16 December 2009

SDT Financial Software Solutions, established in 1995, offers business applications for the financial sector.

The company targets providers of life insurance, loans, health insurance and pension funds. Over twenty clients in eleven African countries and years of experience have made SDT a household name in the African market. SDT’s knowledge of the market is reflected in its applications, which enable financial service providers to work with greater flexibility and efficiency. SDT is a Microsoft Gold Partner, and all its applications are based on Microsoft technology.

The insurance sector is in a constant state of flux as a result of the developments in the realms of politics, economics and social circumstances. The South African insurance sector in particular has seen a number of positive developments. The country’s financial infrastructure has improved considerably, and there is a broader base for life insurance policies among other instruments.

Seeing as the insurance market is subject to constant change, SDT started scouting out the possibilities of an automated correspondence and document system a few years back. By integrating such a system into SDT’s business applications, the company offers its clients the possibility of responding quickly to changes in the market or changes to the situations of clients.

Initially, SDT started working on the development of a correspondence system itself, but after some time, it emerged that this tool did not match the dynamics of the African market. Develop a solution that could be used with often complex African family structures – the average African family has more than ten members – turned out to be a complex problem. Insurers often have several different policies for the different family members, leading to many changes at customer level. This results in a very complex administrative organisation with lots of correspondence.

SDT wanted a solution that offers the flexibility and functionality to deal with this kind of situation. SDT eventually decided to stop the development of its own correspondence solution and turned its attention to finding a standard solution. After taking stock of what is available on the market, Aia’s ITP Document Platform turned out to fulfil SDT’s need for a flexible, interactive and user-friendly system. By choosing a standard solution, SDT can now focus on further developing and fine-tuning its core application, Exergy.

It is crucial for SDT’s clients to be able to work, independently, with the correspondence solution. They do not want to depend on SDT’s consultants for the implementation of changes to documents. User-friendliness was, therefore, a key requirement of SDT’s during the selection process. This requirement formed a perfect match with Aia’s philosophy of giving the business user full control over document creation. Thanks to the integration of ITP into SDT’s Exergy, clients can now automatically generate policies and personalised correspondence. Intensive training by Aia at the start of the partnership has made SDT a fully independent implementation partner for ITP.

Gerhard Coetzee, portfolio executive at SDT, said: “Simply because the African market is in no way comparable to the European market, it proved tricky to find a system that fully meets our wishes and requirements. We have now found the right partner in Aia, and we are more than satisfied with ITP. Aia Software’s vision and its high-quality product ITP dovetail perfectly with our objective of putting user-friendliness first. Nothing should stand in the way of the business operating independently when it comes to editing and modifying documents. ITP was designed for that, making it an excellent system for us that matches our corporate objective of offering our clients a user-friendly and efficient solution. We are currently working hard on taking full stock of the possibilities in  developing a new service we can offer, as part of which we want to market ITP 3.5. The option of independently editing text blocks is one that we expect will prove particularly relevant to our clients.”

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