The Data Factory Tool Kit (DFTK) and data migration methodology acquired by Mastek have been used to deliver the migration of over 30,000 live monthly household insurance policies for PlusOne Services, an insurance administration company. The project was completed within 90 days.

Embedded at the heart of Mastek's Data Migration Centre of Excellence, DFTK was used to migrate PlusOne's legacy policy administration system onto SSP's S4i application, which was already being used to administer new business and the business of a number of existing clients.

Before the move to S4i, business for some clients was being administered on an ageing custom-built system which was very restrictive and made it difficult to implement new products, introduce changes or produce management reports.

The successful migration enables PlusOne to offer improved services to their clients and launch new products more quickly onto the market. Significant cost savings have been achieved from reduced maintenance and staff training needs.

"Data migration was a lumbering beast that represented a huge risk to our business", said PlusOne's IT Director, Bob Bruce. "Without the migration, the legacy application would have represented a huge, ongoing cost."

Mastek worked alongside PlusOne in a joint team to deliver the project. Mastek used an early release of DFTK, version 7, which provided substantial improvements in productivity, enabling a full data load to be delivered for testing within a month of the project start.

"Many iterations of testing were required to prove all the scenarios for the transformation of data from the legacy system to S4i and Mastek provided excellent support throughout" said PlusOne project manager, Ian Burroughs.

Mastek UK Data Migration Manager Philip Magnall said: "While PlusOne has had the vision to realise how important data migration was for the future success of their company there are still many organisations ooations out there surviving on creaking IT systems which restrict the development of their business."

"Many put off migration from their legacy systems as they believe it to be a complicated and risky process. The key to success is using the right approach and tools for the job. We managed to complete the entire PlusOne data migration project in half the time of more traditional methods" Mr Magnall continued.

PlusOne's IT Director, Bob Bruce was very happy with the service he received: "Mastek knew what they were talking about when it came to data migration in the insurance domain and were able to solve problems. They did not over-promise or under-deliver and were very flexible in the way that they worked. When plans had to be changed at short notice they responded very well".