Universal Underwriters Group (UUG) is a leading provider of insurance for businesses that sell or service autos, trucks, motorcycles and equipment, or that sell insurance to auto recyclers.

UUG’s strategic e-business initiatives - to develop greater customer access to the company’s products and services, and to increase customers’ online interactions with the company – called for the rapid development of web-based enterprise applications. One of the company’s initial projects was to develop a portal to support the activities of its 900-person, geographically dispersed sales force. The portal would ultimately be accessed by 1,800 end users throughout the company.

Time was a primary challenge in the execution of this initial project. UUG’s goals were to develop the application quickly and reduce time to market, and simultaneously ramp up the Java skills of its IT resources. The IT talent pool had a relatively long tenure with the company, and possessed valuable understanding of UUG’s business. The majority of the IT staff were Cobol mainframe developers, and the costs and time associated with training to develop web-based applications could be significant.

Browsersoft’s eQ!™ is a development foundation for quickly deploying enterprise applications and adapting them to changing business requirements.

By licensing eQ!™ Foundation, UUG was able to flatten developers’ learning curve and significantly reduce time-to-market for their web-based applications.

Browsersoft first assessed the company’s development environment and fundamental application requirements. The web portal for sales professionals would need to integrate information from numerous legacy databases and present multiple views and security levels for that information.

Based on assessment of the requirements, Browsersoft determined that eQ!™ could significantly reduce the amount of coding – and time - required to build the application. For the web portal application, the eQ!™ data management service could be especially valuable in reducing coding time.

eQ!™ was used to build a web application that would pull required information out of multiple databases, convert it to XML and present it in 4 different interfaces, according to security level requirements.

Browsersoft provided the UUG development team with up-front training for eQ!™ Foundation, which entailed approximately 10 hours training over the first two weeks of the project. Even developers who were not highly skilled in Java were able to utilize eQ!™ Foundation with minimal training. After training, Browsersoft provided both ongoing support for eQ!™ Foundation, as well as consultation in the form of regularly scheduled meetings with the development team.

Due to the dynamic nature of the portal, managing changes in the application’s requirements had to be handled efficiently. By simply configuring the application using eQ!™, UUG was able to add or change functionality easily. Instead of making multiple changes in low-level coding, and having to retest all of the rewritten code, UUG’s development team was able to make changes by reconfiguring script-level components in the application. The ability to streamline changes and testing of the application dramatically shortened the change process.

In addition, developers and programmers who were not expert Java developers were able to configure the application using eQ!™ within two weeks of project initiation.

Browsersoft, Inc. provides consulting services and breakthrough products that reduce enterprise application development costs and accelerate time to market.

Founded in 1998 by a team of high-tech software and business development professionals, Browsersoft specializes in the design and development of web-based enterprise applications.

Browsersoft’s flagship product, eQ!™ Foundation, is a development foundation for quickly deploying applications and adapting them to changing business requirements.