Our client, a health plan administrator serving multiple payers and plans, needed to onboard a new plan with 13 million members and be ready for enrollment in only 2 months.
Their current internal process would have required much more time—so significant changes were needed to comply with the contract and successfully integrate the new plan.
While systems integration is vital to making business processes efficient, the wrong tools and/or the wrong design can severely affect performance and security. This was the case for our client. They had invested heavily in IBM middleware tools but implemented a flawed integration design. As a result, they were facing serious performance challenges and the inability to onboard new clients due to their system design complexity.
They needed to add or replace the technologies they were using. Also, to respond to a new client's requirements, they needed to support new security protocols for member data being accessed across multiple environments by multiple providers and member partners.
The Eliassen Group team performed a thorough assessment of the client's architecture, environment and business needs. Then they applied Eliassen Group's proven Integration Architecture Framework to help improve the current design and fill the security gaps.
By applying the Framework, the Eliassen Group team efficiently developed a roadmap for specific design improvements that leveraged the client's existing middleware investments. This led to redesigning the client's application to remove unnecessary complexity.
The process also identified a gap that the IBM DataPower Gateway would address by efficiently securing the edge zone and connections with trading partners.
Furthermore, they leveraged IBM API Connect to address the need for multiple users to access or expose different categories of data across numerous API environments.
With a sound architecture based on a proven framework, addition of a secure gateway, and a solution to manage APIs, the client was able to onboard its new customer and 13 million members in weeks instead of months, and meet the mandated enrollment dates.