud for the Chown, Project Manager for the Case decade, it has provided more than payments and other applications that additional flexibility and Management Services Project at the GBP 2.3 billion in debt relief. were not fully integrated, making the cost savings.” agency. “And Microsoft Dynamics is speed and quality of the agency’s so powerful and configurable. We But providing that relief—and —Lydia Chown, Project Manager, service less effective than it could be. were very keen on moving to the processing billions in payments—is Strategy and Change Directorate, cloud for the additional flexibility and complex. The agency’s Redundancy The Insolvency Service For example, RPS case officers had cost savings.” Payment Services (RPS) business to manually select which calculation unit, which processes claims and to pay from two options presented by To minimize risk, the agency is calculates payments, handles as comparing data supplied by service to all its stakeholders, the replacing its systems in phases. many as 80,000 claims annually and, claimants, such as how long they’ve strategy calls for pulling together Phase 1, which was completed in on occasion, as many as 170,000. worked for a company, against data the various business units to act as March 2019, focused on replacing a What’s more, cases are getting larger in wages records. Making changes one by implementing key key case management system that and more complicated. was often time-consuming and infrastructure changes. supported RPS. expensive. System limitations made it While the agency’s primary purpose difficult to process large quantities of “A fundamental building block of the IBM Services led the project but remains the same—to deliver cases without adding extra staff. strategy is bringing together our five worked closely with the agency’s IT economic confidence—the Case officers had to track and record case management systems,” says department. The objective was to insolvency landscape in which it some business processes on Sharon Lewis, “so we have one transfer knowledge while designing operates is changing. This requires spreadsheets to compensate for the version of the truth across the and implementing the core platform, The Insolvency Service to evolve its limitations of the current systems, entire service.” integrating existing business operations and the IT infrastructure applications and migrating data. supporting it.

2 Migrating the data was a significant IBM relied on the Azure Service Bus too. Integration with key business claimant data against wages undertaking and presented several platform, a queue-based mechanism applications delivers process records, eliminating the need to do challenges. For example, to for asynchronous integration, and efficiencies and visibility across all so manually. consolidate duplicate claimant and Azure Hybrid Relay technology lines of business, enhancing the company data into unique customer for point-to-point quality of constituent services. And Sharon Lewis agrees: “One of the records, the team had to build synchronous integration. the platform’s flexibility means the most powerful things about the complex matching algorithms. agency can adapt itself and the platform is its flexibility. So if we need Migrating payments also required Combined, the flexibility, reliability, technology as business—and the to adjust or change calculations, or complex data transformations security and performance of public’s—needs evolve. get a new tax law, case decision, or because the new payments process Microsoft Azure cloud services piece of legislation coming in, we can was significantly different from the enabled IBM Services to rapidly The changes make a real difference. adapt that much more quickly and previous one. design and configure the platform In the past, when large cases came that much more cheaply.” with minimal customization. The in, each claim had to be handled one The teams overcame these issues platform is designed so that the client by one because of system limitations. That same system integration offers with tools from the Microsoft Azure can change it as its business needs case officers unprecedented levels cloud service portfolio, including evolve. It also provides a solid “Now, with the new system’s of visibility into important Azure Data Factory, Azure SQL foundation for the next phase of automated checks, data selection business processes. Database, Azure Key Vault and Azure application consolidation. and bulk processing capabilities, an “Business processes that were Blob Storage technologies. Using experienced case officer can process effectively dealt with off system are these services, the team gained Today IBM Global Business Services® four times the number of now part of the main system,” adds significant flexibility and elasticity to – Application Management Services straightforward claims in a day than Sharon Lewis. “With employment scale up performance over traditional provides application maintenance they could in the old system,” says tribunals, for instance, we can track hardware SQL servers, and de-risked and support service. “The support Lydia Chown. the schedules and outcomes of the migration process to meet the from IBM post go-live has been As a result, when there’s a sudden tribunal hearings for thousands of data migration time window required excellent,” says Lydia Chown. “Our spike in workload, the agency doesn’t people, and manage that case for achieving system go-live. And lead support engineer is exceptional need to increase its workforce. This load within the system much because the error handling and works brilliantly with our teams.” frees up case officers to work on more efficiently.” capabilities of Azure Data Factory more complex issues and claims. marked failed records, only those Helping those in Both Lydia Chown and Sharon Lewis records needed reprocessing. need, faster In a recent instance, RPS sent out point to IBM’s expertise with 3,000 benefit letters in a single day Microsoft cloud services, proven In total, the agency migrated roughly Throughout the first phase of that, until recently, it would have delivery methods and collaborative half a million contacts, half a million modernizing its IT infrastructure, The generated one by one. “So we’ve working style for the success of claims, 1.6 million payments and 2.8 Insolvency Service never lost sight of automated a whole new area of Phase 1. million documents. its ultimate objective: helping those in work,” adds Sharon Lewis. “The IBM Services project team As part of Phase 1, the team also financial distress. And it succeeded. The integration of key business worked tirelessly to develop and integrated seven of the agency’s key With the platform’s automation applications, such as the calculation deliver the new Microsoft Dynamics- business systems: two digital portals; capabilities, case officers can engine, also delivers flexibility and based case management system and finance, document management and process more claims more quickly process efficiencies across the worked well with our in-house document production applications; than ever before, which means agency. For example, the platform delivery team,” concludes Sharon and a calculation engine. To securely claimants are getting served faster, automatically compares and selects Lewis. “They are a knowledgeable integrate the systems in the cloud, and invested team.”

3 Solution components “Now, with the new ® ® system’s automated • IBM Global Business Services – Application Management checks, data selection Services and bulk processing capabilities, an • IBM Services™ experienced case officer • Microsoft Azure™ can process four times the • Microsoft Dynamics™ 365 number of straightforward claims in a day than they could in the old system.” Take the next step To learn more about the IBM —Lydia Chown, Project Manager, solutions featured in this story, Strategy and Change Directorate, please contact your IBM The Insolvency Service representative or IBM Business Partner.

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2020. IBM Corporation, Global Business Services, New Orchard Road, Armonk, NY 10504. Produced in the United States of America, January 2020. IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, Global Business Services, and IBM Services are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at “Copyright and trademark information” at www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml. Microsoft, Dynamics, Windows, and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every country in which IBM operates. The performance data and client examples cited are presented for illustrative purposes only. Actual performance results may vary depending on specific configurations and operating conditions. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided. . Azure Blob Storage, Azure Data Factory, Azure Hybrid Relay, Azure Key Vault, Azure Service Bus, Azure SQL, Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement are not IBM products or offerings. Azure Blob Storage, Azure Data Factory, Azure Hybrid Relay, Azure Key Vault, Azure Service Bus, Azure SQL, Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement are sold or licensed, as the case may be, to users under Microsoft’s terms and conditions, which are provided with the product or offering. Availability, and any and all warranties, services and support for Azure Blob Storage, Azure Data Factory, Azure Hybrid Relay, Azure Key Vault, Azure Service Bus, Azure SQL, Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, is the direct responsibility of, and is provided directly to users by, Microsoft.

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