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STERLING INTEGRATOR



HEALTH INSURANCE

PROJECT NAME

Communications and scripting

CLIENT PROFILE

A health insurance company, serving more than 880,000 members, in Missouri and Kansas.
  • Industry: Health Insurance
  • Location: Midwestern United States
  • Products: Individuals and Family Plans, Group Health Insurance Plan
  • Technical Environment:
    • Hardware(and OS): Unix
    • Software(and version): GIS 4.2
    • Communications software (and version): Unix and GIS
    • ERP: mixed, i.e. Peoplesoft, Trizetto, etc.
    • Relevant to the project...
      • Number of Trading Partners: 50+
      • Number of Maps:
      • Number of Business Processes: 60+
      • Number of Scripts:
      • Other:

BUSINESS CASE

  • Increase revenue processed by EDI P.Os
  • Save company in compliance chargebacks

It had been very tough and time consuming to create and to maintain the scripts, to monitor and to re-process the daily jobs. All the communications, compression or decompression, encryption or decryption had been handled through the Unix scripting. The scheduling and the e-mail notification had been handled through the mainframe jobs.

The customer intends to use GIS as a communication gateway and as a depository/archiving of files being sent or received through the gateway. The mainframe will soon go away. GIS will be in place to play the role of the mainframe.

SITUATION

  • Company installed Sterling Commerce GIS 4.2 UNIX in 2007.
  • Sterling Commerce had set-up the mailboxes allowing the customers to drop or pick-up files via FTP. The DOS batch jobs and Unix scripts were scheduled to run to process these files.

SOLUTION / DELIVERABLES

  • Provided a GIS consultant to develop different templates to replace the existing DOS command and Unix script.
  • Trained and helped two employees to use the developed templates to replace other batch jobs.
  • Developed re-usable FTP sub-processes to get and put files from and to the mainframe and the Unix boxes.

OUTCOME

  • Most of the batches (80+) and Unix scripts have been replaced with GIS business processes.
  • Eliminated unnecessary FTPing to the Unix boxes.
  • Eliminated the scheduling and e-mail alert or e-mail notification from the mainframe.
  • Eliminated Unix scripting to compress or decompress, to encrypt or decrypt, to FTP and to handle complex file requirements from the clients.
  • Added additional communication protocols such as FTPS and SFTP to meet the clients' requirements such as banks.
  • Expanded the use of the mailboxes to handle different file processes.
  • A process can be re-started without reloading files.