Baird MacGregor, established in 1979, is Canadian owned insurance brokerage operating its head office in Toronto's core. Managing creative, customer focused, solution driven programs, Baird MacGregor has had excellent success building their business. With unique offering such as Taxi & Limousine Insurance and Risk Financing coupled with more traditional instruments, Baird MacGregor had developed a significant customer base. In keeping with their philosophy of leading edge customer value, BIA was engaged to develop unique, industry leading software to build on existing capability.

Case Study:A large part of Baird MacGregors’ success has been it’s domination of the taxi insurance sector. For years it was this core service that has allowed them to grow and develop other practices to the point where today they offer a complete suite of products. The taxi insurance system had fallen behind over the years and could no longer support growing demand. Expertise to support the old FoxPro system was also getting harder and harder to source.

Baird MacGregor engaged BIA to initially perform a software evaluation and develop an applications modernization approach. Some of the key requirements for the new application were the ability to assess the system from anywhere and configurable features.

Based on interviews, analysis of the application and database, access requirements, transaction volumes, available technology and market trends, BIA developed a long term application strategy. Our approach was to redevelop the application with ASP.net, using a SOA framework and Agile methodologies. We recommended the hardware, software and methodology, assembled it into a compelling value proposition for the IT department and helped them win executive sponsorship and funding.

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The benefits of performing an assessment and application modernization strategy are;

Align business and technology so that an application’s modernization direction is based on business drivers as well as technology enablersEliminate low value business applications and associated support costsConsolidate redundant applications, functionality and supportEnable sustained seamless, predictable maintenance and development pathEliminate spending on obsolete functionalityMaximize investment through full and appropriate utilization

By redeveloping their application, Baird MacGregor eliminated the reliance on very old, barely supported technology. At the same time they maximized their usage, increasing the footprint of the user base.

They ran a huge risk. If anything had gone wrong with their application there was no one available to fix it. Help was at a minimum of several days away and that would have been very difficult for their business.

The kind of risks they were unknowingly taking would have been totally unacceptable to any other business.

With the full engagement of the use community, a state of the art, fully tested and documented, functionally rich and user friendly application emerged with the full endorsement of everyone involved. Today, as a result of the advancements made to the application Baird MacGregor has easily supported substantialy growth in it’s taxi insurance portfolio.

“Advanced development tools drive better applications.Better applications drive business better.”

Allen Richards, VP IT Strategy, Cami Research Group

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