Case Study
The Markel Corporation
The Markel Corporation is a US based international property and casualty insurance holding company which also has a UK operation based in London.
A project was initiated by Markel to migrate their legacy ERP system from CODA Financials, and other supporting satellite systems onto the Lawson Financials package.
System Requirements and Solution
Markel required Accounts Payable vendors and invoices (both current and historical) and General Ledger balances and transactions to be extracted from the CODA system which resided on an Oracle database. There also existed a whole host of specialist insurance data in a number of other data repositories linked to the General Ledger but also having its own standalone structure. This data was to be stored in the Lawson Strategic Ledger system which was built and parameterised to allow this structure to remain in place but to be contained in one integrated system. The extracted legacy data was collected, collated, rationalised and written to CSV-formatted files for loading into the Lawson conversion tables.
A key requirement from the client was to use existing software and IT infrastructure for the delivery of the migration solution. This involved the transferring and initiating of the conversions, and thereafter the ongoing interfaces through the clients existing staging area adhering to the checks and controls demanded therein.
The solution was delivered to the Finance department so that the data extraction could be performed “on demand” and by corporate entity. This approach enabled Finance to convert corporate entities across to Lawson as required rather than having to adopt a “big bang” approach.
Other specialised bespoke reporting applications were created to allow Markel to query and report on insurance data in the prescribed manner. Applications were also written to allow Markel to operate various diverse electronic AP payment formats for both the US and UK operations.