Naatujuna Deborah Cit Masters Report

AN E-COMMERCE FRAMEWORK FOR IMPROVING

BUSINESS PROCESSES

IN CORPORATE INSURANCE SYSTEMS

Deborah NaatujunaBsc. Educ Phy, Math (MUST)

A Project Report Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Award of the Degreeof Master of Science in Computer Science

of Makerere University

November, 2005

Declaration

I, Deborah Naatujuna hereby declare that this research project is my original work and has

been done based on independent investigation, except where i have indicated references to

other sources.

This work has not been submitted as a partial fulfilment for any degree in any university for

any award and no part of this project may be reproduced without the prior permission of

the author.

Signature ..........................................

Date: ............................................

Deborah Naatujuna

ii

Approval by Supervisor

This research project entitled ”An E-commerce Framework for improving Business

Processes in Corporate Insurance Systems” has been under my supervision and is

ready for submission to the Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, Makerere

University. This is in partial fulfillment for the award of Master of Science in Computer

Science Of Makerere University.

Supervisor

Dr. Ezra K. Mugisa

Faculty of Computing and Information Technology,

Makerere University,

Signature: ........................................................................

Date: .............................................................................

iii

Dedication

To all the Makurus, to Beatrice (the late in her memory) and to the Junas. You have given

my life sparkle and zest.

iv

Acknowledgments

To God be the glory, honour, power and majesty, for having enabled me to successfully

complete this challenging journey. The toil of coming this far needed no less than thanking

you my Lord.

Your Grace is forever sufficient for my weakness has been made perfect in your power.

Special thanks go to, Dr Ezra K.Mugisa who sacrificed time to provide advice, support and

encouragement and for having been there for me throughout the project. I wish to thank him

for all his effort, time, patience and insightful comments on the design and implementation

of the models for this project, without your help this work would never have come this far.

Thank you for walking the walk.

Special thanks also to Mr.Wilson Makuru for his awesome advice, his enduring confidence

in me to move ahead to victory and the financial support provided throughout this course.

My dear family members Hope, Hosea, Joshua, and little Theophilus thanks for standing by

my side. May the good Lord keep you and richly bless you all .

The staff National Insurance Corporation and other insurance corporations like Liason Bro-

kers, i remain greately indebted for your time and information provided toward the success

of this project.

My friends Maureen Ouma, Dora Bampangana, Peace Mutuwa, Alice Tumwesigye, Paul

Ssemalulu, and all my officemates you are acknowledged, your moral support, your out-

standing encouragement and all the work done towards the sucess of this project is greately

commended.

v

Table Of Contents

Content Page

Title Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

Declaration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii

Approval by Supervisor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii

Dedication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

List Of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

List Of Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.1 Background to the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.2 The Insurance Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.3 Statement of the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.4 General Objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.4.1 Specific Objectives of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.5 Scope of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.6 Significance of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1.7 Limitations of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

vi

2 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.1 General Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.2 The Corporate Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.3 Business Process Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2.4 An Overview of Approaches to Business Process Modeling Methods and Tools 10

2.5 E-Commerce and Insurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2.6 The E-Insurance Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.7 From E-commerce to E-Insurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.8 Architecture of the E-insurance system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

3 CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY 15

3.1 Review of literature relevant to Corporate Insurance Systems . . . . . . . . . 15

3.2 Requirements Elicitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

3.2.1 The Approach to Business Process Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

3.2.2 Data Collection and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

3.2.3 Case study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

3.3 Systems Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3.3.1 Tools and environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3.4 System Software Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3.5 System Validation and Verification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

vii

4 CHAPTER FOUR: ANALYSIS, DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION 21

4.1 The Requirements and Design Rationale in the UML . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

4.1.1 Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

4.1.2 Sequence diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

4.1.3 Class diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

4.1.4 Activity diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

4.2 Summary of the System requirements from the current Business Processes . 23

4.2.1 System Inputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4.3 Modeling the Requirements and Context of the System . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4.4 System Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

4.4.1 The System Class Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

4.4.2 The generalized system package diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

4.5 Modeling the system flows by time ordering (System Interaction) . . . . . . 35

4.6 Database Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

4.6.1 The Relations for the Insurance Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

4.7 System Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

4.7.1 The User Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

4.8 System Validation and Verification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

4.9 System Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

viii

5 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION 47

5.1 The E-commerce Proposed Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

5.2 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

5.3 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

5.4 Risks to the Implementation of E-insurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

5.5 Recommendation and Further Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

ix

List of Figures

Figures Page

3.1 A Model-based approach to business process change. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

4.1 The Underwriting process (Proposal application) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

4.2 Activity diagram for the proposal application with horizontal swim lanes . . . . . 27

4.3 The Claim process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

4.4 Activity diagram for the claim process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

4.5 The internal processes of claim Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

4.6 Model Architecture for the insurance system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

4.7 Class diagram for the insurance system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

4.8 The Logical view of the system classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

4.9 Interaction Analysis of Insurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

4.10 Welcome screen of the insurance system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

4.11 The Administrator’s view with authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

4.12 The Administrator menu bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

4.13 The Client Login Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

4.14 Registered Client Login Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

4.15 The proposal application form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

4.16 The insurance product details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

x

4.17 The client’s claim status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

4.18 Validation of input: Wrong user password . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

4.19 Validation of input: Client authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

4.20 Effectiveness of testing with users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

5.1 The E-commerce architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

5.2 The system webserver operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

5.3 The Insurance Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

xi

List Of Acronyms

BP Business Processes

BPR Business Process Re-engineering

DB Database

E-Commerce Electronic Commerce

GUI Graphical User Interface

HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol

HTML Hypertext mark up language

NIC National Insurance Corporation

ODBC Open Database Connectivity

UML Unified Modeling Language

IT Information Technology

ICT Information and Communication Technology

PC Personal Computer

PIN Personal Identification Number

PK Primary Key

SQL Structured query language

WWW World Wide Web

xii

Abstract

This project covers a flexible and extensible methodological framework for business process

improvement on the basis of practical experience by insurance companies. In view of the

trends concerning the growth of E-commerce in business, although other online services

have already taken off vigorously, the insurance industry’s commitment to E-commerce lags

far behind competitors in the banking and brokerage industries. In order to survive in

competitive economic environments, many organizations need to continuously improve their

business processes. The key changes in the business environment pose a challenge to the

traditional corporate insurance system. We must determine what structure will assimilate

best in our business institutions.

The problems being experienced based on manual methods of data management in applying

for insurance policies are highlighted. And by analyzing the way insurance is being carried

out, it was possible to identify current business processes. These were remodeled using the

UML that supports object-oriented design to come up with new ways of carrying out the same

insurance function to enable efficient and flexible supply of insurance services to customers.

UML can be successfully used as a formal modeling tool without the notational complexities

that are commonly found in textual specification techniques. System development involved

creating user interfaces, use of web-technologies and the database. Web pages were created

to input and receive formatted text. A combination of methodologies was used since none

has all the components required to complete the design of the project. HTML and Java

servelets were used in the programming environment. The final output was tested with

insurers in the corporate system and customers to determine whether it obtains the desired

expectations, so that its applicability and relevance are confirmed in the insurance industry.

xiii

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

The past decade has seen a massive shift in the way the world does business; the emergence of

E-commerce has radically transformed the economic scenery. No sector of the ’old’ economy

has been more directly affected by IT than the insurance industry. Money, the industry’s

raw material has gone digital and so have the products and services of consumer finance,

from debit cards to financial planning software.

These changes ushered in by IT are deep and fundamental. Corporate organizations are

uniquely positioned to drive some of the changes. There is no exception for the insurance

business that is currently experiencing transformation in technology, an industry where E-

commerce will play a significant role (Grace, 1998) [12].

With the rapid growth of the Internet, people all over the world are getting connected to the

Internet, which has fueled the emergence of E-commerce. The connectedness and rapidity of

the Internet process is revolutionalizing the traditional models of our society, it is therefore

not surprising that business and trading processes are being modified by the internet through

E-commerce (Dasgupta, 2000 [5]; Yao, 2004 [39]). The rapid growth of the Internet has made

available a wide range of applications and services over the WWW at a low cost (Tsalgatidou

and Veijalainen, 2000) [34]. Millions of users enjoy the benefits accrued by the Internet by

using their desktop computers or portables from anywhere. Recent surveys indicate that

around 300 million people around the world access the Internet and about 15-20 percent of

them use the Internet for E-commerce ( Holzhey et al., 2000) [16]. Trading electronically

offers a number of advantages to companies. Location and distance are no longer immovable

barriers. Availability of information allows easier location of products, services, suppliers

and general business opportunities. Improved speed and affordability of transport has led

to global delivery of goods as well as services and information.

1

In view of these trends concerning the growth of E-commerce , although other online finan-

cial services have already taken off vigorously, the insurance industry’s involvement with

and commitment to E-commerce lags far behind competitors in the banking and brokerage

industries (Garven, 2000) [11].There is a convetional wisdom that the Internet will disinter-

mediate existing insurance distribution networks. There is a major problem in incorporating

E-commerce. Many companies approach E-commerce with no clear idea of where they are

going, some of the enterprises that have tried have just registered a web presence, and are us-

ing the internet only for information distribution other than online transactions. It is difficult

to integrate the E-commerce software with the existing applications and databases; others

have tried redesigning the whole organization making fundamental challenging changes in

organizational behavior.

The impact of integrating E-commerce is so pervasive and as a result of the fast pace of

change, organizations in all sectors need to develop strategies for effective integration of these

activities. We should determine what structure will assimilate best in our business institution

(Vesna et al., 2001) [36]. Organizations need to address how to embrace E-commerce in a

way that enhances rather than diminish the value of the existing networks. Insurers need

to determine ways to configure electronic channels that enhance traditional channels and

possibly even increase overall channel utilization (Garven, 1998) [10]. There is a fear that

the rush into E-commerce could have translated to the development of systems with little

thought hence leading to crises in organizations. There is a need to re-think and formulate

an effective E-commerce strategy for the insurance industry with a view to developing an

appropriate design, which respective businesses can use to compete in the market place led

by E-commerce. The insurance industry is a vital sector in the economy that touches nearly

every business and individual (Yao, 2004) [39]. Identifying, designing, implementing and

operating E-commerce, works most effectively and efficiently when a well-defined process

and structure is used.

In order to survive in competitive economic environments organizations need to continuously

improve their business processes (Vesna et al.,2001) [36]. The Internet enables companies of

all sizes to develop new online business models, which means improving and altering the ways

in which companies operate and interact with business partners, customers and suppliers.

2

1.2 The Insurance Industry

Insurance is an agreement by contract to pay money especially in case of a misfortune (such

as illness, death or accident)or the business of making this type of contract by providing

such payments; or making protection against property. Individuals and businesses purchase

insurance policies to protect themselves against monetary losses. The buying and selling of

insurance takes place everyhour of the working day, thus it is classified as an insurance indus-

try since it is supportive financially to industries and people producing goods and services.

Insurance represents a tool of prime importance in modern economies, it enables economic

agents to reduce and better manage their risk. The basic feature of an insurance contract is

that the insured buys a future promise of payment contigent upon the occurrence of spec-

ified events. Most companies and even individual people deal with insurance companies at

one point or another in their lives. How satisfactory is the experience? And can things

be improved? E-commerce in the Insurance industry is still in its infancy stage yet to be

developed. This research project set out to identify key processes, structures and tasks to

use to improve the current business processes in the corporate insurance industry to embrace

E-commerce. To take advantage of the opportunities created by E-commerce, it is important

that companies implement applications that operate at a high level of E-commerce.

1.3 Statement of the Problem

Following the rapid growth of E-commerce which has changed the nature of business, the

insurance company still regards the Internet as a medium to advertise products and distribute

information (Yao, 2004) [39]. Offering online transactions is still problematic. The existing

systems prevent insurers from accessing relevant data; there is more paper work and slow

response to claims of customers due to bureaucratic, manual and hectic work involved.

Worse still the traditional insurers and brokers are hassling with enabling their customers to

purchase policies, lodge and track claims and renew their policies. These processes consume

a significant proportion of human and paper resources and call centre time in notifying,

renewing policies, tracking and settling claims hence generate costs. This situation implies

insurance companies will lose market share to new and more innovative players in the banking

and brokerage industry (Drury, 2002) [8].

3

Given that insurance claims and policies are essentially information intensive, they are en-

tirely conducive to automation. This will eradicate the paper-intensity of the processes, as

well as the drain on human resources.

1.4 General Objective

The research project was aimed at developing an E-commerce framework to improve busi-

ness processes in the corporate insurance sector so as to enhance insurance availability and

efficiency.

1.4.1 Specific Objectives of the Study

To achieve the aim, the specific objectives of the research project were:

1. To review existing literature and determine what the E-commerce framework in insur-

ance should accomplish.

2. To study the current existing traditional insurance framework, ascertain its insuffi-

ciency and identify requirements for developing an improved framework.

3. To design an improved E-commerce framework in the corporate insurance system that

addresses the identified shortcomings.

4. To implement and validate the developed prototype of the improved E-commerce

framework in the corporate insurance system so that its relevance and applicability

in the industry are confirmed.

1.5 Scope of the Study

The research project was carried out on the corporate insurance sector. This only covered

Business to consumer E-commerce processes. Other types of E-commerce like Business to

business and business to government were not tackled, but their importance was noticed.

4

From the customer’s perspective, electronic insurance (E-insurance) services are not as de-

veloped as business-to-business services (Jarvinen et al., 2001) [19].

The project largely covers business processes pertainng to applying for insurance cover and

the general claims process of the insured against risks.

1.6 Significance of the Study

(i) It is hoped that the findings of the research project will help stakeholders in the insur-

ance industry to have a deeper insight into what constitutes an effective approach to

standard performance in the insurance business. This will allow efficient, rapid collec-

tion and analysis of enormous amounts of information from clients (Grace, 1998) [12].

(ii) The insurance market will be poised to unite technology-enabled processes to reap

the benefits of E-commerce. The web enabled framework will influence the insurance

landscape of the future by allowing insurance companies to reduce processing expenses

through streamlining the administration of insurance policies and the claims process.

There will be design of more competitive products by incorporating the speed, flexi-

bility and interactive capabilities (Dasgupta, 2000) [5].

(iii) E-commerce being a valuable expertise, the government and business decision makers

at all levels will be enlightened in a whole new way to comprehend and understand

the benefits and challenges associated with the management and maintenance of E-

commerce in corporate organizations. This will help to determine which E-commerce

technologies will provide the most benefit for the least cost.

(iv) The research project shall also contribute to the knowledge concerning the develop-

ment of an E-commerce framework in the insurance industry for future reseachers and

academicians.

It is therefore entirely plausible that the end result of this project will be of great help and

will bring hope to the insurance industry as she treads her path of economic development

with E-commerce as a tool.

5

1.7 Limitations of the Study

The insurance data is treated with confidentiality. Proposal forms previously filled were

useful for this study but could not be easily accessed. New forms were therefore used for

this study.

Futher still, the project would have covered other subsytems such as the finacial management

system to handle client premium payments but had time and financial constraints. However

these components can be built later and intergrated with the existing system to expand on

the framework.

6

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 General Overview

E-commerce is quickly emerging as a particularly visible and spectacular incarnation of

globalization. The complexity of a development endeavour leading to migration from a

traditional system stresses the need for a systematic supporting approach to business process

improvement. It is important to note that E-commerce in insurance is expected to have an

impact on global insurance causing a shift of the current trend of business operations and the

premiums at large. This chapter presents a qualitative evaluation of secondary research, that

is academic and industrial studies that are generally related to this project. The purpose

of reviewing literature is to achieve objective(i). This will also provide a foundation for the

project to understand the existing system and to discover a new approach to improve the

existing processes in the insurance industry.

2.2 The Corporate Framework

A framework is an architectural pattern that provides an extensible templete for applications

within a domain ( Booch et al., 1999) [3]. It entails a simplified description of a complex

entity or process; it is a model or structure supporting or containing something. Micheal

Porter in Argyres (2002) [2] considers that ” A framework tries to capture the full richness

of a phenomena with the most limited number of dimensions”. In frame work building,

the artistry is in providing the number of core elements that still capture the variation

and dimensionality of competition. These dimensions then have to be intuitively grounded.

Framework specifies the skeleton of the architecture, together with the slots, tabs ,knobs,

and dails that are exposed to users who want to adapt that framework to their own context.

In UML, the framework is modeled as a stereotyped package (Booch et al., 1999) [3]. The

E-commerce framework is an established way to analyze the issues related to E-commerce

and to develop a harmonized E-commerce system. Zachman (1996) [41] recommends that

7

a useful approach to make enterprise design and change management comprehensive and

yet comprehendible, is to describe the architectural or engineering process, identifying the

descriptive representations that are created and used for the physical products. With this as

a basis, it is straightforward to identify the equivalent process and descriptive representations

for conceptual products and enterprises. It is by no accident that many of these enterprise

representations are recognizable as models or deliverables from the process of developing

information systems. Furthermore, it is easy to see the logical relationships and structure

of the various descriptive representations of the enterprise and its systems, which can be

depicted, as a ”Framework for Enterprise Architecture.”

2.3 Business Process Modeling

A business process represents the organisation’s way of work horizontally, allowing an anal-

ysis of the workflow through their internal and external boundaries (Castela et al., 1999) [4].

Business processes (BPs) are collections of activities with a common objective, such as ful-

filling a business contract or satisfying a customer need. This largely involves description

of a process at a high conceptual level necessary for process understanding, evaluation and

redesign. It requires a well-defined model that provides a set of concepts appropriate to

describe the processes. The model should be rich enough and enable process validation to

decide whether the process definition accurately represents the system under study (Niko-

laidu et al., 2000) [27].

E-commerce dramatically and strategically changes traditional business processes. Electronic

business is about improving and transforming key business processes by using the Internet

and other contemporary technologies. It refers to all aspects of business that take place

over computer networks (Kalakota and Whinston, 1999) [20], (McEachern and O’Keefe,

1997) [25], and drastically changes the way organizations do business. E-commerce is ex-

panding, and is constantly being transformed through innovative processes. It pushes fun-

damental changes throughout the company and demands quick and flexible adoption of

businesses. By strictly pursuing a process perspective, businesses are restructured across

functional and hierarchical boundaries.

8

Grover and Malortha (1997) [13], observed that to accommodate these changes, organizations

may need to be restructured around these new business processes. The proposed framework

will capture the changes in the organization and thus provide an application with improved

business processes.

The growing interest among academic and industrial communities in organizational change

and business process re-engineering has resulted in a multitude of approaches, methodologies,

and techniques to support these design efforts (Wastell et al, 1994) [38], Harrison and Pratt

(1993) [14].

Hlupic (2001) [15] detected that globalization trends and competitive pressure urge many

organizations to radically change business processes. As organizations need to adapt to

new trading conditions and respond to competition, various change management approaches

such as business process re-engineering (BPR) are being adopted. This management concept

relates to the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of an entire business system to

achieve significant improvements in business performance. BPR and business process change

in general have become one of the most popular in organizational management creating new

ways of doing business. To compete effectively, organizations must structurally transform

their internal and external processes. These goals could be reached by simultaneous reno-

vation of business processes and implementation of electronic business models (Vesna et al.,

2001) [36].

Davenport and Short (1990) [6] prescribe a five-step approach to BPR:

(1) Develop the Business Vision and Process Objectives:

BPR is driven by a business vision which implies specific business objectives such as

Cost Reduction, Time Reduction, Output Quality improvement.

(2) Identify the Processes to be Redesigned:

Most firms use the High- Impact approach which focuses on the most important pro-

cesses or those that conflict most with the business vision. Lesser number of firms

use the Exhaustive approach that attempts to identify all the processes within an

organization and then prioritize them in order of redesign urgency.

(3) Understand and Measure the Existing Processes:

9

For avoiding the repeating of old mistakes and for providing a baseline for future

improvements.

(4) Identify IT Levers:

Awareness of IT capabilities can and should influence the process design.

(5) Design and Build a Prototype of the New Process:

The actual design should not be viewed as the end of the BPR process. Rather, it

should be viewed as a prototype, with successive iterations. The metaphor of proto-

type aligns the BPR approach with quick delivery of results, and the involvement and

satisfaction of customers.

2.4 An Overview of Approaches to Business Process Modeling

Methods and Tools

The problem of understanding complex system behaviour and the challange of developing

easy to use models are apparent in the field of business processes. Until recently many or-

ganisations used tools including flowcharting tools, spreadsheets, project management tools,

wordprocessors. One of the major problems that contribute to the failure of business process

change projects is a lack of tools for evaluating the effects of designed solutions before im-

plementation (Eertink et al.,1999) [9]. Many different techniques can be used for modeling

business processes in order to give an understanding of possible scenarios for improvement

(Ould, 1995) [29].

For some purposes, simulation is less suited because it is too time consuming or does not de-

liver the level of completeness required. In such cases, analytical techniques for quantitative

analysis can be used (Lazowska et al., 1984) [23].

Workflow approaches (Lawrence, 1997) [22] tend to use activity models like role activity

diagrams or non-standard modeling techniques to define the business processes and their

relations. Workflow is often used to automate or streamline business processes. When

considering people and their positions in an organisation, it is not sufficient to focus only

on the procedural aspects of process definition. Aspects of responsibility and accountability

must also be taken into account.

10

Thus the existing modeling languages each emphasise some elements, but do not provide an

overall solution for business process remodeling. This is partially caused by the fact that

most of these methods originate from information system development.

The UML provides a set of concepts and language elements for different aspects: use-case

diagrams show the actors, class and object diagrams define objects and their behaviour,

state or scenario diagrams show life-cycles and scenarios.

Andy et al.,1997 [1] recommend that UML can be successfully used as a formal modeling

tool without the notational complexities that are commonly found in textual specification

techniques. The UML is a semantically rich and expressively powerful modeling language.

The UML provides complete semantics expressed in a precise way using meta models and a

mixture of natural language and an adaptation of formal techniques that improves precision

while maintaining readability. It is widely accepted as a de facto standard for object-oriented

modeling. UML is based on meta-models and these capture a precise notion of the abstract

syntax. The object- and agent-oriented paradigms are highly compatible. Agent-oriented

concepts can readily be defined in terms of object-oriented ones. The aim of the design is

to define the goals each process must achieve and to show the relationship between them

(Jacobson et al.,1999) [3].

2.5 E-Commerce and Insurance

Morath (2000) [26], views E-commerce as often taking a narrow perspective limited to spe-

cific initiatives such as sales via the Internet, electronic procurement, or electronic payment.

This however does not look at issues like advertisement and thus the need for websites. It

involves the use of the Internet and web to carry out digitally enabled transactions between

and among organizations, governments and individuals (Laudon and Traver, 2002) [21]. E-

commerce is an endeavor to make use of the Internet facility to conduct transactions electron-

ically. It largely includes the process of sharing business information, maintaining business

relationships and conducting business transactions by means of telecommunication networks.

E-commerce creates more effective external communications with customers, collaborators

and suppliers, as well as improving internal business competence.

11

Nogueria (2002) [28] observed that despite E-commerce’s huge impact on business in general,

the insurance industry has yet to fully embrace the technology. The insurance industry faces

several obstacles to E-commerce, including customer attitudes, complex insurance policies,

state regulations and the traditional agency distribution system. E-insurance involves adver-

tisement, recommendation, negotiation, purchase and claim settlement of insurance policies

through the Internet. At present most of these processes are not automated. In the con-

ventional insurance industry, the insurance company initially informs its customers through

advertisements. Advertisements are either made through passive channels like newspapers,

magazines, billboards, radio and television or through active channels like human insurance

agents.

2.6 The E-Insurance Scenario

Nogueria (2003) [28] observed that despite the increasingly rapid advances made in com-

puter technology, companies in the insurance industry are making the most use of the new

technical possibilities offered today in their internal operations only, such as generating re-

ports, recruiting human resource, while hardly employing them at all when negotiating and

transacting with their customers. Some insurance sites offering web-based policies are little

more than passive catalogues of alternatives available to customers, not all sites are useful

for getting quotes. Some are too difficult to use and others little more than referral services

where you are put in touch with an agent, something you most of the time, do not need the

Internet to achieve.

Dasgupta (2000) [5] argues that the insurance industry has been reluctant to adapt to E-

commerce due to factors such as lack of appropriate software infrastructure, non-awareness

among customers and security concerns. Like most industries, the insurance industry has

also used the Internet as another distribution channel. However with the rapid growth of

IT infrastructure and radical economic reforms, online insurance offers immense opportuni-

ties globally such as reduced costs and transaction time. It is thus imperative to design a

framework for effective transactions online. E- insurance is not just a passing novelty but

the necesarry technology of the hour (Dasgupta, 2000) [5] .

12

2.7 From E-commerce to E-Insurance

The Internet’s impact will affect profound and lasting changes. Companies all over the

world are enabling new processes through the Web, transforming fundamental business rules

such as the way a company does business, enters new markets, communicates across the

enterprise, and deals with suppliers. Reduced transaction costs are part and parcel of the

impact of the Internet and E-commerce. Because transactions are a part of commerce, the

potential savings for business done on the Internet supports the theory that in the future,

all transactions will be done online. Taking this a step further, there may also come a

time when all business will be electronic. Already the rate of web-enablement of business

processes is growing tremendously, even in the most traditional industries. As constant access

to information becomes the standard way of doing business, using the Internet effectively is

becoming a necessity in the insurance industry.

E-commerce adapts the principles of traditional commerce to support business processes over

the internet (Dasgupta, 2000) [5]. In online insurance traditional methods of insurance are

replaced by online processes analogous to those in E-commerce.

E-commerce has several benefits over the normal manual trade. As the reach of Internet is

vast, the merchant can sell goods to a larger number of people and those who are physically

too far away. The customer can buy something from a long distance merchant with a wider

choice. Moreover, unnecessary delays that are involved in conducting a trade can be cut short

and there is round-the-clock availability of goods/services to the customer. The demands of

customers can be met at awkward hours for there is no person needed to conduct the trade.

2.8 Architecture of the E-insurance system

E-insurance involves the advertisement, recommendation, negotiation, purchase and claim

settlement of insurance policies through the Internet. At present most of these processes are

not automated (Dasgupta, 2000) [5]. Some E-insurance sites offer web based policies but

these are little more than passive catalogs of alternatives available to buyers (Nogueria, 2002)

[28]. Insurance transactions can be well dealt with in a distributed manner. By configuring

13

a society of intelligent agents, each one charged with autonomously carrying out different

specific functionalities, the insurance system is able to analyze products being offered, and

deduce useful information regarding the current state of the market. By increasing the

degree and sophistication of the automation process, commerce becomes more dynamic,

personalized and context sensitive. The business changes can be of benefit to both customers

and insurers.

14

CHAPTER THREE

METHODOLOGY

This chapter gives a description of the steps and procedures that were undertaken to accom-

plish the research project. It involves the design and development of the system architecture.

The developing mechanisms that were used to guarantee the effectiveness of the system are

well explained. The research project was implemented through the following phases;

1. Review of literature relevant to corporate insurance systems.

2. Requirements elicitation.

3. Systems design.

4. Software system development.

5. System validation and verification

3.1 Review of literature relevant to Corporate Insurance Systems

Relevant literature was reviewed about the corporate insurance sector. The review looked

at the traditional, E-insurance function and the transition from traditional insurance to

E-insurance. The process of business process modeling and tools used were also reviewed.

3.2 Requirements Elicitation

The cornerstone of any development project is a thorough understanding of the business

requirements. Therefore the first step was to explore the current system operations and to

develop a good working knowledge of the claims and proposal processes in the insurance

industry.

15

3.2.1 The Approach to Business Process Analysis

This research project provides a systematic approach to change of business processes particu-

larly in the corporate insurance sector. The presentation of results is based on the alignment

of the current business processes in insurance companies. It is important to note that busi-

ness process models can be used for analysis and manipulation of business processes without

having to actually build the processes first (Eertink et al.,1999) [9]. Organisations are com-

plex artefacts. They involve different customer groups, business units, people, resources and

systems. They stretch over numerous different processes that interact in a seemingly chaotic

way. When one is trying to change business processes within an organisation one is con-

fronted with that complexity. In order to cope with that complexity and cope with the grip

on changing business processes, a systematic and controlled approach is needed (Eertink et

al.,1999) [9].

This project develops a systematic approach to change of business processes particularly in

the corporate insurance sector. The model-based approach allows one to have an insight

into the structure of business processes, relations between them, system requirements and

changes before implementing them.

The models should encampass different levels of organisational detail, thus allowing to find

bottlenectks to assess the consequences of proposed changes to the customers and the or-

ganisation itself (Jacobson et al.,1995) [18],(Ould, 1995) [29].

Eertink et al.,1999) [9] suggested a busines process model that can be used for analysis

and manipulation of the business processes as shown in figure 3.1 below. From practical

experience most organizations have a portfolio of approaches to organizational change in-

cluding reengineering, continuous improvement, incremental approaches, and restructuring

techniques.

16

Figure 3.1: A Model-based approach to business process change.

The model provides a set of concepts appropriate to describe the business processes. Moving

from a current business process to an improved business process moves through a stage of

change and migration. One is led to the new business process model through a thorough

analysis and modeling which can be categorised as the modeling world. This gives various

suggestions for improvement for change.

3.2.2 Data Collection and Analysis

The development process began with elicitation and description of the system requirements of

the domain to be modeled. These requirements were then systematically and progressively

refined under development. In the process, a prototype of the model of the system was

developed.

In order to achieve the objectives of the project, both primary and secondary data were

sought to discover the system requirements. Primary data was got from the field using the

various research tools that included the following;

17

(i) Interviews:

The interview is an important data gathering technique involving verbal communica-

tion between the researcher and the subject. Interviews are commonly used in survey

designs and in exploratory and descriptive studies (Mathers et al., 1998) [24]. The

interview was be aimed at studying the existing business processes to confirm from

the users how activities are currently aligned and identify any insufficiencies. Focus

interviews were arranged with process owners to identify business processes and re-

quirements, with application owners to identify interface requirements and with the IT

infrastructure staff to understand technical requirements.

(ii) Observations:

To achieve objective (ii),the researcher visited the insurance industry and observed the

existing business processes before finally designing a framework. This involved how

insurers renew policies, lodge and track claims in traditional processes. Obervation

futher entailed looking at the proposal forms filled in by insurants to propose insurance,

looking at the filing and archiving of the proposal and claim documents.

(iii) Document Analysis:

This included reading documentation such as strategies, policies and the insurance

business doucments. This further included reading of textbooks, manuals, newspapers,

manuscripts, circulars and Internet materials.

3.2.3 Case study

The final implementation was designed in relation to NIC as the case study for in-depth

analysis. Case studies are particularly useful in depicting a holistic portrayal of a client’s

experiences and results regarding a program. This can then be adopted by other insurance

companies globally. This largely included: finding the possibility of establishment of E-

commerce, requirements needed, how far the insurance business in Uganda has gone in

E-commerce transactions, experiences, challenges and benefits so far accrued.

18

3.3 Systems Design

A combination of notations were used to complete the design of the study. The Unified Mod-

eling language (UML) that supports object-oriented design was used to model the current

state of business and the proposed framework. The UML can be successfully used as a for-

mal modeling tool without the notational complexities that are commonly found in textual

specification techniques (Andy et al., 1997) [1].

3.3.1 Tools and environment

Use case diagrams show the actors while class and object diagrams define the objects and

their behaviour. UML uses collaboration diagrams to model design patterns and provide

ways of instantiating pattern description through the binding stereotypes. Links were used

to define dependencies between terms and the values of these terms. A product is then defined

as an encapsulation of an attribute set to define an individual item or service for sale by an

individual company. A requirement is the specification of what a customer wishes to buy.

It stores attributes about the customer and the details of his insurance requirements. Given

a customer’s details and requirements, the insurer finds a match with the list of insurance

products proposed by the customer. In this system both products and requirements have

attributes constraints and preferences. Thus the customer will have specific requirement

constraints and preferences to his ideal product.

3.4 System Software Development

A standard message format with meaningful structures and semantics is used for agents to un-

derstand each other. There are many languages (XML, HTML, PHP) which are fast becom-

ing the standard for electronic data interchange on the web (Nogueria, 2002) [28]. For this

project, system development involved creating the user interfaces, use of web-technologies

and database creation. Web pages were created to input and receive formatted text. A

combination of methodologies was used since none has all the components required to com-

plete the design of the project. The programming environment consisted of the following

19

languages and systems:

1. Hypertext mark up language (HTML).

2. Structured query language (SQL).

3. Java Servelets.

4. MySQL. A database was developed using MySQL, this inculded a relational database

management system that can support many applications.

3.5 System Validation and Verification

Automated unit tests were created during the build phase test, defect reports were collected

and analyzed. Futher still in order to comfirm the practicability of the system it was used

in an insurance system for the online submision of insurance proposals, quatations and the

claims processes. A futher testing was done with the customers of insurance companies. The

system validation was mainly to;

• Determine if the system was easy to use and worth being developed.

• Whether it captured all the system requirements .

• Identify the system weaknesses and any improvements required for the next iteration.

20

CHAPTER FOUR

ANALYSIS, DESIGN ANDIMPLEMENTATION

This chapter looks at the knowledge gathered from the field with emphasis on the existing

business processes in the insurance business. The analysis took NIC as the case study. It

futher shows the steps that were taken during implementation, the details of the system

developed and the various screen shots of the designed software to improve the business

processes. The analysis and design followed an object oriented approach that manipulates

objects. The object or component based methodology conceptualises applications as sets

of interacting components and a relational database that stores the data. The UML that

supports object-oriented design was used to model the current state of the business.

4.1 The Requirements and Design Rationale in the UML

The UML is an analysis and design feature that supports a set of semantics and notations

to address all scales of architectural complexity. It is a semantically rich and expressively

powerful modeling language. UML semantics provide complete semantics that is expressed

in a precise way using meta models and a mixture of natural language and an adaptation of

formal techniques that improves precision while maintaining readability. It is widely accepted

as a de facto standard for object-oriented modeling. UML is based on a meta-model and the

meta models capture a precise notion of the abstract syntax. The object- and agent-oriented

paradigms are highly compatible. Agent-oriented concepts can readily be defined in terms

of object-oriented ones. The UML diagrams for this project were modeled with microsoft

visual studio 6.0, enterprise edition. This has a microsoft visual modeler that was used to

draw the use cases, class, activity and sequence diagrams. Thus the primary goals of using

the UML were;

(i) It provides users with a ready-to-use, expressive visual modeling language to develop

and exchange meaningful models.

21

(ii) UML furnishes extensibility and specialisation mechanism to extend the core concepts.

(iii) It supports specifications that are independent of particular programming languages

and development processes.

(iv) It supports higher-level development concepts such as components, collaborations,

frameworks and patterns.

4.1.1 Use Cases

The key tool for behaviour modeling are use cases, they clearly capture the requirements of

the system and these are specified as use cases. Use cases have emerged as the most effective

and successful means of capturing and specifying functional software requirements. They

are a good way of specifying the required usages of a system.

The use case diagrams were used to provide a seed focal point to drive the development

process, since they were used to begin the architecture and the design activities. Use case

diagrams model the static use case view of the system. This primarily supports the behaviour

of the system showing the visible services that the system provides in the context of its

environment. They are a better way to capture software specifications than more traditional

techniques because they layer sequence over flat requirements, and are more easily validated

because of their ability to foster shared understanding. The users of the system and other

systems that interact with the system are represented as actors. The actor is an association

point for external entity related requirements such as scalability. For example, associating

scalability to the customer actor would indicate that system must handle potentially large

number of users accessing system functionality represented by the use cases available to

the actor. This provides precise context for the stakeholders; For example, it helps one to

understand who exactly in the system is affected by the requirements and helps in system

testing. The usecase diagrams commonly contain:

• Use cases

• Actor

• Links such as; dependency, generalization, and association relationships

22

4.1.2 Sequence diagram

The sequence diagram shows how objects interact. Each object is listed along the horizontal

and lines dropped from each object define columns. Arrows running between the object’s

lines are lifelines and indicate the sequence of messages passed between the objects. The

key graphical elements are; objects, lifelines and messages and conditions that indicate when

specific messages will be sent.

4.1.3 Class diagram

The class diagram pictures the types of objects used in the system and the static relationship

that exists between them. The key graphical elements are; classes, attributes, associations

and operations.

4.1.4 Activity diagram

The diagram describes a sequence of activities and is used to describe business decision

models and work flows as well as parallel threads that one encounters in distibuted systems.

the key graphical elements are activities, transitions, decisions, branches and joins. Swim

lanes are used to partition activities and indicate who is responsible for different subsets of

the overall flow.

4.2 Summary of the System requirements from the current Busi-ness Processes

The current system has a range of activities that are shared in different sections which

include;

(i) The Underwriting Process

23

This is the backbone of the company and this where decisions are made whether the

business is accepted or rejected and at what premium. Debiting, Policy documentation

and Re-insurance arrangements are also done from this department. The underwriting

process involves;

• Customer applying for or proposing insurance

• After a thorough check and investigation of the insurance proposals by the under-

writers, customer is issued a quotation, and the premium payment requirements.

• Customer pays premuim by cash or credit card , this is a pre-requisite to policy

issuance.

• Policy is issued stating the terms of the insurance cover and the message sent to

the customers e-mail.

(i) Claims Handling

Since insurance is a future promise to pay another party at any time during the period of

policy/cover, this department is very central for the surival of the organization. When

a claim is reported, a claim must be filled and all the relevant documents concerning the

claim logded with the company. The claims official must establish that the business has

been booked by the underwriting department, policy document issued and premium

paid before the claim can be handled further.

The existing system offers complete outputs like debits, policy documents, production

reports, claim reports, debtors and creditors reports. The information is suitable and

appropriate for the users and decision makers.

The following areas were to be addressed:-

(i) The filling of the proposal forms or claims forms are sometimes done illegibly or in-

correctly by the clients/claims committee hence leading to error or inadequacy of the

information. The designed insurance system will authenticate any clients that wish to

claim, by providing an authentication Key.

(ii) Tideous and cumbersome paper work.

24

(iii) Correction of errors made during the capturing of data stage takes time and some

errors may go undetected.

4.2.1 System Inputs

The system shall capture all information about a particular customer which pertains to

proposal application like name, address, telephone number, E-mail address and the premium

payment detail like amount paid, credit card number. Additional information to be viewed

by customers like the available insurable products, insurance groups, property materials

can be added by the administrator. The adminstrator edits the system contents like new

insurable products or the removal of previous insurable products that are no longer insured

by the company.

4.3 Modeling the Requirements and Context of the System

While modeling the static use case view of the system the usecase diagrams are used in

capturing the system requirements. This involves specifying what the system shall do (from

a point of view of outside the system), independent of how the system shall do it. The

desired behaviour of the system is clearly specified. Modeling the context of the system

involved drawing a line around the whole system and asserting which actors lie outside the

the system and interact with it. The following actors were identified: Insurer, broker, and

the customer. These actors are the roles humans play when interacting with the system,

those that live inside the system are responsible for carrying out the behaviour that those

on the outside expect the system to provide. All those on the outside that interact with the

system constitute the system’s context and this defines the environment in which the system

lives.

One actor can communicate with several use cases of an entity requesting several services

of the entity and one use case communicates with several actors when providing its service.

From a pragmatic point of view, an inclusion relationship between the use cases means that

the behaviour defined in the target use case is included at one location in the sequence of

behaviour perfomed by the base use case. The included use case represents encapsulated

25

behaviour which may easily be reused in several use cases. The figure below shows the

context of the business processes in the insurance system, with emphasis on the actors that

sorround the system. The primary actors are outside the system. The processes to be

modeled are defined based on three dimensions (Short, 1990) [6]:

• Entities: Processes take place between organizational entities. These are interorgani-

zational, interfunctional or interpersonal.

• Objects: Processes result in manipulation of objects. These objects are either physical

or informational.

• Activities: Processes involve two types of activities; managerial and operational for

example the filling of a client’s claim or proposal form.

Figure 4.1: The Underwriting process (Proposal application)

In figure 4.1 above, use cases are represented within the system boundary. These are se-

quences of business processes that entail the whole activity of applying for insurance. The

26

dotted links were used to represent use cases or processes that are included in the main pro-

cesses for generalization, for example being issued a covernote and quotation are included in

the process of proposal application and approval which shows the inclusion modeling. The

branches show alternative courses of action to be taken, for example payment of customers

by either cash or credit cards.

Figure 4.2: Activity diagram for the proposal application with horizontal swim lanes

The activity diagram in figure 4.2 above describes a sequence of activities. The diagram

further shows business decision models and work flows as well as parallel threads that one

encounters in the distibuted system. The key graphical elements are activities, transitions,

decisions, branches and joins. The Swimlanes were used to partition activities and indicate

who is responsible for different subsets of the overall flow. The customer, policy clerk and

27

the underwriter are the major actors in the policy application process and are represented

in the horizontal swimlanes. The desired behaviour of the system is clearly specified with

decisions and branches at a process specifiying the alternative course of action.

The other important system requirement is the claims process, this caters for losses incase the

customer was previously issued insurance cover. The various processes involved are outlined

here below in figure 4.3 as shall be handled by the system.

Figure 4.3: The Claim process

The claim process involves claim registration, documentation and risk assessment, thus other

subsystems like assessment of risk by police are captured but are not implemented. If the

customer meets all the requirements they can then be issued a cheque or credit note, and a

message of acceptance or rejection is deposited to the customers E-mail.

28

Figure 4.4: Activity diagram for the claim process

The claims procedure is systematically followed as seen in the figure 4.4 below. In the

event of a loss, policy holders submit claims, or requests for payment, as compensation for

their loss. The previously insured customers are stored in the system database and can be

referenced in future. After a claim is submitted, the main role of the claims committee is to

investigate the claims, negotiate settlements, and authorize payments to claimants, but they

must always be mindful not to violate the claimants rights under privacy laws. They must

determine whether the customers insurance policy covers the loss and how much of the loss

should be paid to the claimant. Although many adjusters and investigators have overlapping

functions and may even perform the same function, the insurance company generally assigns

specific roles to each of these claims workers.

29

Based on the results and the analysis of the existing business processes, the steps followed

in the insurance system can be catagorised as;

(a) Claims department input customers’ claims information and get a claims entry in the

system.

(b) Register the claims and start investigation of the case.

(c) Claims investigators input casualty and property losses after the investigation of the

losses.

(d) Produce adjustment of the case based on the losses investigation, including pre-settlement

or direct settlement; produce adjustment report according to the losses investigation

and store the amount calculated information.

(e) Administrator retrieves the stored amount information and validates the correctness

of the input data.

(f) The system automatically submits the validated settlement report and determines the

maximum settlement limit of the case according to preset settlement conditions, and

at the same time, transfer to claim adjustors at different levels for further process;

(g) Claim adjustors at different levels finish the examination of the settlement amount.

The system changes the state of the amount information.

(h) Operators cannot print settlement calculation report and other settle documents with-

out the approval of the claim.

(i) Register the payment information of the amount report in the premium collection and

payment. The system transfers the information for synchronization;

(j) Finish after verifying that the settlement is completed and complete all the operation

of at least one claims case.

Figure 4.5 below shows the details provided by the insurance company and elaborates the

internal processes of claim handling for a single event.

30

Figure 4.5: The internal processes of claim Handling

4.4 System Architecture

The system design in this chapter was intended to meet the requirements specification de-

scribed in the analysis stage. The aim of the design was to define the goals each process

must achieve and to show the relationship between them. This consists of the system ar-

chitecture and database design. The System design includes the architectural design and

the database design. Architectural design shows how the user interfaces, web technologies,

software, network, middleware and database are linked to work as a system. The different

components were selected on the basis of the requirements specification. It also shows how

information flows between GUI (web browser) and the database. The UML diagrams were

used to describe the structure, behaviour and architecture of the system.

31

Figure 4.6: Model Architecture for the insurance system

The architecture has an agent representing each of the insurers, an agent representing the

customers and an agent for brokering services. Each insurer has full ownership of its agent,

ensuring that all strategic information remains confidential. The goal is to support a distri-

bution of a full range of insurance products from several different insurers without the need

to modify or constrain the standard rigid formats for E-commerce purposes. The system

will has the following components;

1. Customer’s side

This has a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that presents each resource accessible by the

user as an independent object; the GUI shall be provided with the help of the operating

system so consistency across multiple applications is maintained. This model shall

place no limit on the number of insurance agents a customer can access simultaneously.

From the customer’s perspective the application searches all available offers to find the

most suitable one and then go through the process of actually purchasing the product.

2. Middle application

The middle application has a distributed system with agents to support distribution

32

of a full range of insurance products from several different insurers without the need

to modify or constrain them in standard rigid format for E-commerce purposes.

3. Insurer’s side

From the insurer’s perspective, the system varies its own offering depending on the

customer it is dealing with, what its competitors are doing and the current state of its

own business.

4.4.1 The System Class Diagram

Figure 4.7: Class diagram for the insurance system

The class diagram is composed of the elements that represent the system’s business entities.

A class represents an entity of a given system that provides an encapsulated implementation

33

of certain functionality of a given entity. These are exposed by the class to other classes as

methods. Apart from business functionality, a class also has properties that reflect unique

features of a class. The properties of a class are called attributes. For example in the figure

4.7 above, the customer class represents customer entities in the system. The customer

class encapsulates customer information such as customer ID, customer name, these are the

attributes of the customer class. The customer class also exposes functionality to other

classes by using methods such as proposeInsurance(), makePaymentID().

4.4.2 The generalized system package diagram

The Package diagram in figure 4.8 below is used to organize the elements of the system into

related groups to minimise dependencies among them.

Figure 4.8: The Logical view of the system classes

34

This includes a package called the Graphical User Interface (GUI) which controls the look

and feel of the user interface. The GUI presents each resource accessible by the user as an

independent object; the GUI shall be provided with the help of the operating system so

consistency across multiple applications is maintained.

Rather than have each class being responsible for knowing how to catch and throw exceptions,

a package called error handling was added and since it is used by every package it is global.

This model shall place no limit on the number of insurance agents a customer can access

simultaneously. From the customer’s perspective the application searches all available offers

to find the most suitable one and then go through the process of actually purchasing the

insurance policy.

4.5 Modeling the system flows by time ordering (System Interac-

tion)

Modeling flow of control by time ordering emphasizes the passing of messages as they unfold

over time, which particularly is useful in visualizing the dynamic behaviour in the context

of a usecase scenario. Each of the objects has a lifeline, but most of them are persistent

throughout the entire interaction. The business behaviour uses the interaction analysis to

place responsibilties and business processes on organizational units. The UML sequence

diagram was used to show the interaction between organizational units as well as the pro-

cesses that occur between each unit. An interaction is a behaviour that comprises a set

of messages exchanged among a set of objects within a context to accomplish a purpose

(Booch, 1999) [3]. The interaction process includes a sequence or scenario which starts with

a business event, that is a proposal written by customers and it is finished with a result. The

figure below shows the sequence diagram for the insurance business processes. The messages

that are dispatched from object to object are illustrated. A message is a specification of

a communication between objects that conveys information with the expectation that the

activity will ensue (Eertink et al.,1999) [9].

The Interaction diagram in figure 4.9 below is used to model the dynamic aspect of the

system, this includes modeling the prototypical instances of the classes, interfaces, along

with the messages that are dispatched, all in the context of a scenario that illustrates a

35

behaviour among them.

Figure 4.9: Interaction Analysis of Insurance

4.6 Database Design

4.6.1 The Relations for the Insurance Database

This was part of the physical design stage. Entities become tables while attributes become

columns in the physical database. Appropriate data types were chosen for each of the

columns. Unique identifiers become columns that are not allowed to have NULL values.

These were the primary keys in the physical database. Relationships were modeled as foreign

keys. The relations that were implemented to create the database for the insurance system

36

described are customer, insurance company, insurance policy, property, proposal form. The

details of their attributes include:

1. INSURANCE_COMPANY(Company_Name(PK),Company_Address,)

2. CUSTOMER(Customer_ID (PK),Customer_Name,Insurance_Group,Property_ID(FK),Address)

3. GENERAL_PRODUCT_INSURANCE (Product_ID(PK),Product_Name,Form_ID(FK),Evaluation_Document)

4. LIFE_INSURANCE (insurance_ID(PK),Company_Name(FK),Amount_Collected,Collection_Date,Eva

5. PROPERTY(Property_ID(PK),Property_Number,Ground_Rent_Value,Present_Property_Value,Prop

6. PROPOSAL_FORM(Form_ID(PK),Product_ID(FK),Address)

7. INSURANCE_POLICY (Policy_ID(PK),Licence_Number,Division_Name(FK),Year_Of_Issue,Holder_

The generation of data models included the following stages;

• The identification of data objects and relationships between them.

• Adding key attributes to the diagram.

• Adding non-key attributes.

• Diagramming generalization hierarchies.

• Validating the model through normalization.

• Adding business and integrity rules to the model.

4.7 System Implementation

Object oriented programming launguages were used to develop the prototype and this im-

proved with more subsequent iterations. This included user interface design, web-technologies

and database design. Web pages were created to input and recieve formated text.The pro-

gramming enviroment (software tools) consisted of the following languages and systems:

1. Structured query language(SQL)

37

2. Hypertext markup language(HTML)

3. Java Servelets

4. Database: A database was developed using MYSQL, a relational database management

system.

4.7.1 The User Interfaces

The GUI was designed, the interfaces were designed with HTML because it provides ease of

development and enhances the development of a user friendly system. The interface provides

the user a platform for registering and being authenticated by the system. Print screens of

the user interface forms for entering data are here included. The source code for generating

and manipulating these interfaces is included in the appendix.

Figure 4.10: Welcome screen of the insurance system

38

Figure 4.10 above shows a screen shot of the interface that enables a new client to either

propose Insurance, or if they are registered clients to follow up their claims. The Wel-

come screen has an administartor icon for system management and only privilaged person

(administartor) can be able to acess the customer claims or proposals.

When the administrator tool is started from administrators desktop, the user will be pre-

sented with a window that requires authentication. This is functionally represented in figure

4.11 below;

Figure 4.11: The Administrator’s view with authentication

The administration tool is used to provide administrators with an application to view and

enter or make modifications to the content of stored clients. This allows updates to be made

to the E-Commerce database in an intuitive fashion while maintaining data integrity and

table consistency. It is anticipated that the system will be customized to support specific

customer requirements.

39

Figure 4.12: The Administrator menu bar

Figure 4.12 above shows the Administrator’s window, the administrator can be able to view

clients, and edit all the other parameters in the system like insurance groups, insurable

property and insurance products. This is regularly edited to meet the organizational needs.

On the client’s side, the system has a simple and user friendly interface designed to enhance

the ease of use and flexibilty that suits all categories of customers during the proposal

application phase. The client interface screen features embedded in the system include;

indication of mandatory fields on the input screens and provision of consistency in dialog

windows. This simplicity eases the data entry of the customers

40

Figure 4.13: The Client Login Page

This is a screen shot of the interface that enables an authorized user to be authenticated by

means of a password and authentication key before access can be allowed.

Figure 4.14: Registered Client Login Page

The Application process is in two phases, after successful login the client can then fill the

second part of the insurance proposal form. This is shown in the screen shot in figure 4.15

below.

41

Figure 4.15: The proposal application form

The system also enables quick retrieval of information in form of reports on both the client’s

and administrator’s side and these can be referenced in future in case of any defects in the

system operations. The examples are in the figures 4.16 and 4.17 below.

Figure 4.16: The insurance product details

42

Figure 4.17: The client’s claim status

The clients’s claim status can be viewed by all system users and gives the status of the claim.

Users can always check from anywhere the status of their claims and proposals other than

the traditional way of practically visiting the insurance company. Their debit number is

issued in the report and the clearing process to transfer money to their bank accounts can

be done there after. However this is not part of the system but can be easily intergrated. The

developed system is a network application designed to streamline the cost of processing and

handling damage and shortage claims and policies for the insurance industry. The solution

handles all areas of proposal and claim management including claimant information tracking,

damage inspection information, and premium and claim payments. Using a shared database,

claims employees can access data on all claimants and claims immediately. Managers can

query the database for reports on the most common claimants, current claim liabilities, and

general insurance information. The system can be used as a stand-alone product or integrated

with existing systems, so it will grow with an organization. This is a total solution for the

proposal and claims processing requirements.

43

4.8 System Validation and Verification

Testing is a process of validating and checking that the software meets the expectations of its

users. Testing is a cost-effective process, if one considers the trade off between the resources

spent and quality achieved. The system was tested to ensure security, reliability and usability.

Usability is the capability of software to be understood and easily used by the user under

specified conditions. Validation testing is a concern which overlaps with integration testing.

Ensuring that the application fulfils its specification is a major criterion for the construction

of a system test. Validation testing also overlaps to a large extent with system testing, where

the application is tested with respect to its typical working environment. Consequently for

many processes no clear division between validation and system testing can be made. Thus

the specific tests which were performed in the stages of the system development include the

following.

1. Security testing

The system was tested to restrict access like where unauthorized attempts to operate

the application, or parts of it, were attempted. This also included attempts to obtain

access to the data, or harm the application installation or even the system software

itself. As with all types of security it is recognised that someone sufficiently determined

will be able to obtain unauthorized access and the best that can be achieved is to make

this process as difficult as possible. Error messages are indicated or even when the user

is denied acess as shown in figures 4.18 and 4.19 below.

Figure 4.18: Validation of input: Wrong user password

44

Figure 4.19: Validation of input: Client authentication

2. Usability testing

Usability testing was done whereby the underwriters in the insurance company were

able to track the customer claims and proposals with the system. Interviews were

conducted to establish not only the ease of use of the system but also the ability of the

system to be used for its intended purpose. The interview questions were designed to

test the system on the user-friendliness of the graphical user interface and the suitability

of the system for tracking and lodging client claims and proposals. The interviewees

reported satisfaction with the system in the category of user user-friendliness of the

interface and its suitability for tracking customer proposals and claims. The interview

guide which was used is attached as appendix B.

The confront in the testing stage to the system developer is always how many users

one is supposed to test the system with to be able to detect usability problems and

redesign the system accordingly. It was noted that as soon as one collects data from a

single test user, insights shoot up and one learns almost a third of all there is to know

about the usability of the design. The difference between zero and even a little bit of

data is astounding. The effects of testing with users are illustrated in figure 4.20 below.

The X-axis demostrates the number of test users while the Y-axis shows the usability

problems. As observed problems increase as the system is tested with one or two users

but as it is tested with more users there is not much to add so the percentage on the

Y-axis is assumed to remain constant from the 12th user onwards. People are definitely

different, so there will be something new that the second user does that you did not

45

observe with the first user. So the second user adds some amount of new insight, but

not nearly as much as the first user did. But as one adds more and more users, there is

not much need to keep observing the same thing multiple times, this gives motivation

to go back to the drawing board and redesign the system to eliminate the usability

problems found.

Figure 4.20: Effectiveness of testing with users

4.9 System Security

The system has the following security features;

1. Identification and authentication:

The clients do not just report who they are (identification), their identity needs to be

verified as well a process known as authentication. Passwords are the most common

mechanism for authentication. The system displays asterisks instead of the actual

password which is more secure and they are also requested for the authentication key.

The system users can not do anything before they are authenticated by the system

which limits the acess to the system freely.

2. Privacy:

To support anonymity, pseudonymity, unlinkability, or unobservability, the administra-

tor can be able to determine the real identity of someone hiding behind a pseudonym.

46

The system ensures high levels of privacy by protecting the user data that is provided

when the clients are filling in the claim or proposal forms.

3. Security Management:

The system is managed by an administator who controls who can do what. The

administator has a trusted role and its only the administrator with trusted roles that

can invoke them.

47

CHAPTER FIVE

DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION ANDRECOMMENDATIONS

This research project centered on developing an insurance system. This system is a model

framework that insurance industries can use to streamline and improve their business pro-

cesses pertaining to applying for the insurance cover, lodging and tracking claims. The

project report is organized into five chapters. Chapter one gave the background to the

study, chapter two covered literarture review with emphasis on business process improve-

ment, and the present state in the insurance industry. Chapter three was on the methodolgy

used to achieve the project objectives, while chapter four covered the system study, design

and implementation. This chapter covers the discussion, conclusions and recommendations.

5.1 The E-commerce Proposed Framework

E-commerce continues to hold tremendous profit potential for many companies. It still offers

faster response to customer needs, reduced operating costs, and increased cooperation among

customers and trading partners once done right.

”Putting the cart before the horse has never been a wise move ”, which means before bringing

an E-commerce offering to the market there is need to plan a workable architecture . Now

more than ever, companies must thoroughly plan and carefully build their E-commerce

architecture before the first customer ever comes on board. This is because capital, time

and resources are scarcer today, thus margins for error are slimmer and stakeholders are less

in the mood to support initiatives that do not work out of the gates (Deitel et al., 2001) [7].

From the designed prototype the customer is able to approach a company in open space

environment with no historical barriers. Customers can complete policy applications online

and their claims can be fully lodged and tracked by just a click on the computer. This

approach makes many insurers feel comfortable by having direct contact with the customer

without disrupting the conventional business flow in view of the nature of the customer base.

48

The web is used as a gate to all customers, common products like motor insurance can have

their proposal and claim forms filled online. Online administration posses capabilities of

offering services to the different customers, like individual customers or corporate companies

which include underwriting and immediate response to the online Claim forms. The proposed

framework has components that can be organized as shown in figure 5.1 below.

Figure 5.1: The E-commerce architecture

The figure shows a high-level overview that supports E-commerce on the Internet. The

basic idea is that potential customers go to the web page, search for insurance and then

purchase it while they are at the web page. The insurance company then conveys the terms

of the insurance policy to the customer and the customer responds with details including

description of the entity being insured, the terms and the duration of the insurance policy.

Major interaction between the insurer and the insurance company occur in the post sales

phase if the insurer submits the claim for the amount insured. There are three major

components to this architecture: the Internet, a firewall, and the side of the organization.

49

The internet is where the organization will interact electronically with customers, the firewall

will provide security against malicious acts or people, and the organizations system will

process the business transactions generated on the web page by customers. There are other

sub components however that are included here below;

1. The Internet

The internet has already significantly changed the way many independent distributors

work and in particular their relationships with providers. The internet will play an

increasingly important role in various aspects of independent distribution. The main

advantage is that it reduces the time one spends on administrative tasks and at the

same time reduces the delays and errors in the processing of client requests. Insurance

agents can now employ the internet to reach customers through advertisements more

effectively since it integrates the traditional passive and active channels of advertise-

ments into one. Advertisement banners, e-mail notifications and coupons are used

to replace passive media, while software agents replace their active human counter-

parts. An electronic market will provide a facility capable of exploiting bi-directional

exchange of information.

2. Web Server

This is the package which manages web pages and forwards them to the client on

request. In fact, a spectrum of web servers exists, ranging from the serving of mainly

static pages, through to the dynamic generation of web pages based on output from

applications. Web servers can also manage security and can encrypt information if

required. For this system a webserver was developed to manage the web pages and

forward them to customers as requested from time to time. The caption in figure 5.2

below shows the execution of the webserver for the isurance system.

50

Figure 5.2: The system webserver operation

3. Database

The relational database stores information in the form of tables and for the proper

operation of the insurance system a relational database was developed. Flat file and

object databases also exist, but the relational database can manage complex informa-

tion more appropriately than in a flat file, and has a longer pedigree than the object

database and so was as the best choice. Object databases are seen as a better choice for

management of complex data types which do not naturally map to the table format.

Databases are required in the E-commerce architecture to manage transaction status as

well as to manage the information. The relational database gives the database support

with records on all the clients, their proposals and the claims made.

4. JDBC (Java DataBase Connectivity)

With JDBC there is no need to code explicit connections to the database or remote

systems, taking care of load balancing, updating the database and thread controlling.

The business logic was implemented which lets the application server take care of

51

connection, performance and system control issues. ODBC drivers should also be

installed on the client work stations for proper database connectivity.

5. Java Servelet Engine

The system development used java servlets that communicate with a database through

the JDBC. The hardware utilizes a two-tier configuration where the web server resides

on an CPU 400 MHz machine, while the database resides on a machine. The server

option was used, and some command line flags were used to configure the garbage

collector. The Java servlet allows one to add dynamic content to a web server using the

java platform. Servlets are the java counterpart to dynamic web content technologies.

It has the ability to maintain state after many server transactions. This is done using

HTTP Cookies, or URL rewriting and the generated content was in HTML.

6. Firewall

This is a software/hardware combination that connects an organisation’s internal net-

works to the internet. As such, its primary concern is security: it uses rules to determine

what information can be passed in either direction, based on the originator address,

the server address and the type of information to be transferred.

In general the E-commerce architecture summarises the location of clients and the hosting

environment. These are connected by the internet as an intermediary, thus clients can acces

the system through the web browser. The architecture is a tool to manage the complexity

of the organizational system. At the moment clients can be able to access proposal forms

to obtain insurance cover and claims forms for those who have been insured. Other sub

systems can be incorporated as time goes-by since the system is scalable. The road to

long-term success with E-commerce is to start small but think big.

5.2 Discussion

The insurance industry has been undergoing dramatic change for a number of years. Signif-

icant movements toward deregulation in financial services along with advances in telecom-

munication and computer technology, are forcing significant changes upon the industry and

making it far more competitive (Garven, 1998) [10].

52

This project gives insight by the availed business process model that clearly and precisely

represents the essence of the business organisation. It focused on very specific sub processes

that only contain a few processes in the whole insurance function. While the main task was

to develop an E-commerce framework for corporate insurance systems to offer online services,

attention was also given to the relevant fields such as reviewing the vital business processes

involved like proposing or applying for insurance, lodging and tracking insurance claims.

Throughout the research, it was discovered that there are many different procedures that

are followed by organizations in order to accomplish the whole task of business process im-

provement. The major areas in which E-Commerce supports business process improvement

include (Deitel et al., 2001) [7]:

1. Reducing cycle time and the time to market the products this increases productivity

and business competitiveness.

2. Knowledge management in which users can access the organisation knowledge base.

3. Business alliances, companies realize that alliances, such as sharing resources, estab-

lishing permanent supplier company relationships and creating joint research efforts

with other companies or even with competitors are beneficial.

Figure 5.3: The Insurance Model.

53

The most important contribution of this research project is that the system model presents

customers with a direct channel to the insurance company for proposal and claims processes.

The following features are offered with the above approach;

1. Insurance-related content and resources pertaining to applying for insurance cover.

2. Leading edge web-based customer service: Claims notice, policy processing and pro-

posal application (Underwriting).

5.3 Conclusions

This research centered on the analysis and redesigning of business processes pertaining to

proposal writing and tracking claims in corporate insurance Organizations. It is important

to note that E-commerce gives companies improved efficiency and reliability of business pro-

cesses through transaction automation over the Internet. The insurance market will be poised

to unite technology-enabled processes to reap the benefits of E-commerce. The web enabled

model will influence the insurance landscape of the future by allowing insurance companies

to reduce processing expenses by streamlining the administration of insurance business, to

reduce commission costs by replacing them with better lead generation and support, design

more competitive products by incorporating the speed, flexibility and interactive capabilities

(Dasgupta, 2000) [5]. The approach shows that people that are not aware of applying in-

tricacies of applying formal methods can now apply formal methods. It effectively supports

business analysts in the daily work: business process improvement or re-engineering . It is

important to note that in the user audience, UML is gaining increased popularity. The work

has been carried out and expressed in the context of the UML standard, but the results can

easily be adapted to other frameworks.

5.4 Risks to the Implementation of E-insurance

The risks in using E-insurance differ from those in traditional paper-based processes, but

those risks can be reduced to a level at or below the risks of using traditional processes.

These risks fall into two broad categories:

54

1. Authentication Risk

E-Insurance typically does not involve face-to-face settings, verifying the identity of

the person sending a document is essential, unlike most traditional processes where

documents are sent in person. Relying on the person’s unique handwritten signature

is not available in E-insurance as well. As a result, authenticating the identity of the

person who actually sent a document electronically must be addressed in the process.

There are several ways to authenticate the identity of a person. For example, asking

the person to verify information only that client is likely to know, such as the person’s

mother’s maiden name or a PIN, are ways to authenticate one’s identity. Insurance

companies may gather information about the client in the underwriting process that

could be used in the authentication process, even if on a retroactive basis. The goal is

to calibrate the process of authenticating a person with the risk associated with that

particular signature failing.

2. Repudiation Risk

Because electronic data can be altered relatively easily without detection if extra steps

are not taken, those extra steps must be taken to counter claims that the document

could have been altered after it was sent electronically. Traditional methods of detect-

ing altered documents are not sufficient for electronic records. Records signed elec-

tronically should be secured in a way that prevents them from being altered without

detection. Encrypting documents signed and sent electronically is one way to secure

them from being altered without detection, this is not provided for in this system which

was developed but can be implemented at later stages since the system is scalable.

5.5 Recommendation and Further Studies

Recent approaches to E-Commerce systems design, stress the distinction between business

models and process models which also need to be deeply studied . The framework proposed

in this paper can help in improving insurance business process aspects in a systematic way.

Another area where the proposed framework can be of use is process integration. The work

in this paper focuses on improvement of business processes, like processes for exchanging

resources within an organisations. An interesting extension is to consider external processes

55

that describe the work going across the boarders of organizations. This would mean address-

ing aspects such as delegation, authorities, and accounting responsibilities.

As mentioned in the section above, the desired solution was achieved but the project is

not all conclusive as it has catered for only a specific organization. The framework can be

extended and some components inherited to support other features like online quotations,

financial managements systems that handle the insurance premiums and re-insurance by

parent insurance companies that offer insurance to child insurance organizations.

56

References

[1] Andy, E., France, R., Lano, K. and Rumpe, B. (1997). The UML as a for-

mal modelling Notation, Department of Computer Science Engineering Florida,

Workshop on Object-oriented Behavioral Semantics. TU Munchen, TUM-I9737.

http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/article/evans97uml.html

[2] Argyres, N. and McGahan, A. M. (2002). ’An Interview with Michael Porter’,

Academy of Management Executive, vol. 16, no. 3, (pp.43-52).

[3] Booch, G., Rumbaugh, J and Jacobson, I.(1999). The Unified Modeling language user

Guide Addison Wesley, Canada. pp.219-241.

[4] Castela, N., Tribolet, J., Silva, A. and Guerra, A.(2000). Businee Process Modelling

with UML, Castela Branco, Portugal .

[5] Dasgpta, P. (2000). E-commerce in the Indian Insurance Industry: Prospects and

Future.

[6] Davenport, T.H. and Short, J.E. (1990 ). ”The New Industrial Engineering: Infor-

mation Technology and Business Process Redesign,” Sloan Management Review, pp.

11-27.

[7] Deitel, H.M., Deitel, P.J and Steinbuhler, K.(2001). E-bussiness and E-commerce for

Managers- Prentice-Hall Inc: Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458

[8] Drury, S.(2002).Web based Technology and the future of Insurance, BL-5507, Bloor

Research.

[9] Eertink, H., Janssen, W., Luttighuis, P.O., Teeuw, W., and Vissers, C.(1999).A Busi-

ness Process Design Language , World Congress on Formal Methods (FM’99),Volume

1708, Springer LNCS, Toulouse.

[10] Garven, J.R. (1998).‘Electronic Commerce in the insurance industry: Business Per-

spectives. Centre for Risk Management and Insurance Research, Goergia state Uni-

versity, Working Paper Series Number 98- 3.

57

[11] Garven, J.R. (2000).‘The Role of Electronic Commerce in Financial Services Inte-

gration. Department of Finance,Insurance and real estate, Hankamer School of busi-

ness,Baylor University, North American Actuarial Journal Vol 4 Number 3.

[12] Grace, M.F., Klein, R.W. and Straub, D.(1998). E-Commerce in the insurance

Industry:Issues and opportunities”,InSeCom:Secure Electronic Commerce.San Fran-

cisco,CA:Montgomery Research Inc

[13] Grover, V. and Malortha, M. (1997). ”Business process re-engineering: a tutorial on

the concept, evolution. Method, technology and application”, Journal of Operations

Management, Vol 15. Pp192-213.

[14] Harrison, B.D. and Pratt, M.D. (1993). ”A methodology for reengineering businesses”

Planning Review 21(2). Pp6-11.

[15] Hlupic, V. (2001).Current trends in Business Process Modeling Brunel, University

International journal of simulation systems science and technology Vol2 number 2.

[16] Holzhey, T.,Trauth.T and Birkmaier, U.(2000). The impact of e-bussiness

on the insurance industry:Pressure to adapt-chance to re-invest, Swiss

re-insurance company research report. Retrieved from March 10, 2005

http://www.swissre.com/e/ebussiness.html.

[17] Internetnews.com (1999). China considers nationwide E-commerce Framework, re-

ported march 30.

[18] Jacobson, I., Ericsson, M., and Jacobson, A. (1995). The Object Advantage-Bussiness

Process Reengineering with Object Technology ACM Books.

[19] Jarvinen, R. and Jarvelin, A.M. (2002). How Can Consumers Be engaged in E-

Insurance? North American Actuarial Journal Vol 4 Number 3, (pp.133-146)

[20] Kalakota, R. and Whinston, A.B. (1999). ”Electronic Commerce: A Manager’s

Guide”, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.

[21] Laudon, K.C and Traver, C.G (2002). E-commerce: Bussiness Technology. society,

USA

58

[22] Lawrence, P.(1997) (Ed.), Workflow Handbook, John Wiley and Sons Ltd, Chichester,

UK.

[23] Lazowska, E.D., J. Zahorjan, G. Graham, and K. Sevcik,(1984) Quantitative System

Performance: Computer System Analysis Using Queueing Network Models. Prentice-

Hall.

[24] Mathers, N., Fox, Nick and Hunn, A. (1998). , Trent Focus for Research and De-

velopment in Primary Health Care: Using Interviews in a Research Project. Trent

Focus,

[25] McEachern, T. and O’Keefe, B. (1997). ”Re-Wiring Business Uniting Management

and the Web”, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York.

[26] Morath (2000).Succes@e-bussiness. London:Mc Graw-Hill

[27] Nikolaidou, M., Anagnostopoulos, D. and Tsalgatidouet, A. (2000). Business pro-

cesses modelling and automation in the banking sector banking sector: A case

studyInternational Journal of Simulation: Systems, Science and Technology, Special

Issue on ”Business Process Modelling”, Vol. 2, No 2, Dec. 2001, (pp. 65-76).

[28] Nogueria and Oliveira (2002). A Multi-Agent system for E-Insurance brokering, Pro-

ceedings of the Workshop on Agent Technologies for e-Services (ATES2002) in AISB

JOURNAL, The Interdisciplinary Journal of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation

of Behaviour , V. 1

[29] Ould M.A. (1995). ”Business Processes: Modelling and Analysis for Re-engineering

and Improvement”, John Wiley and Sons .

[30] Rowley, J.(2002). E-Bussiness Principles and Practice Palgrave Houndmills Bas-

ingstoke Hampshire , Great Britian.

[31] Sowa,J.F.and Zachman, J.A.(1992). ”Extending and Formalising the Framework for

Information Systems Architecture”, IBM Systems Journal, Vol 31, No 3. IBM Publi-

cation G321-5488 .

59

[32] Steinfield, C. (2002).Conceptualizing the role of collaborative e-commerce in geograph-

ically defined business clusters. Presented to the workshop on The Ambivalent Re-

lationship between IT and social capital, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, May 27-28,

2002, The Netherlands.

[33] Straub, D., Hoffman, D., Weber, B. and Steinfield, C. (2002).. Measuring e-Commerce

in Net-Enabled Organizations: An Introduction to the Special Issue, Information Sys-

tems Research 13 (2), 115-124.pdf abstract from Informs pubs online.

[34] Tsalgatidou, A. and Veijalainen, J. (2000).Mobile electronic commerce: Emerging is-

suesInternal Report, University of Jyvskyl.

[35] Turban, E., Jaelee, King, D. and Chung, H.M. (2000). Electronic Commerce: A Man-

agerial Perspective-Prentice-Hall,Inc Upper Saddle River,NewJersey N07458, USA.pp

6,7.

[36] Vesna, V.B, Stemberger, M.I and Jaklic,J. (2001). Simulation modelling towards e-

business models development. International journal of simulation systems science and

technology Vol2 number 2

[37] Warwick, F. and Baum, M.S.(2001). Secure Electronic Commerce - Prentice-Hall, Inc:

Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458, Second Edition.

[38] Wastell, G.W., White, P. and Kawalek, P. (1994).”A methodology for business re-

design: experience and issues”, Journal of Strategic Information systems

[39] Yao, J. (2004).Ecommerce Adoption of insurance companies in new Zealand. Journal

of Electronic research,Vol.5,No.1

[40] Zachman, J.A. (1987).”A Framework for Information Systems Architecture”,IBM Sys-

tems Journal, Vol 26, No 3. IBM Publication G321-5298 L

[41] Zachman, J.A. (1996).”the challenge is change””, President, Zachman International.

Published on IES Web Site, May 1996.

60

APPENDIX A: QUESTIONNARE FOR INVESTIGAT-

ING THE INITIAL SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

The growth of the internet has revolutionalized the traditional business models of our soci-

ety; this has led to the emergence of E-commerce, which has transformed business processes.

This questionnaire is designed to study the business processes in corporate insurance systems.

The ultimate goal is to use the information there after to design an E-commerce framework

for improving the business processes in corporate insurance systems. Your opinions and your

time in answering the questions about the insurance company will be much appreciated. All

information provided is guaranteed to remain confidential.

PART A

1. What type of insurance do you offer to customers? .

2. What type of insurance is highly demanded and frequently insured by customers?

3. On Average how long does it take to lodge and track a claim?

4. How many people are involved in the processing of a claim to the final stage? List them

5. What is the flow of activities to finally acquire an insurance policy?

6. Do you process any documents in between the transactions, given to customers? If yes

which kind of documents?

7. How are these documents archived?

8. Are there any special qualities or qualifications customers must have before purchasing

an insurance policy? If Yes what kind of qualifications?

9. How do you guarantee security of your customers insurance policies?

PART B

1. Is the company connected to the internet?

2. Does the company have a website?

3. What are the basic functions of your company website? (Please list them)

4. Do you carry out any transactions through the internet? If Yes what kind of transactions?

5. Would you like to have all your transactions computerized, just like for the banking sec-

tor?

61

6.List some of the activities that are not computerized and you would prefer them comput-

erized or digitally enabled?

7. Do you think it will increase your company returns? How?

8. What do you think will be the response of your customers toward a new business process?

9. Give any suggestions of how the business transactions can be digitally enabled in the

corporate insurance system.

Thank you for all your time and responses.

Deborah Naatujuna

Faculty of Computing and Information Technology

Makerere University,

P.O Box 7062,

Kampala

62

APPENDIX B: INTERVIEW GUIDE FOR SYSTEM

TESTING

1 Is the system response to inputs fast enough?

2 Are the prompts and the instructions helpful?

3 Did the system at one time stop unexpectedly?

4 Where do you stumble while walking through the system? What problems do you meet?

Where do you get confused?

5 What time does is take you to learn working with this system?

6 Does the system follow the same procedures and steps that you would have otherwise

followed when manually tracking customer proposals and claims?

9 Is task performance straightforward with this system or do you get lost?

10 Are the error prevention messages adequate enough?

11 Do you feel you need assistance when using this system?

13 Are the outputs from the system in form of system reports or queries what you would

expect if you had used manual methods?

14 Would you rather use this system for tracking customer proposals and claims ?

63

APPENDIX C: SELECTED SECTIONS OF THE SYS-

TEM CODE

Command line instructions when starting the webserver

@echo off

rem $Id: shutdown.bat,v 1.2 1999/04/09 19:50:32 duncan Exp $

rem Startup batch file for servlet runner.

rem This batch file written and tested under Windows NT

rem Improvements to this file are welcome

if "CLASSPATH" == "" goto noclasspath

rem else

set _CLASSPATH=CLASSPATH%

set CLASSPATH=server.jar;servlet.jar;classes;CLASSPATH%

goto next

:noclasspath

set _CLASSPATH=

set CLASSPATH=server.jar;servlet.jar;classes

goto next

:next

rem echo Using Classpath: CLASSPATH%

java com.sun.web.shell.Shutdown 1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9

rem clean up classpath after

set CLASSPATH=_CLASSPATH%

set _CLASSPATH=

64

Data Insertion

// CALLING REQUIRED JAVA PACKAGES

import java.io.*;

import java.sql.*;

import javax.servlet.*;

import javax.servlet.http.*;

import java.util.*;

import java.awt.*;

import javax.swing.*;

public class CheckUserLogin extends HttpServlet

{

// GLOBAL VARIABLES

String picked_password,picked_password1,picked_code,picked_group;

// INITIALISATION METHOD

// IT LOADS ALL REQUIRED DATABASE DRIVRES

public void init(ServletConfig config) throws ServletException

{

super.init(config);

try

{

Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver");

}

catch(Exception e)

{ }

}//init

65

//POST METHOD CORRESPONDING TO THE USER INTERFACE POST ACTION

public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request,HttpServletResponse response) throws

{

response.setContentType("text/html");

//CREATING OBJECT FOR OUTPUTING RESULTS

PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();

//CREATING SESSION OBJECT

HttpSession session=request.getSession(true);

//VALIDATION OF RETRIEVED VARIABLES

//check code

String entered_code=request.getParameter("code");

if(entered_code.length() < 2)

{

out.println("<Html><head><title>Incorect Entry</title></head><body>");

out.println("<p><i><font face=Verdana size=5>User Code Must Be Size 2 .Cannot

out.println("<a href="../HTML/Login.html">Try again</a>");

out.println("</b></font>.</font></p>");

out.println("<hr>");

out.println("</body></html>");

return;

}

//check password

String entered_password=request.getParameter("password");

if(entered_password.length() < 1)

{

out.println("<Html><head><title>Incorect Entry</title></head><body>");

out.println("<p><i><font face=Verdana size=5>User Password Cannot Be Blank

66

out.println("<a href="../HTML/Login.html">Try again</a>");

out.println("</b></font>.</font></p>");

out.println("<hr>");

out.println("</body></html>");

return;

}

//CREATING DATABASE CONNECTION OBJECT

Connection connect=null;

ResultSet rs=null;

try{

connect = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:odbc:insurance","","");}

catch(Exception e2){out.println("<html><body>"+e2+"</body></html>");}

try

{

Statement stmt =connect.createStatement();

try

{

//select details from users table corresponding to code and password

//select code,password1,password from users table corresponding to code and password

String select_user ="SELECT * FROM USERS WHERE USERS.CODE=’"+entered_code+"’";

rs= stmt.executeQuery(select_user);

if(!(rs.next()))

{

out.println("<html><head><title>Wrong User Code </title></head><body>");

out.println("<center><table border=1 bgcolor=lavender WIDTH=100%>");

out.println("<p><i><font color=#054F67 face=Verdana size=5>WRONG USER CODE</font></i></p

out.println("<p><center><font color=#000080><b><a href="../HTML/Login.html"><font color=red>

out.println("<p><center><font color=#000080><b><a href="../Welcome_Form.html"><font color=red>

out.println("</body></html>");

67

return;

}

rs= stmt.executeQuery(select_user);

while(rs.next())

{

picked_code=rs.getString(1);

picked_password=rs.getString(2);

}

//CHECK IF CODE IS NOT WRONG VIA CAPITALISATION ETC

if(! (picked_code.equals(entered_code)) )

{

out.println("<html><head><title>Access Denied</title></head><body>");

out.println("<center><table border=1 bgcolor=lavender WIDTH=100%>");

out.println("<p><i><font color=#054F67 face=Verdana size=5>WRONG USER CODE( Code is case

out.println("<p><center><font color=#000080><b><a href="../HTML/Login.html"><font color=red>

out.println("<p><center><font color=#000080><b><a href="../Welcome_Form.html"><font color=red>

out.println("</body></html>");

return;

}

//CHECK IF PASSWORD IS NOT WRONG

if(! (picked_password.equals(entered_password)) )

{

out.println("<html><head><title>Access Denied</title></head><body>");

out.println("<center><table border=1 bgcolor=lavender WIDTH=100%>");

out.println("<p><i><font color=#054F67 face=Verdana size=5>WRONG USER PASSWORD</font></

out.println("<p><center><font color=#000080><b><a href="../HTML/Login.html"><font color=red>

out.println("<p><center><font color=#000080><b><a href="../Welcome_Form.html"><font color=red>

out.println("</body></html>");

return;

}

68

//ASSIGN VALUES TO SESSION OBJECT

//enter session id

String sessionId=entered_code;

session.putValue("session.id",sessionId);

response.sendRedirect("../HTML/AdminMenu.html");

}//TRY

catch(Exception e2)

{

out.println("<Html><head><title>Error While Selecting From Users Table </title></h

out.println("<p><i><font color=#054F67><font face=Monotype Corsiva size=6>Error

out.println("<font color=#000080><b>");

out.println("<a href="../Welcome_Form.html">QUIT</a>");

out.println("</b></font></font></p>");

out.println("<hr>");

out.println("</body></html>");

return;

}

}

catch(Exception e3)

{

out.println("<Html><head><title>"+e3.getMessage()+"</title></head><body>");

out.println("<p><i><font color=#054F67><font face=Monotype Corsiva size=6>"+e3.g

out.println("<font color=#000080><b>");

out.println("<href="../Welcome_Form.html">QUIT</a>");

out.println("</b></font></font></p>");

out.println("<hr>");

out.println("</body></html>");

return;

}

finally

69

{

//CLOSE ALL OPEN DATABASE CONNECTIONS

try

{

if(connect != null)

{

connect.close();

}

}

catch(Exception e4)

{

out.println("<html><body>"+e4+"</body></html>");

}

}//finally

}//doPost

}//class

Data Dispaly

// CALLING REQUIRED JAVA PACKAGES

import java.io.*;

import java.sql.*;

import javax.servlet.*;

import javax.servlet.http.*;

import java.util.*;

import java.awt.*;

70

import javax.swing.*;

public class List_Client_Details extends HttpServlet

{

// GLOBAL VARIABLES

String name,phone,email,date,business,property,property_material,status;

// INITIALISATION METHOD

// IT LOADS ALL REQUIRED DATABASE DRIVRES

public void init(ServletConfig config) throws ServletException

{

super.init(config);

try

{

Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver");

}

catch(Exception e)

{ }

}//init

//POST METHOD CORRESPONDING TO THE USER INTERFACE POST ACTION

public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request,HttpServletResponse response) throws

{

response.setContentType("text/html");

//CREATING OBJECT FOR OUTPUTING RESULTS

PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();

//GETTING THE SESSION OBJECT

HttpSession session=request.getSession(true);

String sessionId=String.valueOf(session.getValue("session.id"));

if(sessionId.equals("null"))

71

{

out.println("<Html><head><title>Unknown User</title></head><body>");

out.println("<p><i><font face=Verdana size=4> Your Session Has Expired!! Please

out.println("<font color=#000080><b>");

out.println("<a href=\"../HTML/Login.html\">Login</a>");

out.println("</b></font>.</font></p>");

out.println("<hr>");

out.println("</body></html>");

return;

}//if

// RETRIEVING VARIABLES TO FORM QUERY STRINGS

String business=request.getParameter("business");

if( !(business.equals("")))

{

business=" BUSINESS.NAME LIKE’%"+business+"%’";

}

String property=request.getParameter("property");

if( !(property.equals("")))

{

property=" PROPERTY.NAME LIKE’%"+property+"%’";

}

String material=request.getParameter("material");

if( !(material.equals("")))

{

material=" PROPERTY_MATERIAL.NAME LIKE’%"+material+"%’";

}

String name_start=request.getParameter("name_start");

72

String name_end=request.getParameter("name_end");

//CREATING DATABASE CONNECTION OBJECT

Connection connect=null;

ResultSet rs1,rs=null;

try{

connect = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:odbc:insurance","","");}

catch(Exception e){out.println("<html><body>"+e+"</body></html>");}

try

{

Statement stmt =connect.createStatement();

// strings for comparison operator ’between’ in the ’where’ clause

String using_name=" BETWEEN ’"+name_start+"’ AND ’"+name_end+"’";

String display_user_details1=" ";

//QUERING DATABASE USING THE DIFFERRENT QUERY STRINGS

// 1. reading all details from personal table

if( (business.length() == 0) & (property.length() == 0) & (material.length() == 0) & (name_sta

{

display_user_details1="SELECT PERSONAL.NAME,PERSONAL.EMAIL,PERSONAL.PHONE,BUSINESS.NAME,

rs1= stmt.executeQuery(display_user_details1);

if(!(rs1.next()))

{

73

out.println("<html><head><title>No Client Details Found</title></head><body>");

out.println("<center><table border=1 bgcolor=lavender WIDTH=100%>");

out.println("<p><i><font color=#054F67 face=Verdana size=5>No Client Details Found !!</font></

out.println("<TR><TD><TD><TD><font color=#000080><b><a href=\"../HTML/Selection_Client_De

out.println("</body></html>");

return;

}

}//if none is filled

else if( (business.length() == 0) & (property.length() == 0) & (material.length() == 0) &

{

display_user_details1="SELECT PERSONAL.NAME,PERSONAL.EMAIL,PERSONAL.PHONE,BUSINESS.NAME,

rs1= stmt.executeQuery(display_user_details1);

if(!(rs1.next()))

{

out.println("<html><head><title>No Client Details Found</title></head><body>");

out.println("<center><table border=1 bgcolor=lavender WIDTH=100%>");

out.println("<p><i><font color=#054F67 face=Verdana size=5>No Client Details Found !!</font></

out.println("<TR><TD><TD><TD><font color=#000080><b><a href=\"../HTML/Selection_Client_De

out.println("</body></html>");

return;

}

}//if NAME is filled

else if( (business.length() != 0) & (property.length() == 0) & (material.length() == 0) &

{

display_user_details1="SELECT PERSONAL.NAME,PERSONAL.EMAIL,PERSONAL.PHONE,BUSINESS.NAME,

rs1= stmt.executeQuery(display_user_details1);

if(!(rs1.next()))

{

out.println("<html><head><title>No Client Details Found</title></head><body>");

out.println("<center><table border=1 bgcolor=lavender WIDTH=100%>");

74

out.println("<p><i><font color=#054F67 face=Verdana size=5>No Client Details Found !!</font></

out.println("<TR><TD><TD><TD><font color=#000080><b><a href=\"../HTML/Selection_Client_De

out.println("</body></html>");

return;

}

}//if name & business is filled

else if( (business.length() == 0) & (property.length() != 0) & (material.length() == 0) &

{

display_user_details1="SELECT PERSONAL.NAME,PERSONAL.EMAIL,PERSONAL.PHONE,BUSINESS.NAME,

rs1= stmt.executeQuery(display_user_details1);

if(!(rs1.next()))

{

out.println("<html><head><title>No Client Details Found</title></head><body>");

out.println("<center><table border=1 bgcolor=lavender WIDTH=100%>");

out.println("<p><i><font color=#054F67 face=Verdana size=5>No Client Details Found !!</font></

out.println("<TR><TD><TD><TD><font color=#000080><b><a href=\"../HTML/Selection_Client_De

out.println("</body></html>");

return;

}

}//if property & name is filled

else if( (business.length() == 0) & (property.length() == 0) & (material.length() != 0) &

{

display_user_details1="SELECT PERSONAL.NAME,PERSONAL.EMAIL,PERSONAL.PHONE,BUSINESS.NAME

rs1= stmt.executeQuery(display_user_details1);

if(!(rs1.next()))

{

out.println("<html><head><title>No Client Details Found</title></head><body>");

out.println("<center><table border=1 bgcolor=lavender WIDTH=100%>");

75

out.println("<p><i><font color=#054F67 face=Verdana size=5>No Client Details Found !!</font></

out.println("<TR><TD><TD><TD><font color=#000080><b><a href=\"../HTML/Selection_Client_De

out.println("</body></html>");

return;

}

}//if material & name is filled

else if( (business.length() != 0) & (property.length()!= 0) & (material.length() == 0) &

{

display_user_details1="SELECT PERSONAL.NAME,PERSONAL.EMAIL,PERSONAL.PHONE FROM PERSONAL

rs1= stmt.executeQuery(display_user_details1);

if(!(rs1.next()))

{

out.println("<html><head><title>No Client Details Found</title></head><body>");

out.println("<center><table border=1 bgcolor=lavender WIDTH=100%>");

out.println("<p><i><font color=#054F67 face=Verdana size=5>No Client Details Found !!</font></

out.println("<TR><TD><TD><TD><font color=#000080><b><a href=\"../HTML/Selection_Client_De

out.println("</body></html>");

return;

}

}//if none is filled

else if( (business.length() != 0) & (property.length() == 0) & (material.length() != 0) &

{

display_user_details1="SELECT PERSONAL.NAME,PERSONAL.EMAIL,PERSONAL.PHONE,BUSINESS.NAME

rs1= stmt.executeQuery(display_user_details1);

if(!(rs1.next()))

{

out.println("<html><head><title>No Client Details Found</title></head><body>");

out.println("<center><table border=1 bgcolor=lavender WIDTH=100%>");

out.println("<p><i><font color=#054F67 face=Verdana size=5>No Client Details Found !!</font></

out.println("<TR><TD><TD><TD><font color=#000080><b><a href=\"../HTML/Selection_Client_De

out.println("</body></html>");

76

return;

}

}//if none is filled

else if( (business.length() == 0) & (property.length() != 0) & (material.length() != 0) &

{

display_user_details1="SELECT PERSONAL.NAME,PERSONAL.EMAIL,PERSONAL.PHONE,BUSINESS.NAME

rs1= stmt.executeQuery(display_user_details1);

if(!(rs1.next()))

{

out.println("<html><head><title>No Client Details Found</title></head><body>");

out.println("<center><table border=1 bgcolor=lavender WIDTH=100%>");

out.println("<p><i><font color=#054F67 face=Verdana size=5>No Client Details Found !!</font></

out.println("<TR><TD><TD><TD><font color=#000080><b><a href=\"../HTML/Selection_Client_De

out.println("</body></html>");

return;

}

}//if none is filled

else

{

out.println("<html><head><title>No Client Details Found</title></head><body>");

out.println("<center><table border=1 bgcolor=lavender WIDTH=100%>");

out.println("<p><i><font color=#054F67 face=Verdana size=5>No Client Details Found !!</font></

out.println("<p><i><font color=gold face=Verdana size=6>Try Using: <font color=magenta

out.println("<p><i><font color=gold face=Verdana size=6>Note:<font color=magenta face=Verdana

out.println("<p><p><p><font color=#000080><b><a href=\"../HTML/Selection_Client_Details.h

out.println("</body></html>");

return;

}

//DISPLAYING UGING THE OUTPUT OBJECT "out" EMBEDDED WITH HTML

out.println("<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>THE INSURANCE SYSTEM PAGE</TITLE></HEAD>");

77

out.println("<BODY BGCOLOR=LAVENDER><CENTER><p><font color=red ><h1><u><b>THE INSURANCE

out.println("<FONT COLOR=GREEN><H2>CLIENTS LIST</H2></CENTER><table><THEAD>");

out.println("<TR><TH COLSPAN=4 ALIGN=LEFT ><FONT SIZE=4 color=green>NAME</TH><TH></TH><TH

rs1= stmt.executeQuery(display_user_details1);

while(rs1.next())

{

name=rs1.getString(1);

email=rs1.getString(2);

phone=rs1.getString(3);

business=rs1.getString(4);

property=rs1.getString(5);

property_material=rs1.getString(6);

status=rs1.getString(7);

out.println("<TR><TD COLSPAN=4><FONT SIZE=4>"+name+"</TD><TD></TD><TD COLSPAN=4><FONT SIZE=4>"+ph

}

out.println("</TD></TR></table></BODY></HTML>");

return;

}//try

catch(Exception e)

{

out.println("<Html><head><title>Error </title></head><body>");

out.println("<p><i><font color=#054F67><font face=Monotype Corsiva size=6>"+e.ge

out.println("<font color=#000080><b>");

out.println("<a href=\"../HTML/Selection_Client_Details.html\">QUIT</a>");

out.println("</b></font></font></p>");

out.println("<hr>");

out.println("</body></html>");

return;

}

finally

{

//CLOSE ALL OPEN DATABASE CONNECTIONS

78

try

{

if(connect != null)

{

connect.close();

}

}

catch(Exception e)

{

out.println("<html><body>"+e+"</body></html>");

}

}//finally

}//doPost

}//class

79