DOCOsoft and ACORD strengthen partnership with Test Harness Development
ACORD Standards: A Beacon of Quality for Insurance Industry Professionals
DOCOsoft joined ACORD is January 2015 and since then we have found that there is huge value in achieving ACORD certification, which is a kite mark of quality. It proves to clients and potential clients that businesses are serious about achieving the highest standards and finding smarter ways of sharing information. Using ACORD standards provides a number of benefits, including:
- Enhanced interoperability; systems able to talk to each other in the same language.
- ACORD messages can update back office systems and documents can be delivered directly to document repositories.
- ACORD is a global standard – data becomes international and portable.
From a DOCOsoft point of view, our messaging will work with and for all ACORD certified Trading Partners while our software also meets universal ACORD standards. Key to building trust with clients is that when they use our messaging they can have confidence that it will work with all other parties. ACORD helps to enable that trust.
Meanwhile, the importance of the ACORD Test Harness is that it provides DOCOsoft with the ability to test in a controlled environment, like a test harness in the sky. There is no reliance on other trading partners to exchange messages and it offers us the flexibility to test independently rather than having to rely on a third party. We were delighted that in the implementation there was no impact on production services or on financials so in that respect the process was seamless.
We will be participating in the next phase of ECF Write Back, which is due to start April 2016, this will give us another opportunity to work with the new test harness. The main benefit of the new test harness is that it will provide us with a level of validation on each message that can easily identify issues in our build infrastructure and allow us to immediately remedy any problems.
The newly enhanced ACORD Test Harness will build upon all of the existing functionality used to test and certify ACORD messaging, but with updated capabilities designed to move the insurance industry into the future. An important consideration of the new Test Harness is that it enables implementation communities to move between versions in a reasonable timeframe. This is achieved by allowing organisations to test changes directly with the ACORD Test Harness. The enhanced testing minimises the testing effort required for individual organisations as they roll out ACORD messaging to increasing numbers of trading partners.
ACORD gives us a more effective and secure gateway. Businesses can log in and test their operational capability, the detailed level of validation carried out on each message is highly granular and it is possible to test an entire business process as you develop without having to involve one of your trading partners.
Write Back messaging continues our work with ACORD as previously we have implemented ACORD DRI in association with an existing client.
We found the people in ACORD to be very approachable and easy to work with. Any issue that we encountered or queries we had were quickly resolved. During the build phase of our Gateway the help we received was invaluable, which allowed us to develop our Gateway to the highest standards.
We have certainly found that ACORD Standards has helped DOCOsoft to do business more efficiently by improving data flow and reducing errors and it is helping us and insurance industry professionals we work with to develop and maintain the Standards to stay current with the industry’s evolving needs.