What is the profile of your typical customer?
Customers range from startups with fewer than 25 users to fast growth operations approaching 100+ users to large, established companies with 300+ users administering an average portfolio of 300,000 policies.

For what type of customer is the software best suited?
The functionality in the CIS software is best suited for medium sized to smaller companies selling Traditional, Variable, Universal and Annuity life insurance or general insurance product lines, or in large companies for new products that cannot be easily supported by existing application software.

What server platforms do you support?
The Oracle database provides awesome flexibility in platform selection. The server platform can be almost any Windows 2000 / Windows NT or Unix compatible equipment.

What GUI client types do you support?
The client platform is Windows 2000 / Windows 98 / Windows 95.

With growth, how do customers migrate to new platforms?
Usually, all that is required is an upgrade of the customer's RDBMS licence and recompilation of the software for the new platform architecture. The Oracle database offers utilities that facilitate easy export and import of data between platforms for seamless migration.

How well are the CIS applications integrated?
If desired, these systems can reside on one RDBMS to share data, functionality, stored procedures, and routines where appropriate. In particular, the CIS-LIFE and CIS-GROUP applications are ideal candidates for integration. The benefits of integrated implementation include seamless customer support, lower costs for operation, and better cross-selling opportunities.

Does your software have functionality to support multi-country operations?
The software provides functionality to support multiple currency and country operations within a single implementation.

How long does a typical new installation take?
This depends on the scope of the customization. Experience is that a startup company may take three to nine months depending on the product complexity. Established companies usually have more complex product mixes as well as data conversion issues, which can typically result in installations taking anywhere from 9 months to 2 years.

What is your pricing structure?
Due to vendor consolidation we remain one of the few software vendors that can still serve smaller companies economically. Our licence fees are typically lower than those of larger vendors for software solutions with similar functionality. Our base licence prices are for 24 users or less in deference to the economies of smaller operations with a regime for adding seats as the number of users grow beyond 24.

How do you handle new releases?
We aim to remain a "product" company, so unique customizations for client companies are typically held in the base version as "site features" for that customer's installation, as opposed to the typical route used by "service" companies of making each site into a unique version of the application. One benefit of this approach, is that it simplifies the introduction of new releases by eliminating the retrofitting of upgrades. This results in savings in the costs for on going maintenance and new product releases.

Is source code delivered with your applications?
Optional source code licences, restricted to own use, are available for purchase separately from the software licence. Source code is delivered with technical documentation.

Is technical support and/or maintenance available?
An annually renewable technical support and maintenance agreement is available for each of our applications. This includes the provision of help desk services and entitlement to software upgrade releases for the licensed platform. The cost will depend mainly on the cost of the software licence and is typically 15% to 20% of the licence fee.

Is technical support and maintenance provided free of cost ?
There is an annual fee for technical support and maintenance. However, technical support and maintenance is normally provided free of cost for the first year of implementation.

What are the technologies used?
CIS is a relational design normalized to third normal form. There are about 300 tables, most of them reference tables holding user-defined rates and other date-sensitive information. This is implemented in an online client/server environment utilizing Windows for the client desktop, TCP/IP for the communications protocol and a suitable operating system on the server to meet capacity requirements. Essentially a thin-client design, there are in excess of 100 stored procedures that run from the database for common functions such as alpha search or premium calculation. There is an integrated Agency Data Warehouse where statistical data is periodically updated into a de-normalized structure that summarizes time stamped data at the Agent and all layers in the Agency hierarchy. All programs were developed using Oracle's development tool set, except for some report programs which were developed in Sqribe Technology's SQR, but are in the process of being replaced with Oracle versions. Deployment on the Windows desktop allows integration with a number of third-party applications, such as Microsoft Word for the printing of selected documents.

Is your software Year 2000 compliant?
All our application software packages are fully Year 2000 compliant.

Is your software designed for mainframes or PCs?
All our software packages are developed for client/server implementation on networked PCs.

Is your software Windows compatible?
All our software packages can be implemented on Windows platforms.

Is your software developed with full GUI functionality?
Our CIS applications software with the exception of COVER and BROKER is developed for implementation in a GUI (graphical user interface) environment.

Can your software run on Windows 2000?
All our software packages can run on Windows 2000 or Windows NT 4 servers.

Can your software run on Novell?
The COVER and BROKER applications can run on Novell servers. However, our CIS applications can not run on Novell servers.

Can your software run on Unix?
All our software packages can run on Unix servers. However, the CIS applications require client PCs running Windows desktops.

Can your software run on character-based terminals?
Our COVER and BROKER applications are the only ones that can be implemented for use on character-based terminals.

Does your software include a general ledger module?
No, we advocate the use of one of the many well written G/L applications available to which an electronic data interface can be provided.

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