California Casualty Uses Scriptless Workflow In ActiveBatch® Job Scheduler To Eliminate Extra IT Work, Improve Customer Service

MORRISTOWN, N.J., July 20 /PRNewswire/ -- The modern insurance industry is far different today from what it was even a few years ago.  Staffs are leaner, competition is tighter, and the flow of information between customers, internal departments, regulators and outside business entities is virtually instantaneous.

California Casualty is keenly aware of how such changes have impacted its information technology infrastructure.  The San Mateo, California-based company, which offers a full range of auto and home insurance in over 40 states, is continually sharing data on a secure basis between business departments as well as with customers, outsourcers, and even state departments of motor vehicles.  In the past, the company used Windows Task Scheduler to execute the various batch processing tasks involved with these data transactions.  

"Windows Task Scheduler is an excellent product—but we found we needed something more extensive to handle our jobs, particularly those involving FTP [File Transfer Protocol] as well as Secure FTP," said Ruben Santiago, Senior Network Analyst for California Casualty.  "As we began getting more and more requests from different groups for greater process automation, we began to look at our use of ActiveBatch."

California Casualty had been using ActiveBatch® Workload Automation and Job Scheduling Software from Advanced Systems Concepts, Inc. (ASCI) for several years—but only in a limited role.  Santiago, who had not been involved in the original purchase decision, began looking at ActiveBatch's advantages more closely.  As he explained, the product's features matched California Casualty's evolving needs very well.

"ActiveBatch has the ability to interact with non-Microsoft products.  It also could quickly execute commands to encrypt and decrypt, as well as send and receive, our FTP transfers without having to script them," he noted.  "But what really excited me was its workflow capabilities."

ActiveBatch is the industry's leading enterprise job scheduling application for Windows™, Linux, UNIX, z/OS and OpenVMS systems, among others.  Proven in over 1,000 installs from SMBs to Fortune 100 companies, ActiveBatch automates and centrally manages jobs and workflows across applications, technologies, computing platforms, and databases.

With ActiveBatch, jobs and job plans can be triggered by virtually any kind of event, from file creation and modification to system startup, runaway processes, or thousands of other actions.  Its jobs library helps users quickly and efficiently create workflows involving templates, calendars and services across the product.

California Casualty upgraded to ActiveBatch 7.0, which gives it access to a dynamic SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) and related Web Services tools.  "We also licensed ActiveBatch's Web interface, which means we no longer have to go through the server—a potential security issue for our system," Santiago commented.  "It also has built-in email notifications.  We no longer had to use Javamail, so it helped us consolidate multiple products."

The biggest benefit of the new workflow capability, he noted, was the greater efficiency his department gained.  "For our five or six technical users, ActiveBatch is pretty self-explanatory.  We created a test area for our people to create and test their workflows, and when they're ready I simply move them over into production using ActiveBatch's built-in Change Management system," Santiago said.  "We also have about a half-dozen non-technical users in departments like Claims and Finance.  For them I set up the workflows and give them rights to trigger a process whenever they need to."

With ActiveBatch at the helm, California Casualty is now able to run jobs as often as needed—in many cases as frequently as every 10 to 15 minutes.  "A lot of financials have to go through the system quickly, including payroll, payments from customers and so forth.  The ability to run jobs ad hoc or on short notice, based on events, is key because one these payments are processed, we can mail out checks sooner."

The payments, reports and other critical elements ActiveBatch governs has made a major difference in California Casualty's customer service.  "For our policy holders and client organizations, that kind of consistency makes them very happy.  By dramatically expanding our use of ActiveBatch, we've been able to implement what I call 'organized consistency.'  It's made a huge difference."

About Advanced Systems Concepts, Inc.:

Headquartered in Morristown, New Jersey, Advanced Systems Concepts, Inc. offers many software products and options for users of Windows, UNIX, Linux, HP OpenVMS and NSK systems as well as IBM z/OS, AIX, i5OS and SCO UNIX.  These products provide answers to software developers and system managers with improved system efficiency and utilization.  Advanced Systems Concepts today has over 200,000 licenses installed and a worldwide base of customers in 37 countries around the world.  Advanced Systems Concepts is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and a member of the Microsoft System Center Alliance.  It is also an SAP software solution partner, an Informatica Partner, an HP Business Partner, a Sun Catalyst member, an IBM Business Partner, a member of the VMware TAP program, Oracle Partner Network, an HP-UX Power Partner, and is certified Red Hat Ready.  For more information, see the company's website at http://www.advsyscon.com or call (800) 229-2724 or 1-973-539 2660.

Copyright © 2010 Advanced Systems Concepts, Inc.  ActiveBatch is a registered trademark of Advanced Systems Concepts, Inc.  Other company and/or product names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective firms.

SOURCE Advanced Systems Concepts, Inc.