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Farmers
New World Speeds Productivity, Provides Single Interface with
.NET
 Farmers
New World Life Insurance Company, Mercer Island, WA, has combined
several of its distinct corporate entities with .NET technology.
Subsidiary companies, information channels, the company website,
and the end-user interface—LifeNet—have been united
on a common .NET platform. The results, according to Lynn Henderson,
FLMI, ACS, Business Analyst at Farmers, have “improved
the way we interact with other organizations to share applications
and data.” Henderson discussed the .NET system at a presentation
during COSSConference ’04 in September.
A
key advantage of .NET, said Henderson, is that it gives Farmers
“greater flexibility and ease of deployment,” especially
because “we’re no longer required to register COM
on the production servers.” This means that production
servers no longer have to be shut down and reconfigured with
a new COM package every time a .dll is changed. Additional benefits
of the .NET architecture include:
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Improved
programming productivity |
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Ability
to reuse code and implement legacy code/languages |
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One
interface for multiple applications |
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Bi-directional
data sharing among applications |
Developer Tools Expanded, Larger
Code Base Supported
The .NET technology direction increased developer productivity.
Comprehensive debugging tools and a dynamic Help system that
accessed the relevant environment made the mechanics of getting
through the code much faster. Drag and drop validation controls
and the ability to auto-generate XML schema (XSD) were other
timesavers. Henderson also liked how code in .NET could be reused
and standardized. “We can design and implement our own
Web controls, such as return navigation, common headers and
footers, and marketing themes,” she said. What is especially
helpful is that any time a Web control is modified, all instances
of it throughout the site automatically pick up the change.
As
.NET also supports the C#, Visual Basic, JavaScript, and C++
languages, the company is able to build on already-existing
skills and programming assets.
Integration
into One Interface Yields Sales Success
Finally,
.NET allows Farmers to integrate a vast array of existing systems
into one interface. The multiple functionalities of the COSS
illustration system and various outside Web services—such
as Zip Code lookup—can all be housed under the .NET umbrella.
In Henderson’s view, “COSS has built the .NET system
in such a way that it is very easy to connect with other processes.”
The ability to share data improved performance between application
and agent processes because it eliminates the duplication of
input by the agent. “The COSS .NET architecture provides
an open, easy way to share data bi-directionally by means of
Web service calls,” she said.
The
overall picture? The general integration of applications and
programming languages has resulted in sales success, she explained,
because “Farmers can provide a single user interface,
an easy-to-use process for an agent to use in making a sale
... encompassing everything that is needed.”
To
Learn More
Call
COSS Vice President of Strategic Relations Chris Kite at 1.800.776.7087.
Read about other clients and their presentations in our Client
Spotlight.
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