Event
Summary
"Mercator Software (NASDAQ: MCTR), the e-business transformation company,
announced new capabilities within its Mercator E-Business Integration
Broker products that enable dramatic reductions in the time, cost and
effort to integrate ACORD XML transactions with existing insurance applications.
With new e-business data transformation support incorporating ACORD XML,
customers will be able to accelerate the adoption of XML for business-to-business
(B2B) exchange of insurance transactions, forms and documents. Combined
with existing Mercator support for ACORD AL3 standards for EDI, these
new capabilities allow customers to deploy a single software architecture
for integration of both XML and EDI transactions based on ACORD standards
without creating programs, regardless of application complexity."
"Mercator
committed to ACORD standards two years ago and began capturing ACORD standards
within its e-business integration products. ACORD standards make it easy
for Mercator customers to conduct e-business with their partners," stated
Fred Rella, director of member services, at ACORD. "As the driving organization
for promoting interoperability within the insurance industry, we are very
pleased that Mercator has extended its business-to-business capabilities
to support ACORD XML. This adoption further enhances our members' ability
to achieve seamless integration with partners."
"The emergence of the Internet and electronic marketplaces has dramatically
changed the way business is conducted," said Dave Power, vice president
of marketing at Mercator. "XML is at the center of these changes, yet
most companies today still conduct significant business over private networks
using EDI protocols. Our world-class data transformation support for both
the ACORD AL3 standards and ACORD XML standards makes it easier for insurance
companies to manage the transition to XML and Internet-based trading,
without abandoning investments in existing information systems."
Note:
ACORD is the focal point for standardizing insurance information and point-of-sale
document requirements. Changing requirements that result from industry
coverage enhancements, legislation, regulation, case law, consumer pressures,
and insurance environment changes are channeled through ACORD by state
insurance departments, a National Insurance law monitoring service, companies,
and agents. ACORD evaluates all requirements and requests, relying on
a broad network of industry experts, and makes the appropriate changes
to ACORD Standards. The Standards that are affected include Forms, AL3
and ObjX.
Market
Impact
Once again, an enterprise application integration vendor has realized
the potential of vertical market focus. Since EAI applications require
such a high level of customization, reducing the complexity by providing
specific vertical applications which may actually function "out of the
box" is a strong selling point. The addition of XML (the Extensible Markup
Language) to the existing support for EDI (Electronic Data Interchange)
makes this effort even easier.
Mercator already has a number of insurance customers, including Wausau
Insurance and Nationwide Insurance, and will most likely be able to add
to the list. According to the vendor, the products "capture the complete
semantic descriptions of ACORD standard transactions in graphical form,
including importing of ACORD data type definitions (DTDs), thereby allowing
100% transformation to any other format through a drag-and-drop interface,
without writing programs or coding user exits." Given that Mercator has
supported ACORD since 1998, this should give them additional strength
in this particular vertical market.
User
Recommendations
Customers evaluating enterprise application integration solutions for
the insurance vertical should definitely include Mercator (a.k.a. TSI
International Software) on a short list of vendors. Since EAI solutions
require such a high level of customization (and related consulting fees),
any vendor efforts to reduce this time and expense and supply a proven
vertical solution should be closely investigated. Customers should exercise
caution when considering a new product release, and if vendor consulting
assistance is being considered, should investigate the possibility of
a fixed-price contract.